Expensive Bills

They call it trimming the Christmas tree. As Congress scrambles to adjourn, a wave of special-interest bills and home-state boondoggles is gaveled into law without protest. "The only way sponsors can get them passed is to bulldoze them through and hope that no one notices," says Senator Howard Metzenbaum. "It happens every year." This year is no exception, despite the lawmakers' public hand-wringing about looming deficits.

But last week Ohio Democrat Metzenbaum drew attention to the practice by mounting a filibuster against the Christmas ornaments. In the process he has incurred the wrath of his colleagues. Says Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, in words seldom uttered in the august corridors: "I think he's a pain in the ass."

Stevens is particularly incensed because he has been trying to push through a bill that would give the federally owned Alaska Railroad to the state, lock, stock and pork barrel. Metzenbaum favors a House version of the plan, which would at least require oil-rich Alaska to pay 75% of the railroad's liquidation cost. Stevens got so mad he publicly threatened to go to Ohio to campaign against Metzenbaum's reelection. Says Metzenbaum: "I may send him the plane ticket."

More than a dozen other special-interest bills were barely quashed during the final hours. Among them: an act to exempt the maritime industry from antitrust laws, a reprieve for timber companies that hold $2 billion in unfulfilled federal contracts, an exemption that would allow beer distributors to set up local monopolies and an antitrust waiver for the National Football League. There was even a bill that would exempt Zeke's Floatin' Bait, which is manufactured by a company in La Canada Flintridge, Calif., from a 10% excise tax. Despite Metzenbaum's guard, a few yuletide goodies may slip into law, including a $500,000 chimpanzee colony for New Mexico State University. Not that the issue is just fish bait and monkeys. Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker's notorious pork-barrel project, the $3.6 billion Clinch River breeder reactor, was voted continued funding.

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