$562-Billion Spending Bill Voted by House, 201 to 200

The House on Thursday night approved by a one-vote margin a $562-billion spending measure to run the government, a bill fattened by politically enriching add-ons that pay for everything from acquiring the personal effects of Duke Ellington to repairing the roof at the Pennsylvania Steamtown U.S.A. train museum.

The omnibus appropriation, a record amount for a single bill, was needed because Congress has failed to finish work on individual fiscal 1987 funding bills for government programs. The new fiscal year begins Wednesday.

The measure bankrolls major multibillion-dollar weapons systems and welfare programs and virtually every other facet of government spending. It was sent to the Senate on a 201-200 vote.

It had also been sweetened with funds for small-scale pet projects sure to help prominent lawmakers curry election-year favor with voters back home.

The measure includes $7.5 million to pay for improvements at the stockyards in Fort Worth, home of House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Tex.). An additional $5 million is earmarked to fix the old roundhouse and depot at the train museum in Scranton, Pa., which is represented by Rep. Joseph M. McDade--a prominent Republican on the Appropriations Committee, which drew up the overall spending bill.

A major fight looms in the Senate over arms control initiatives passed earlier by the House and inserted in the bill despite a Reagan Administration veto threat. But the Republican-run chamber is expected to leave about 60 House-written special-interest provisions intact, as well as add many more of its own.

“Just like kids in a candy store,” mused Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Sacra mento), another appropriations panel member.

“We put all our eggs in this one basket,” said Rep. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the House Republican whip. He called it the “Bloated Omnibus Money Bill--or BOMB for short, which is just what’s going to happen to it when it gets to the White House.”

Although Congress breaks up federal spending proposals into 13 regular appropriations bills, it rarely completes action on all of the bills before the Oct. 1 start of a new fiscal year. Unfinished bills get rolled into a catchall measure such as the one taken up by the House on Thursday.

Senate resistance to the House arms provisions--which trim funding for President Reagan’s “Star Wars” space-based defense program, as well as restrict nuclear testing and chemical weapons production--is virtually certain to delay final congressional passage of the spending bill until after the start of the new fiscal year on Wednesday.

Funds to Fight Drugs

But lawmakers early next week are expected to pass a stopgap, short-term measure to cover the federal payroll and pay bills while they thrash out their differences on the permanent package. The House bill includes $2.1 billion to pay for a new drug crackdown initiative recently passed by the House.

Because such omnibus measures must eventually be passed or the government would shut down, they become magnets for unusual, special-interest provisions that might otherwise be slowed or killed in the normal legislative process.

In past years, opponents of abortion and mandatory school busing have waged major fights to graft onto such bills proposals advocating their causes. On a less controversial note, one House member with a back problem last year sought an amendment that would have made chiropractic services available to lawmakers.

Houseboat Mooring Fees

Although requests such as those have usually failed, the current bill does contain a provision blocking the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service from quadrupling fees charged to houseboat owners who moor their vessels in the White River National Wildlife refuge in Arkansas. The restriction was attached as a favor to Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), the assistant majority whip, whose constituents had complained about government plans to raise fees from $50 to $200 a year and eventually squeeze them off the nature preserve entirely.

The legislation includes a provision that would require the U.S. Army to reopen competition on a $75-million handgun contract initially awarded to the Italian-based Beretta company. Opponents of the original contract claimed that Smith & Wesson, a Massachusetts gun manufacturer, was unfairly eliminated in the bidding process.

But a few other requests apparently tested the limits of generosity even for House members. The appropriations panel turned down Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.) when he sought an amendment that would force the government to grant a patent to an inventor who claimed to have perfected a perpetual motion machine, something scientists contend is a physical impossibility.

Pet Programs Approved

And Democratic leaders rejected a move by Appropriations Committee Chairman Jamie L. Whitten (D-Miss.) to revive the federal revenue-sharing program, which had long been targeted for extinction.

But several other pet programs were approved, including:

--A $1-million appropriation proposed by Rep. Louis Stokes (D-Ohio) to help the Smithsonian Institution buy personal effects of the late music great Duke Ellington. The items, now gathering dust in a New York warehouse, include compositions, instruments and other memorabilia.

--A proposal by Fazio designed to keep costs associated with the cleanup of the chemically polluted Westlands irrigation project from being passed on to customers of electricity generated by the Central Valley project.

--Another Fazio proposal to block developers who had received low-interest federal rural housing loans from diverting property built with the money away from low-income renters.

--A request by House Majority Whip Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) to stop the Veteran’s Administration from converting a medical center in Walla Walla, Wash., to a clinic only for outpatients.

--Proposals by Rep. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) to repair train sidings in Central Illinois and expand the eligibility of parochial school students to buy federally subsidized school lunches.