And the lawmakers, who include powerful committee chairmen or party leaders, often pushed legislation or special appropriations sought by the corporations.
In addition to $2.8 billion for construction projects through 1990, the State Department is seeking $1.6 billion in salaries and expenses for new security personnel, bringing the total in emergency supplemental appropriations being sought to $4.4 billion.
The other rider, attached to the veterans and housing appropriations bill, seeks to throw unnecessary obstacles in the way of a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency on how best to deal with toxic sediments in the Hudson River.
The Department of Homeland Security's National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), to be built in Manhattan, Kansas, ran into a funding roadblock last week when the U.S. House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill denying $36 million sought by DHS for the first phase of construction.
As you'd expect, the simple brilliance of the idea has seen it spread to larger cities, with punters in Lima and Cuzco adopting the custom; prepare to wince and cheer in equal measure upon discovering its cultural appropriation by attention-seeking hipsters near you.
When Los Angeles initially sought not an appropriation but a loan, nobody in Washington knew how to respond.
The Defense Department had sought the extra appropriation as "emergency" funding, contending that, if the bill were not approved by late March, the services would have to cancel training exercises and stop buying spare parts, quickly crimping military readiness.
At the same time, Charles Taylor, then a Republican North Carolina congressman, who was the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee for the Department of the Interior, sought about six hundred million dollars to build a highway across Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The "facts" presented by the department's witnesses who were seeking appropriations do not accord with those contained in its own publications.
And it tried to claim it briefed Murtha or his staffer on whatever torture-related appropriations it was seeking in 2006.
