WASHINGTON INSIGHT

WARNING SHOT: As Congress mulls internal change, strange political bedfellows are drawing a bead on the “College of Cardinals”--the 26 chairmen of appropriations subcommittees in the House and Senate. They want the powerful funding panels merged with authorizing committees, which are supposed to spell out program details and set spending ceilings for the appropriators. The critics charge that the current two-track system is wasteful, with appropriators often fouling up programs by ignoring instructions from authorizers. One typical result: eight costly redesigns of the space station. . . . Liberal Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton), chairman of the (authorizing) House Science Committee, is pushing a kill-the-appropriators bill with conservative Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and others. The cardinals will probably survive: Too many colleagues fear taking them on and, besides, authorizers aren’t all angels. But Brown has found that even a warning shot can bring change. He recently won approval of a rule requiring that appropriators give two days’ notice when they bring bills to the floor containing unauthorized “pork” projects.