Outgoing Sen. Richard Shelby Slips $656 Million Worth of Earmarks...

by Sean Moran at Breitbart

Congressional leaders dropped the $1.7 trillion, 4,155-page omnibus spending bill at 1:30 a.m. ET, giving lawmakers little time to digest the implications of the mammoth legislation.

While the bill may have many major reforms that are readily apparent, lawmakers also slipped hard-to-find earmarks into the bill. Many lawmakers, such as Shelby, are retiring and face few political repercussions for pushing a bill that contains many special interest carveouts and increases the deficit.

Shelby, as the longtime Senate Republican appropriations leader, had a particularly outsized influence in the drafting of the gargantuan legislation. Here are the earmarks he put into the bill:

$13 million for the Abbeville Municipal Airport Runway Extension
$26 million for the Tuscaloosa National Airport (TCL) Runway Extension
$100 million for the Woosley Finnell Bridge
$200 million for the Alabama State Port Authority Intermodal and Terminal Expansion
$50 million for a Revolving Loan Fund to benefit the city of Mobile, Alabama
$35 million for the Marion Military Institute
$45 million for the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa
$2.6 million for the Deepening Study for Tennessee—Tombigbee Waterway (TTWW), AL and MS and Black Warrior and Tombigbee (BWT) Rivers; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
$6.7 million for the Alabama River Lakes, AL; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
$356 million for the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers, GA, AL & FL; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
$7.25 million for the Black Warrior & Tombigbee Rivers (BWT), AL; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
$7 million for the Dauphin Island Bay, AL; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
$250,000 for the Jim Woodruff Lock and Dam, Lake Seminole, FL, AL & GA; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
$2.25 million for The University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, AL, for a permanent endowment fund to support the recruitment and retention of exceptional faculty in science and engineering.
$35 million for the Spring Hill College, AL, for facilities and equipment
$76 million for the UAB Heersink School of Medicine, AL, for facilities and equipment
$50 million for the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, AL, for a permanent endowment fund to support the recruitment and retention of exceptional faculty in science and engineering.

The omnibus bill also designates…