Helping Colombia expand its war against drugs will cost U.S. taxpayers $1.3 billion. Keeping American troops deployed in Kosovo and aiding Americans stricken by disasters here at home runs to an additional $4.1 billion. Rebuilding fire-damaged Los Alamos National Laboratory could go as high as $448 million.

Important undertakings, important enough for Congress to agree to fund them with emergency legislation. Expensive undertakings, but not so expensive that they add up to the $12 billion Congress is considering.

In an annual phenomenon as inevitable as the blossoming of coca plants in the Bogota suburbs, members of Congress are once again larding up emergency legislation with goodies for the voters back home. Start with roughly $6 billion in seed money, fertilize liberally and watch it grow.

An added twist this time is the spectacle of Congress acting as though keeping $6 billion from ballooning beyond twice its size is a feat of restraint. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott says $12 billion is less than $13 billion and much less than $20 billion — a lesson in advanced mathematics that will, according to the Mississippi Republican, “save taxpayers a boatload of money.”

In conjuring up a phantom ship of nonexistent savings, Sen. Lott and his colleagues hope to divert attention from the $6 billion in locally targeted, special-interest projects that could not, on their own merit, get through an essentially gridlocked Congress. No one wants to vote against ending the scourge of cocaine, supporting troops overseas or aiding the victims of natural disasters or Park Service prescribed burns and 12 is undeniably less than 20.

Much of the excess is typical — money for peanut growers, more money for dairy and agriculture assistance (sponsored by Sen. Lott’s Mississippi teammate, Sen. Thad Cochran, and on top of the $15.3 billion emergency bailout signed into law just last week), lots more money for aircraft the military doesn’t want but that an aircraft manufacturer wants to build. Sen. Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, continues to assert himself as the king of pork, acquiring for his home state tens of millions to complete a dam the state started but would rather let someone else finish, $9.8 million to help the mining industry meet federal environmental rules other industries meet out of their own pockets and $25 million for a U.S. Customs training facility, ideally located in a state without a foreign border or an international port of entry.

Not content with greasing his constituents with a federal project or two, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg is reaching beyond the borders of New Hampshire to help his alma mater, Columbia University. Columbia holds a patent on a drug-making process that has proven quite lucrative in its nearly 17-year life span — so lucrative that Columbia would like, and may well get, an extension. The pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough is finding plenty of senators to help extend its patent on the popular allergy drug Claritin, also about to expire.

Coming as they do in the midst of an angry debate over pharmaceutical prices, the brazenness of these requests is almost as startling as Congress’ willingness to rewrite what essentially is a contract between patent holders and the public. Americans have been told repeatedly that the high drug prices they pay are justified by the fact that the patents protecting research investments run out after a specific time and allow competitors to manufacture cheaper generics. Now, Americans must find themselves in partial agreement with Sen. Lott — it’s a boatload.