Washington, D.C. – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today denounced Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) for having Lake Champlain designated as the “sixth” Great Lake in the National Sea Grant College Program Reauthorization Act (S. 927).  Leahy’s backdoor efforts will enable Vermont – a landlocked state – to snatch a piece of the $290 million pie authorized by Congress to be spent over the next five years on conservation and management of marine resources.

“Sen. Leahy’s arrogance is clearly boundless,” remarked CAGW President Thomas A. Schatz.  “He is apparently willing to redraw the map of the world if it enables him to bring home a few more morsels of federal pork.”

The Sea Grant College Program, established in 1966, provides grants to colleges and universities for the study of problems related to ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes resources.  Currently, 29 institutions receive grants through the program.  By “making” Lake Champlain the sixth Great Lake, Leahy hopes to have the University of Vermont and other Vermont colleges added to the list of institutions eligible for sea grant money.

“Sen. Leahy has a long history of feeding at the trough,” Schatz stated.  “In fiscal year 1997, he and Sen. Jim Jeffords (R-Vt.) teamed up to bring $17.9 million in pork-barrel projects back to the Green Mountain state.  This year, that figure is expected to be even higher – more than $27 million.”

Leahy’s use of Lake Champlain as an excuse to waste federal dollars goes beyond the Sea Grant College Program.  As a senate appropriator, he was able to quietly slip a $900,000 economic development initiative grant for the Lake Champlain Science Center in the FY 1998 Housing and Urban Development Appropriations bill.

“Sen. Leahy certainly deserves credit for using his imagination,” Schatz said, tongue in cheek.  “Who knows?  Maybe next week he’ll dream up a bill making Vermont maple syrup a staple of the school lunch program.”

CAGW is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, inefficiency, mismanagement and abuse in the federal government.