BOATLOAD AHOY

Helping Colombia expand its war against drugs will cost U.S. taxpayers $1.3
billion. Keeping American troops deployed in Kosovo and aiding Americans
stricken by disasters here at home runs to an additional $4.1 billion.
Rebuilding fire-damaged Los Alamos National Laboratory could go as high as
$448 million.

Important undertakings, important enough for Congress to agree to fund them
with emergency legislation. Expensive undertakings, but not so expensive
that they add up to the $12 billion Congress is considering.

In an annual phenomenon as inevitable as the blossoming of coca plants in
the Bogota suburbs, members of Congress are once again larding up emergency
legislation with goodies for the voters back home. Start with roughly $6
billion in seed money, fertilize liberally and watch it grow.

An added twist this time is the spectacle of Congress acting as though
keeping $6 billion from ballooning beyond twice its size is a feat of
restraint. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott says $12 billion is less than
$13 billion and much less than $20 billion — a lesson in advanced
mathematics that will, according to the Mississippi Republican, ''save
taxpayers a boatload of money.''

In conjuring up a phantom ship of nonexistent savings, Sen. Lott and his
colleagues hope to divert attention from the $6 billion in locally
targeted, special-interest projects that could not, on their own merit, get
through an essentially gridlocked Congress. No one wants to vote against
ending the scourge of cocaine, supporting troops overseas or aiding the
victims of natural disasters or Park Service-prescribed burns and 12 is
undeniably less than 20.

Much of the excess is typical — money for peanut growers, more money for
dairy and agriculture assistance (sponsored by Sen. Lott's Mississippi
teammate, Sen. Thad Cochran, and on top of the $15.3 billion emergency
bailout signed into law just last week), lots more money for aircraft the
military doesn't want but that an aircraft manufacturer wants to build.
Sen. Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, continues to assert himself as
the king of pork, acquiring for his home state tens of millions to complete
a dam the state started but would rather let someone else finish, $9.8
million to help the mining industry meet federal environmental rules other
industries meet out of their own pockets and $25 million for a U.S. Customs
training facility, ideally located in a state without a foreign border or
an international port of entry.

Not content with greasing his constituents with a federal project or two,
Republican Sen. Judd Gregg is reaching beyond the borders of New Hampshire
to help his alma mater, Columbia University. Columbia holds a patent on a
drug-making process that has proven quite lucrative in its nearly 17-year
life span — so lucrative that Columbia would like, and may well get, an
extension. The pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough is finding plenty of
senators to help extend its patent on the popular allergy drug Claritin,
also about to expire.

Coming as they do in the midst of an angry debate over pharmaceutical
prices, the brazenness of these requests is almost as startling as
Congress' willingness to rewrite what essentially is a contract between
patent holders and the public. Americans have been told repeatedly that the
high drug prices they pay are justified by the fact that the patents
protecting research investments run out after a specific time and allow
competitors to manufacture cheaper generics. Now, Americans must find
themselves in partial agreement with Sen. Lott — it's a boatload.