CONGRESS TAGS $1.3 BILLION FOR DRUG WAR

WASHINGTON - Congress approves a package to battle Columbian drug
producers. The measure also earmarked millions for disaster relief and
other state projects.

Congress completed an $11.2 billion measure Friday, financing
Colombia's war against drugs, Pentagon needs and U.S. disaster aid.
This came four months after President Clinton requested a package half
that size.

After resolving the last in a series of hurdles that nearly upended
the measure, the Senate gave final approval to the bill by voice vote,
and lawmakers left town for their weeklong July Fourth recess. The
House assented to the bill on Thursday night, 306-110.

The biggest difference between Clinton's $5.2 billion version and
Congress' was that lawmakers more than doubled his defense request to
$6.4 billion. But legislators also included hundreds of millions for
election-year, home-state projects, ranging from New York City's
proposed Second Avenue subway to the crabbing industry in Alaska,
Washington state and Oregon.

Clinton, who said he will sign the bill, said in a speech Friday in
Englewood, N.J., that it was ``very, very important.''

He was especially eager for its $1.3 billion to help equip and train
Colombian forces battling cocaine and heroin producers controlling
southern sections of the country. Though some lawmakers warned of
being dragged into a Vietnam-type of unwinnable war, Clinton and House
Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said the money would help combat drug
use at home.

``Most of the cocaine and most of the heroin that flows into the
bodies of the young people in America comes out of Colombia,'' Clinton
said.

As if mimicking the House's last-minute problems on Thursday, Senate
passage came only after a pair of fiscal conservatives - Sens. John
McCain, R-Ariz., and Phil Gramm, R-Texas - threatened to delay the
vote for a week.

They were demanding cuts in the bill that McCain said was ``incredibly
full of unnecessary, unwarranted, unauthorized, unmitigated pork.''

Underlining the hardball that leaders were willing to play to win
passage of the measure, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted
Stevens, R-Alaska, circulated a letter to his colleagues from Gen.
John M. Keane, the Army's vice chief of staff.

It warned that unless the Army received $1.5 billion the bill
contained, it would ``break the Army's ability to remain solvent and
maintain a ready force'' for the rest of the year.

The final package contained $2 billion for the costs of U.S.
peacekeeping troops in Kosovo; $661 million to help New Mexico recover
from blazes that blackened Los Alamos and other communities; and $350
million for fighting other wildfires.

There was also $360 million to help North Carolina and other states
hit by last September's Hurricane Floyd and farm problems, and $600
million to help low-income families pay their utility bills.

Lawmakers also managed to find $45 million to buy a Gulfstream
executive jet for the Coast Guard's commandant; $8.4 million to help
the White House reconstruct the lost e-mails that congressional
investigators are hunting; and $17.5 million to fix some of the
Capitol's numerous fire hazards.

The bill also had $7 million to help Hawaiian fishing boats avoid
snagging sea turtles; $112 million to reimburse California, Arizona,
New Mexico and Texas for costs of dealing with illegal immigrants and
smuggling; and $2 million to help refurbish the rail link between
Danbury and Norwalk, Conn.

Meanwhile, the Senate voted 52-43 to pass its $352 billion version of
the fiscal 2001 spending bill for the departments of Labor, Education
and Health and Human Services. Differences with a smaller House
version must now be resolved.