HERE COMES THE PORK

By DAN GOODGAME

When he was elected to Congress last November, George Nethercutt became a national symbol of the Republican revolt -- not only against the Democrats but also against the ancient culture of buying votes and campaign contributions with taxpayer money. A political newcomer, Nethercutt had taken on the towering Speaker of the House, Tom Foley, and turned the Democratic incumbent's traditional advantage -- his ability to deliver everything from federal buildings to highway construction to his district -- into a liability. "Pork comes with a price," Nethercutt reminded voters, one that would be paid by their grandchildren unless all Americans pitched in to bring down the deficit.

These days, though, Nethercutt is making exceptions for some Americans. During a recent session of the House Appropriations Committee, he helped beat back a proposal to cut crop subsidies to farm owners who earn more than $100,000 a year in nonfarm income, a measure known as the "Sam Donaldson Amendment,'' after the abc newsman who collected five-figure federal subsidies over the past two years to support his New Mexico sheep ranch. When asked why wealthy farmers should not help balance the budget, Nethercutt, sounding remarkably like Foley, replies that some spending programs are "just a sensible use of federal dollars."

This week, as Congress returns from its Independence Week break, many of the populists who talked about making history are making back-room deals. The admirable seven-year budget-balancing plan that Congress passed last month must be implemented line by line -- a process that has moved behind closed doors, into the hands of veteran horse traders who run the tax and appropriations committees. There lawmakers labor not only to meet their savings targets but also to spare hundreds of special interests from the sacrifice that Congress agreed should be shared by all Americans.

In some cases, the special interests aren't even that special. They are members of the large class of wealthy Americans who vote Republican and can back their votes with money. And because the tax and spending committees still must deliver large net savings, the Republicans' side deals mean that the burden of chopping the deficit is growing heavier on those Americans who have little influence on the party. Republicans, says Representative David Obey of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, "are very good at taking on the poor and the lame, but not very good at taking on the muscle guys.''

For instance, the appropriations and tax committees, under orders to produce a $245 billion tax cut while balancing the budget by 2002, are planning to provide a credit of $500 per child to families earning up to $200,000 a year. But that tax break would exclude more than a third of the children in America whose families earn so little that they owe no income tax. (The cutoff is $24,310 for a family of four.) Those families, however, pay record amounts of Social Security payroll tax, from which Congress is offering no relief.

Americans who depend on public transportation would see mass-transit aid for cities cut $618 million in a bill the House Appropriations Committee will send to the floor this month. But highway spending, which serves better-off suburban voters, would increase $840 million. Adding insult to injury, Representative Enid Waldholtz, a Utah Republican, has procured $5 million in "mass transit'' funds designated for new car-pool lanes on I-15 in Salt Lake Valley.

Some Republicans fear that this broad defense of well-connected Americans could undermine public support for the budget-cutting crusade and imperil the party's chances in 1996. "This process has to be fair," says House Budget Committee chairman John Kasich, whose budget resolution targeted corporate welfare as well as spending on the poor. "If it turns into just cutting spending on people who don't have lobbyists, we lose.'' Asserts deficit hawk Scott Klug, a Wisconsin Republican: "The appropriations committee has been extraordinarily defensive of the status quo."

Nowhere is this more evident than in the defense budget, which, as it stands midway through the legislative process, would force-feed the military billions of dollars for projects it says it does not need. Examples include the B-2 bomber (volume discount price: $16 billion for 20 aircraft), backed by the Republicans generally and by liberal Democrats in Southern California, where the aircraft is built; a third Seawolf submarine ($2.4 billion), built in Connecticut and fiercely lobbied by that state's lawmakers and General Dynamics; 10 more C-130 cargo planes ($35 million apiece), built in a plant that abuts House Speaker Newt Gingrich's Georgia district; 14 more eight-seat C-12 turboprops ($2 million each), built in Senate majority leader Bob Dole's home state of Kansas; and a helicopter assault ship (down payment: $1.3 billion), built in the Mississippi hometown of Senate Republican whip Trent Lott.

Tobacco growers could make out well too. Despite Democrats' attempts to cut $42 million in growers' annual subsidies, the House Appropriations Committee, spurred by tobacco lobbyists and members of both parties from southeastern states where the crop is grown, plans to send to the floor as early as this week a bill that preserves the money. Republicans tried to trim $206 million from spending on military veterans, mainly from underused Veterans Administration hospitals. But the veterans' lobby got the money restored on the floor of the House. "They're very powerful and they can get the votes to kill anything,'' explains House Republican whip Tom Delay. "They can get you elected and they can get you unelected."

In some cases, critics say, research windfalls are awarded to big corporations that could otherwise afford to pay for their own. Giant companies like General Electric, Westinghouse and Asea Brown Boveri, based in Stamford, Connecticut, are looking forward to $40 million from the appropriations committee toward the development of an experimental nuclear technology called an advanced light water reactor.

Fortunately, Republicans have a few aggressive pork busters in their ranks, most notably Arizona Senator John McCain. While most lawmakers pay little attention to the thousands of line items in appropriations bills, he has assigned a sharp-eyed 29-year-old staff member, Mark Buse, to pore over them and monitor the Senate floor for as long as 13 hours at a stretch. Buse has earned the nickname "the ferret" -- as well as the enmity of Senators annoyed by his zealous impertinence. But Peter Sepp, a spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union, says, "Mark's efforts have been absolutely critical. If he weren't in there doing this kind of research every day, some ridiculous spending projects would never have seen the light of public scrutiny."

Two weeks ago, for example, Buse was on floor duty when the Senate considered the second version of a recisions bill intended to cut $16 billion from the current year's budget. Buse noted two suspicious changes. One required that nasa purchase, "for no more than $35 million,'' a Texas property known as the Clear Lake Development Facility, currently owned by aerospace giant McDonnell Douglas. The measure had been quietly inserted into the bill, after it had passed the House and the Senate, by Republican Senator Kit Bond of Missouri, where McDonnell Douglas is based, and by House whip Delay, in whose suburban Houston district the property is located. A second provision, inserted by Mississippi lawmakers, called on nasa to give its 1,200-acre Yellow Creek Facility near Iuka, Mississippi, to that state-along with $10 million to reimburse the state for roads and other improvements to support a rocket-motor facility that had been promised but not built.

Alerted by Buse, McCain was soon on the floor, threatening to delay the Senate's July 4 recess by demanding a separate vote on both projects. Eventually, Yellow Creek was removed from the bill, and the Clear Lake provision was modified to McCain's satisfaction. "There is still a belief that you can't get re-elected unless you bring home the bacon,'' says McCain. "I don't think that's the way voters feel anymore ... They don't understand why, when we're asking people to make a sacrifice on Medicare, we feel we can afford these other kinds of extravagant spending.'' As voters ponder that double standard, they might wonder whether those who vowed to change the ways of Washington have already been taken in.

--Reported by John F. Dickerson and Karen Tumulty/Washington

With reporting by John F. Dickerson and Karen Tumulty/Washington