Pentagon Spending vs Congress: Broken Gov't & War Funding

Congress Wars: Battle for the defense budget

In what is shaping up to be a classic congressional right vs. left fight over defense and war funding, both the House and Senate are gearing up to battle over some expected and not-so-expected items in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act.

On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed its version of the bill, showing its hand to members of the House of Representatives on what it felt should be authorized for military spending.

The act authorizes spending limits and sets defense policy, but it does not actually appropriate the funds.

The committee version must still pass a full Senate vote. The House signed off on its bill this month. While a date has yet to be announced, both the final House and Senate versions will go through extensive negotiations to hammer out a final version of the legislation, expected in the fall.

Both bills have numerous amendments that will be debated and fought over in the coming months. Keep an eye on these five if you like political fireworks.

Clash of the cash

The first battle will come as no surprise, as the House and Senate versions put out two totally different bottom lines for Pentagon funding. The Democrat-run Senate version, announced Thursday, gives the military $631.4 billion under the president's trimmed-down Pentagon budget. It received full bipartisan support with a unanimous vote to pass it out of the committee.

But the House version passed this month comes in at $642.5 billion. Although it does not seem to be much more than the Senate version, it is over the president's Pentagon budget request, and it triggered a veto threat by the White House.

The measure adds $4 billion to the Pentagon budget, which is already targeted for almost $500 billion in cuts over the next 10 years to help reduce the nation's deficit.

Missile mess

Within the House version is a hotly debated missile defense shield for the East Coast of the United States.

The bill obligates $100 million to plan for the system, which is to be fully established by 2015. The cost of the entire system will be well into the billions.

Proponents, like Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, an ardent missile defense backer, say there is a need for the shield to protect against threats from Russia or Iran.

But House Democrats and Pentagon leaders who are against the plan say there is no threat to the eastern seaboard.

"Today's threats do not require an East Coast missile field, and we do not have plans to do so," Gen. Charles Jacoby, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, told Congress this year.

On Thursday, the Senate chose not to put money toward the plan and instead called for a study on the missile plan, which U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts, called the "East Coast fantasy 'Star Wars' base."

Combat for all

Another key item to watch for is how both sides address an amendment in the Senate version that would allow women in the U.S. military to fight alongside their male counterparts on the front lines of war.

The provision, added to the bill last week by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, orders the Pentagon to devise a plan to let women have an active combat role on the battlefield. As of now, the Pentagon bars women from joining the ranks of front-line combat troops.

Last week, the Pentagon announced that it was relaxing parts of the policy of barring women from direct combat positions. Gillibrand's provision would direct the Pentagon to develop plans to remove all of the regulations and open every combat position to female troops.

While the House National Defense Authorization Act does not have a similar provision, there is a separate bill pending in the House of Representatives that could be added to the final version of the bill when both sides come to the negotiating table.

"Though the Pentagon has taken some small steps to remove restrictions on female service, they have not yet made a real commitment to a formal repeal. It's time to do what is right and recognize these women for what they do every day in Afghanistan and around the world," said Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-California, who introduced the bill in the House.

Abortion debate

What is sure to be a hot-button issue in the coming months is a provision in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, lifting the ban on the Department of Defense paying for abortions in cases of rape or incest.

The measure was added by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, a member of the Armed Services Committee, and had bipartisan support in the committee.

"This is about equity," Shaheen said. "Civilian women who depend on the federal government for health insurance - whether they are postal workers or Medicaid recipients - have the right to access affordable abortion care if they are sexually assaulted. It is only fair that the thousands of brave women in uniform fighting to protect our freedoms are treated the same."

"It is an outrage and a national security risk that the women in our military do not have the same basic protections for reproductive health care as women across the U.S.," said Gillibrand, a co-sponsor of the amendment.

Quietly, staffers on the Hill say they fully expect fight between the left and right, especially with some members who face re-election in the fall.

But officials familiar with the issue on the Hill say it may not be an issue at all come negotiation time.

"It's a perennial issue. Almost every year, a similar provision is added, and every time it gets eliminated somewhere in the negotiation process," according to one Hill aide who was not authorized to speak ahead of the negotiations.

