CONGRESS SENDS CLINTON BILL FOR COLOMBIA

Washington -- Congress sent President Clinton an $11.2 billion emergency
measure for Colombia, the Pentagon and victims of domestic disasters after
the Senate abruptly resolved an eleventh-hour fight over the bill's size.
The Senate approved the bill by voice vote Friday after leaders agreed that
in a future bill they will undo $6.3 billion of accounting gimmicks that
the emergency measure contains.

They agreed to do so after Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Phil Gramm,
R-Texas, who objected to the bill's spending, threatened to use procedural
moves that could have delayed passage of the bill until next week.

Senate leaders considered it mandatory to complete the bill Friday, to
start Congress' weeklong July Fourth recess. The Pentagon warned of
scaled-back operations beginning in July unless it received funds in the
bill, and most lawmakers were eager to avoid being blamed for such steps.

"This is for military construction and emergencies," said Senate Majority
Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., "We need to get this done."

The House endorsed the bill Thursday by 306-110.

The lopsided margin belied the bill's stop-and-start journey through
Congress, which began in February when President Clinton asked for $5.2
billion. In the end, most members could not resist the election-year
largesse it contained for the Long Island Sound's struggling lobster
industry, law enforcement along the Arizona-Mexico border, and much in between.

Saying that the bill "will make our nation safer and more secure," Clinton
indicated that he stood ready to sign it.

"It has been four months since I first sent this request to Capitol Hill,
and the needs are all the greater today," he said after the House vote.

The highest profile item was $1.3 billion to help Colombia's government
prevail in its four-decade conflict against drug traffickers and their
heavily armed left- and right-wing allies.

Both Clinton and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., pushed hard for the
money, which they argue will help stem the flow of cocaine and heroin from
Colombia. The South American country supplies more than 80 percent of the
cocaine used in the United States.

"This Colombian aid package is an investment in our future -- a future free
from the scourge of drugs," Hastert said after the vote

Their combined drive for the money overwhelmed opposition by members of
both parties. Opponents cited allegations of Colombian human rights abuses,
fear of U.S. involvement in an unwinnable, four-decade-long conflict, and a
preference to use the money for drug prevention programs at home.

"A profound mistake," is how Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., described the
Colombian aid.

Most of the aid is to provide the Colombians with 60 Blackhawk and Huey
helicopters, train and equip Colombian military and national police
battalions, and for intelligence activity. Officials envision retaking
portions of southern Colombia that the rebels control, and fumigating
jungle coca fields.

There would also be money for human rights programs in Colombia, for
Bolivia, Ecuador and other nearby countries, and for U.S. aircraft
performing anti-drug surveillance.

The bill also contained $2 billion to refill Pentagon accounts drained to
pay for the 5,700 U.S. troops in the NATO peacekeeping team in Kosovo.
There was also $4.4 billion more for fuel, health care and other Pentagon
programs -- including $40 million in for Vieques, Puerto Rico, site of the
Navy's controversial bombing range.

There was also $661 million to help New Mexico rebuild from the blazes that
ravaged Los Alamos and other communities; $350 million for fighting other
wildfires; about $360 million to help North Carolina and other states
recover from last September's Hurricane Floyd and other agricultural
problems; and $600 million to help low-income families pay their utility bills.

In a setback for environmentalists and the administration, conservatives
won language blocking forthcoming Environmental Protection Agency rules
aimed at reducing industrial and agricultural run-off into polluted streams
and lakes.

Money for lawmaker's pet projects, however, knew no political boundaries.

There was $110 million for a new Great Lakes icebreaker to be based in
Wisconsin, home state of the House Appropriations Committee's top Democrat,
Obey.

Two U.S. Senate candidates -- Reps. Rick Lazio, R-N.Y., and Bob Franks,
R-N.J. -- won projects to boast about. Lazio was trumpeting $6 million for
homeless shelters nationwide, part of which was going for a veterans'
shelter in Buffalo, N.Y. Franks won $41 million for New Jersey communities
damaged by floods spawned by last September's Hurricane Floyd.

There was also money for a bicycle path in the northern Virginia district
of Rep. James Moran, D-Va.; to repair a federal hurricane-chaser plane
based in the Tampa district of House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill
Young, R-Fla.; to continue work on a sealife institute in Seward, Alaska,
home state of Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

The emergency money was attached to a routine $8.8 billion measure
financing military construction projects for 2001.