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.
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The bill is HR4425.