The problem with Pakistan

In one of the more unusual pieces of the Senate's National Defense Authorization Act, senators agreed to withhold Pakistan's part of a $1.75 billion aid package because of outrage over the imprisonment of a Pakistani doctor who helped with U.S. efforts to pinpoint Osama bin Laden in last year's deadly raid as well as the continued closure of NATO supply routes into and out of Afghanistan.

The provision calls for the aid package to be conditional on Defense Secretary Leon Panetta certifying that Pakistan opens the supply lines, no longer detains Dr. Shakil Afridi and is not supporting terrorist groups.

On Thursday, another bill in the Senate Appropriations Committee also withheld aid to Pakistan for similar reasons.

When asked whether there was a coordinated effort on the Hill to punish Pakistan through legislation, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said there was not, but there was a lot of anger on the Hill over these issues.

"What it shows is a common outrage, a common response to just about every place you can look," Levin said.

The House bill passed before the outrage in Congress erupted over Pakistan, so it does not contain any similar language.

So as Congress rages about Pakistan this week, it will be interesting to see whether that momentum holds and the Senate Armed Services Committee language stays in the final version of the bill, expected to be voted on by both chambers later this year.


Sources: CNN, Russia Today, Youtube

House GOP Refuses To Continue Raising National Deficit

House budget splits defense, jobs



A year-end budget bill taking shape in the House on Monday night would meld $626 billion in new defense spending with a set of pared-back tax- and unemployment related provisions designed to get through the Senate without a prolonged fight.

At the same time, the leadership has opted to pursue a second, more robust job-creation package that will allow the House to speak on the issue but with no anticipation of Senate action before January.

What’s evolved then is a two-bill strategy with the primary focus this week on finalizing the budget package that will carry must-pass measures to extend the estate tax and authorize billions in extended jobless benefits.

“Our whole interest in life today is what can get through the Senate,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.)

Over Pentagon protests, the defense chapter in the bill is expected provide an estimated $2.5 billion for the purchase of 10 more of Boeing’s C-17 transports, and $465 million is included for the continued development of a second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. But elsewhere, Defense Secretary Robert Gates largely gets his way, including a full order of 30 F-35 fighters and the terminations he wanted of funding for the F-22 and VH-71 presidential helicopter programs.

Included in the package is $128 billion in contingency funds for on-going military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the Pentagon is expected to seek at least $35 billion more next year to help cover the cost of President Barack Obama’s decision to add up to 33,000 more U.S. troops.

As seen in the bill now, the ripple effect of this buildup is already being felt.

There has been increased pressure to add funds for the purchase of more armored vehicles able to cope with the rough Afghan terrain. The final core defense budget is expected to include an additional $825 million for this purpose on top of the administration’s request. And as proposed by the Senate months ago, hundreds more vehicles would be purchased by trimming back on spending for the training of Afghan security forces.

Hoyer’s goal is to get the bill to the House floor by Wednesday, but it’s no longer certain that Democrats will use this measure to address the sensitive issue of expanding Treasury’s borrowing authority to finance the growing federal debt.

Just a week ago, the Maryland Democrat had hoped House and Senate leaders could join forces on the defense bill to raise the ceiling by as much as $1.8 billion — enough to carry the government through next year and the 2010 elections. But this proved nerve-racking for Senate moderates, who are insisting on the creation first of an independent commission to force Congress to do more to address deficit reduction.

Hoyer is still pursuing some resolution of the issue. Even as the House bill moves forward, he remains in negotiations with Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) over such a task force, already championed by 33 senators including 14 Democrats.

“I haven’t given up on that,” Hoyer told POLITICO. And if agreement can be reached, a long-term increase in the debt could still be added by the Senate and sent back to the House together with a compromise on the Conrad-backed deficit commission.

The senator himself has said he is open to giving Treasury the authority to borrow what it needs for a short term period—perhaps two months. But where this goes is ticklish still.

Threading the Senate needle is complicated by the fact that some liberals oppose the defense funding itself because of their opposition to the wars overseas. So it could be that the debt debate shifts to what would be a third hastily assembled vehicle, a stop gap spending bill to keep agencies operating while the budget bills are resolved.

As these many scenarios suggest, the whole year-end exit strategy is still evolving and something of a roll of the dice.

With Christmas next week, House leaders are anxious to send their members home for the holidays — but it’s proven difficult to get a clear read from Senate Democrats, who are consumed by the ongoing health care reform debate.

