Congress wraps up fiscal 2002 spending bills

The House completed the fiscal 2002 appropriations cycle Thursday morning with an overwhelming 408-6 vote for the 13th and final spending bill--the $317 billion Defense and $20 billion anti-terrorism supplemental package--after a scant five minutes of debate.

Voting against the bill were Reps. John Conyers, D-Mich; Bob Filner and Barbara Lee, both D-Calif.; Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., Ron Paul, R-Texas; and Thomas Petri, R-Wis.

The House also adopted, by voice vote, a seventh and final continuing resolution to give the President until Jan. 10 to sign the final fiscal 2002 spending bills into law.

The Senate passed the last three appropriations conference reports Thursday evening, but not until Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., excoriated colleagues for pork-barrel spending. "We've ended up with the most extreme and wasteful spending that I've ever seen," McCain told reporters. "It's disgraceful." McCain called the spending "war profiteering." Among the items McCain criticized was a controversial lease deal that Boeing secured in the supplemental.

A coalition of conservative and liberal groups led by consumer advocate Ralph Nader and Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist denounced the 10-year, $20 billion plan to lease 100 Boeing 767s for use as air-refueling tankers, and Thursday wrote to senators urging them "to take to the floor to speak and vote against this specific siphoning of taxpayer money to the Boeing company."

Defense Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, the provision's greatest champion in the Senate, rejected the Nader- Norquist argument that the deal represents a corporate bailout, saying it reflects extensive review of the Air Force's needs.

Following the Defense vote, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., told reporters he expected the administration to send its next supplemental request for further fiscal 2002 funds to wage the war on terrorism at home and abroad "in the March time frame," although he conceded: "It could be sooner, it could be later. I just don't know."

Young said the committee is already looking ahead to what would have to be included in the next supplemental, so Congress can respond quickly once the President submits his request.

Although he declined to go into detail or to give dollar figures, Young did say the next installment of supplemental funding would focus on the Defense Department, Coast Guard, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, airport security, the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies.