Monday, May. 31, 1999

Pork Talk

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Michelle Derrow, Tam Gray, Daniel Levy, Lina Lofaro, David Spitz, Flora Tartakovsky and Chris Taylor

HEY, PIG SPENDER Congress never met a bill it couldn't stuff with special spending programs. The emergency appropriations bill for NATO's attack on Yugoslavia is particularly porky. Some of the "emergencies" that seem the least urgent:

--A new dorm for House pages ($3.7 million)

--Subsidies for Dungeness crab fishermen ($23 million)

--A new broadcast satellite ($48 million)

--Extra water for San Carlos Lake in Arizona ($1.5 million)

--Extra money for disasters that haven't happened yet (could be up to $528 million)