To appease the Senate and hold down costs, House Democrats are prepared to pare back plans to authorize a full one-year extension of benefits for the long-term jobless. Instead, any extension will be close to six months, costing $40 billion, and this may have to be reduced further, Democrats said Monday night.

At the same time, liberals are desperate to preserve some job creation and infrastructure investments. Tempers are frayed, and the two-track approach on jobs is born of this frustration.

In a remarkable effort to force the Senate’s hand, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) went so far last week as to actively pursue a strategy of providing only stop-gap funding for the Pentagon, thereby freezing out billions of dollars in home-state projects added by lawmakers in both chambers.

At one level, it was an anti-pork-barrel statement in the name of helping the unemployed. On the other, it would have put Democrats in the untenable posture of freezing defense funds in the midst of two wars.

A more peaceful approach, taken by tax writers, seeks to minimize their differences with the Senate by scaling back the scope of the bill. The House will insist on perhaps a one year extension of the current estate tax, which otherwise drops to zero in January. But tax writers have agreed that they can afford to wait before renewing billions of dollars in often popular tax breaks due to expire at year’s end.

Since many won’t affect tax filings until April 2011, there is a longer window for Congress to act. But the biodiesel industry is anxious, since transactions in January would be immediately impacted by the removal of the credit to encourage the blending of diesel with biofuels.

Watching from the sidelines, California Rep. Jerry Lewis, the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, complained that Democrats were creating a “hodgepodge” and should just let the defense agreement — finalized over the weekend — stand on its own.

“Let me make it easy for my Democrat colleagues,” Lewis said in a statement late Monday. “Put a clean Defense Appropriations bill on the floor, let members and senators cast a vote they can be proud of and send our troops and their families the resources they need and deserve.”


Sources: Politico

Sen. Durbin Skeptical About Obama's Afghan Exit Strategy

Dick Durbin Won't Commit To Support Budget For Afghanistan


One of President Barack Obama's closest allies in the Senate would not commit on Sunday to voting in favor of the proposed surge of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, saying he had outstanding questions about how serious the administration was about its withdrawal timeline.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told Fox News Sunday that he was "skeptical as to whether 30,000 more troops will make a difference," noting that there were now "over 200,000" troops in the country, when counting those from NATO, the Afghan army and the United States.

Asked specifically if he would vote in favor of a budget to pay for the additional troops that the president -- his one-time Senate colleague -- has requested, Durbin merely said he would make up his mind after more consultations.

"I will meet with the president...and have conversations about that deadline which appears to be interpreted different ways by different people. But I would like to believe that by July of 2011 that we will be in a position where we are going to see our troops really coming home," said the Illinois Democrat.

"The thing that I find encouraging, you probably find discouraging," Durbin earlier told host Chris Wallace. "And that is the fact that he has said to the leader of Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai; 'There is a limit beyond which we will not leave American troops. We are not going to make Afghanistan a protector of the United States. You have to change your government. You have to show that you are willing to stand up and fight for your own country.' I think that message is long overdue."






Clinton, Gates Walk Back Obama's "Locked In" Afghan Withdrawal

Despite the president's commitment on Tuesday that a surge of US and international troops in Afghanistan would "allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011," that date is not a "drop dead deadline"--at least according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates recorded an interview with David Gregory that's set to air Sunday on NBC's Meet The Press. Both Clinton and Gates contradicted Obama's withdrawal language:

HILLARY CLINTON: We're not talking about an exit strategy or a drop dead deadline. What we're talking about is an assessment that in January 2011, we can begin a transition. A transition to hand off -- responsibility to the Afghan forces.


ROBERT GATES: We're not talking about an abrupt withdrawal. We're talking about something that will take place over a period of time.... Our military thinks we have a real opportunity to do that. And it's not just in the next 18 months. Because we will have a significant -- we will have 100,000 forces -- troops there. And they are not leaving-- in July of 2011. Some handful or some small number or whatever the conditions permit, we'll begin to withdraw at that time.

After the president's speech, CBS News's Chip Reid sought clarification as to whether July 2011 was a "target" or a deadline and asked Obama's Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the date. Reid reported that Gibbs then called him to his office "to relate what the president said. The president told him it IS locked in - there is no flexibility. Troops WILL start coming home in July 2011. Period. It's etched in stone. Gibbs said he even had the chisel."



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Sources: Huffington Post, Fox News, Politico, Google Maps