2002 Supplemental Spending Bill: Drowning in Pork

June 5, 2002 4 min read

Brian Riedl

Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute

The $34 billion Senate FY 2002 Supplemental spending bill to enhance Homeland Security fulfills many of the legitimate national defense and security requests of President Bush, but in the process has also been abused by many Senators to provide unnecessary spending to privileged constituents. As the list below makes embarrassingly clear, most of these questionable add-ons are for purposes that have absolutely nothing to do with national defense, Homeland Security, or anti-terrorism efforts. Nor do they fund legitimate damage re-construction sustained during the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

In fact, in a number of cases, the Senate has reduced spending for legitimate security and anti-terrorism objectives requested by the President in order to make way for a costly wish list of special-interest projects.

Because many Senators are threatening to add even more questionable spending to this supplemental appropriations bill, this list will be updated daily as more pork barrel spending is added.

Senate FY 2002 Supplemental

Require Agriculture Department to fund report of Dog Dealers Task Force as it relates to violations of puppy breeding.

$2,000,000 - Research related to mad cow disease.
$2,500,000 - Vaccine trials related to foot and mouth disease.
$3,000,000 - Cattle genome sequencing.
Re-deploy departmental funds to sustain Honey Bee research on tracheal mites.
$85,000,000 - Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Interoperable Communications Technology program, to be designed and implemented by the COPS office. This amount is $85,000,000 above the budget request.
$50,000,000 -Construction of the National Animal Disease Laboratory, Ames, Iowa.
$19,022,000 - Animal health surveillance.
$21,550,000 - Pest detection activities.
$100,000,000 - Recovery operations of the Watershed Protection Program.
Re-deploy departmental funds to sustain the Senior Farmers' Market Nutrition Program which encourages senior's to purchase fresh produce.
$450,000,000 - Office of Justice Programs to establish an election reform grant program.
$3,000,000 - National Ocean Service to enhance the National Water Level Observation.
$21,400,000 - National Ocean Service to address mapping and charting backlog.
$7,200,000 - A supercomputer backup system for the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration.
$11,000,000 - Economic assistance for the New England fishing industry.
$25,000,000 - Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority for a back-up operations control center.
$10,000,000 - Army Corps of Engineers to assist with the recovery efforts resulting from flooding in Southern West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky and Southwestern Virginia.
$700,000 - Biomass project at Winona, Mississippi.
Department of Energy to award a contract for the design, construction and operation of facilities for the conversion and disposition of depleted uranium hexafluroide on each of the sites of the gaseous diffusion plants at Paducah, Kentucky and Portsmouth, Ohio.
$3,000,000 - Department of Interior, Bureau of Reclamation for drilling five wells in Santa Fe, NM.
$50,000,000 - Humanitarian, refugee, and reconstruction assistance for the West Bank and Gaza.
$34,000,000 - United Nations Population Fund. (approved in last budget)
$412,000 - Fish and Wildlife Service through resource management for continuity of operations at the National Conservation Training Center.
$765,000 - Security needs at the Clark R. Bavin National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory.
$20,000,000 - Provided to the Survey for high resolution mapping and imagery of the Nation's most strategic cities and $6,776,000 is provided to the Earth Resources Observation System Data Center (EDC). Of the amounts provided to EDC, $6,000,000 is for storage infrastructure upgrades to convert all archived data on outdated types of media to disk-based storage, and $776,000 is provided for an improved backup power supply system that will ensure the uninterrupted delivery of satellite data.
$2,000,000 - Initiate the planning and design of an alcohol collection storage facility located in Suitland, Maryland for The Smithsonian's collections of preserved animal species.
Clarify the grant for the New Mexico Telecommunications Call Center Training Consortium that was provided in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2001 by June 30, 2002.
$43,000,000 - Grants to AMTRAK. $20,000,000 to repair damaged passenger equipment, and $23,000,000 for the heavy overhaul of the rail passenger fleet.
$4,400,000,000 - Increase in spending for Highway Program for fiscal year 2003.
General provision clarifying the re-alignment of funds for a highway project in Mississippi made eligible for enhancement funds in the Transportation Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2001.
$2,750,000 - Delaware River Port project and the Philadelphia, PA (Drexel) project.
$2,000,000 - Customs Service to monitor and investigate the importation in the U.S. products made with forced labor.
$80,000,000 -Cerro Grande Fire Claims to cover the remaining liability resulting from the fire.
$2,500,000 - Coral Reef program to conduct coral mapping in the waters of the Hawaiian Islands.
Re-deploy funds to the Incarcerated Youth Offenders program grants to State correctional agencies to assist incarcerated youth acquire literacy and job skills.
$1,000,000 - Conversion of low-income subsidized housing property in Baltimore, Maryland to student housing.
$11,000,000 - For OSHA Training Grants to continue non-competitively the previous year's grantees.
$750,000 - Clarify previously appropriated funds to the Smart Start Child Care Center and Expertise School at Las Vegas, Nevada.

REDUCED SECURITY:

$13,000,000 - From unobligated balances available in the Drug Enforcement Administration, Violent Crime Reduction Programs.
$2,500,000 - Not provided as requested for the Capital Investment Fund for the Coalition Against Terrorism (CAT) matrix.
$3,600,000 - General expenses of the U.S. Capitol Police. These funds are needed for unanticipated expenses associated with the increased security posture.