Intent on providing lavish tax breaks and directing precious government resources toward unnecessary projects, Congress – with help from the White House – has traded away the federal money needed to fund much of Maine’s Drug Enforcement Agency.

Tucked silently into the omnibus spending law that passed Congress in November was a change that could strip Maine of as much as $500,000 in funding for drug enforcement. According to state Public Safety Commissioner Michael Cantara, the cuts could force a one-third reduction in staff or the elimination of all of the state’s drug prosecutors.

Good government took a holiday with the approval of the $388 billion omnibus spending bill. The law, which wraps funding from nine different appropriations bills into a single law, did not receive any significant scrutiny by members of Congress. The tome, more than 3,000 pages long, contained line after line of legislation that could never survive the light of exposure. Yet it passed because members of Congress could not afford to allow the federal government to shut down.

Now, in a letter to Maine’s congressional delegation, state leaders have made their case for the money: “Drug trafficking and drug abuse devastates families, communities and acts as a barrier to economic development. Maine has not been immune. Heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, diverted prescription drugs and marijuana all pose substantial threats to health and safety …”

A successful drug interdiction program is now threatened. And that means Maine families are threatened.

Never fear, though. Just because Congress failed to fund cops and prosecutors to fight drugs and drug dealers, members found plenty of money for other worthwhile projects.

Here’s a list from the conservative Heritage Foundation of pork spending in the bill that could have offset the $500,000 Maine expects to lose:

• $450,000 for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

• $500,000 for Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York.

• $500,000 for the Center for Living Arts in Alabama.

• $500,000 for restoration of the B&O Railroad Museum in Maryland.

There’s plenty more, some of it directed toward Maine. The Heritage Foundation estimates there were more than 11,000 such projects in the bill, totaling more than $23 billion in spending. Out of all that, a suddenly stingy Congress decided to cut spending on drug cops.

Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and Reps. Tom Allen and Mike Michaud should work together to restore funding for the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency. They should also work to end the disastrous practice of using catchall spending bills to fund government.

While the omnibus law spends $335,000 to protect sunflowers from birds, it’s cutting $500,000 out of efforts to protect Mainers from illegal drugs. That’s crazy. It’s got to change.