Senator DeWine and Ohio colleague Sen. George Voinovich inserted wording in the bill's manager's report that emphasized safety and security of Peace Corps volunteers, after a report by this newspaper on the topic
SOME BILLS IN CONGRESS HITCH A RIDE
Feb 2, 2004
Dayton Daily News
byMei-Ling Hopgood
WASHINGTON - Each year at this time, the president submits to Congress his proposed budget for the year.
But what the president proposes and what Congress ends up passing often are worlds apart.
The 13 spending bills that get passed on Capitol Hill appropriate money to agencies and projects. Lots of extra money for local and pet projects end up in those bills. But plenty of legislative extras, called legislative riders, are quietly included too: Loopholes, initiatives born, programs killed, tweaks and even complete changes in law.
Often, few people know about them until they are passed. Sometimes the public never finds out.
People unhappy with added provisions say they are a sneaky way to avoid transparency and debate. Others say it's a key way to get things done quickly. Riders are not easy to get - the chairman of the committee shepherding the bill has to agree.
There are a lot of extras in the huge omnibus spending bill for fiscal 2004, which passed the Senate two weeks ago.
Environmentalists have been howling about what they call "anti- environment" riders. For example, they say one eliminates environmental review for a huge category of logging projects, leaving homes and communities exposed to fire risk.
Gun-control advocates are jeering and gun-rights activists are cheering a provision that shortens from 90 days to 24 hours the time that the Justice Department must keep background checks for gun purchasers.
Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, is not happy with that gun provision. But as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee overseeing the District of Columbia, he added a few riders of his own. DeWine included in the D.C. appropriations bill language a provision to keep alive for another year a working group that promoted the release of U.S. government records on Nazi war criminals.
DeWine and Ohio colleague Sen. George Voinovich inserted wording in the bill's manager's report that emphasized safety and security of Peace Corps volunteers, after a report by this newspaper on the topic.
In the past, Dayton boosters have tried to get language in spending bills to save the Air Force Institute of Technology, but had to settle for wording in a committee report.
Sometimes the threat of a rider is enough to get the job done. DeWine threatened to add a rider to force a compensation fund to pay money owed to people who had contracted AIDS through the U.S. blood supply. The fund paid up.
Besides riders, lawmakers also use the threat to withhold money. Rep. Dave Hobson, R-Springfield, chairman of the House Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee, was not happy that Florida lawmakers had passed a law giving companies more time to clean the Everglades. So he wrote in his energy and water bill passed last year that the cleanup better move at a pace acceptable to Congress (to Hobson) or federal funds would be at risk. Concerned about new nuclear proliferation, he fenced off $4 million for new nuclear research until he got a report on how the administration plans to dispose of its stockpile of weapons.
As always in Congress, where there's a will, there's a way.
Contact Mei-Ling Hopgood in the Washington bureau at 202-887- 8328 or mhopgood@coxnews.com.
