11th-Hour Additions to Funding Bill Trouble Environmentalists

[theoceansnerves]

WASHINGTON — As Congress raced Thursday to cobble together a massive bill to fund much of the federal government and wrap up its 2004 session, influential Republican senators tried to attach several industry-friendly measures to the package.

One would exempt large livestock and dairy farms from some environmental laws. Another would provide billions of dollars for Army Corps of Engineers water projects. A third — which would have exempted pesticide users from Endangered Species Act rules — was stripped from the bill when it was deemed so controversial that it might delay the entire spending bill, which lawmakers hope to vote on by this weekend.

...

Environmentalists expressed concerns about several other measures that appeared likely to be attached to the big spending bill even though they had not been debated on the floor of both the House and Senate.

One would authorize a land exchange to allow oil drilling on what is now part of the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Another would lift a wilderness designation from Georgia's Cumberland Island, opening the largest undeveloped island on the East Coast to commercial development.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-riders19nov19,1,6346782.story?coll=la-features-elect2004

(might need a login/pass)

[demnan]

1. Yes it's pork time

In most of the country people are thinking about turkey but here in the Nation's Capitol, the Legislative Branch of the Government goes through it's annual pork dispensing program, known as the Federal Budget.