Sen. Daniel Inouye says President Bush's veto of a spending measure for health and education programs resulted in the rejection of $157 million for Hawai'i programs.

Inouye says the lost Hawai'i funds included $25 million for a regional biocontainment laboratory that would boost homeland security and $14 million for Native Hawaiian healthcare.

The White House says the $606 billion education and health spending bill was loaded with 2,000 earmarks that Bush wants stripped from the bill. Earmarks are money designated for specific lawmaker-sponsored projects that critics call pork-barrel spending.

But Inouye said the president vetoed the spending measure because it boosted education, healthcare and job-training funding by $11.8 billion. The U.S. spends that much on Iraq in less than one month, Inouye said.