Federal spending bill includes $845 million for Hawai‘i  

President Bush on Wednesday, Dec. 26, signed a $555 billion domestic spending bill into law while criticizing Congress for including pet projects that total about $10 billion. He lauded the 2008 omnibus spending bill for not requiring tax increases and for adequately funding U.S. troops in the short term without imposing “arbitrary timelines for withdrawal” from Iraq.

Besides nearly 10,000 so-called earmarks, appropriations steered toward favorite projects and organizations, the bill included almost $845 million in federal funding for programs and construction next year in Hawai‘i, including $533.6 million for military construction, $68 million for Native Hawaiian programs, $25 million for a Pacific region biodefense laboratory and $15.2 million for the Honolulu rail transit system.

The bill will pay for all the federal government’s operations and programs, except the Defense Department, for the fiscal year and includes $70 billion for the Iraq war without specifying a troop withdrawal deadline. A defense spending bill, without war funding, was approved in November. Hawai‘i projects include:

• $4.6 million to replace the slowly sinking USS Arizona Memorial Visitors Center in Pearl Harbor
• $4 million to expand the James Campbell National Wildlife Refuge on Oahu
• $136.3 million to continue building a National Security Agency operations center at Kunia
• $88 million to continue the 20-year “Whole Barracks Renewal” program to improve living conditions by revamping all soldier housing at Schofield Barracks
• Almost $50 million to begin building a new drive-in facility at Pearl Harbor to help submarines maintain their stealth
• $16.5 million for the Air Force to expand its surveillance operations center at Hickam Air Force Base
• $121 million would be used for new barracks at Fort Shafter, Wheeler Army Airfield and the Marine Corps base in Kaneohe
• $20 million to continue construction of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration regional office on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor
• $6.7 million to compensate commercial fishermen for closing the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands to fishing
• $19.5 million for emergency medical services for children
• $14 million for Native Hawaiian health care
• $33.3 million for Native Hawaiian education teacher training and recruitment and renovation of public schools with Native Hawaiian enrollment
• $5.6 million for Native Hawaiian secondary and vocational training
• $7.5 million for ferry infrastructure
• $3.8 million to complete on-ramps for the H-1 from downtown Honolulu
• $1.5 million for rural bus service
• $9 million in block grants for Native Hawaiian housing programs
• $1.5 million for Native Hawaiian economic development
• $1 million for a program to guarantee Native Hawaiian housing loans
• $4 million to improve the habitat in the Kawainui Marsh environmental restoration project
• $2.7 million to control the brown tree snake through cooperative efforts of Hawai‘i, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands
• $2.3 million to support Maui Community College’s remote rural job training project throughout the state
• $2 million to continue water systems construction in areas hit by drought
• $2 million to begin acquiring the easement on the Kealakekua Ranch on the Big Island for wildlife and fauna preservation
• $1.3 million to repair the Port Allen breakwater, damaged by Hurricanes Iwa in 1982 and Hurricane Iniki in 1992