The House Appropriations Committee (HAC) approved a $512.5 billion defense appropriations bill Wednesday that trims $3.4 billion from the Pentagon’s proposed budget, faces opposition from the White House, and cuts programs including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

CapitolThe HAC’s bill for fiscal year 2014, which the House will consider next, is expected to be opposed by the President Barack Obama because it adheres to House Republican budget plans that he rejects. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said Tuesday that Obama could veto a different, policy-setting defense authorization bill now on the House floor, and declared in a statement: “As the administration indicated previously, the president’s senior advisers would recommend vetoing any appropriations legislation that implements the House Republican Budget framework.”

HAC Republicans and Democrats clashed during Wednesday’s markup session on the committee’s $512.5 billion defense appropriations bill. While it cuts $3.4 billion from the Pentagon’s base-budget proposal–according to Congressional Budget Office estimates– it adds $5 billion to the Pentagon’s request for the separate Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) war-funding measure, raising it to $85.8 billion.

HAC Ranking Member Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) tried unsuccessfully to delay consideration of the appropriations measure until House Republicans and Senate Democrats hold a conference committee, if they ever do, to reconcile their chambers’ clashing budget resolutions. The dueling House and Senate budget resolutions propose different ways to end the “sequestration” budget cuts facing the Pentagon. Those are the $500 billion in decade-long cuts, which started in March, intended to help balance the federal budget.

Still, Lowey said she will “support the overall funding level in defense because it was written as though Congress will turn off sequestration, as we should.” She said “to remain a global leader, we need a strong national defense and a strong economy.”

The HAC also quashed on Wednesday an attempt from Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) to replace sequestration with what he dubbed “a balanced approach to deficit reduction.”

Both the HAC bill and the Pentagon budget proposal do not reflect the sequestration cuts. Instead, they adhere to different, partisan plans for trimming the federal budget in other ways that lessen the blow to the Pentagon.

It remains to be seen how proposed weapons-program changes in the GOP House’s two defense budget measures–the appropriations bill approved by the HAC and authorization legislation before the House–fare with Democratic Senate and White House.

The HAC takes aim at some of the Pentagon’s largest programs.

Its bill cuts $617.8 million from Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] F-35 program, while still calling for buying all 29 F-35s the Pentagon wants. The funding cut is intended to “address unjustified cost growth and unjustified concurrency estimates for the program,” HAC Defense subcommittee (HAC-D) Ranking Member Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.) said.

HAC-D Chairman C.W. “Bill” Young (R-Fla.) said he wants to ensure the F-35 program succeeds.

“We support the F-35, although it does have some developmental problems still, but we think we’ve got to have the follow-on airplanes,” Young told Defense Daily. “Because now we’re going back to the F-18s, which are very old airplanes, (though) very good airplanes, fortunately for us.”

Overall, the HAC bill would cut the Pentagon’s request for research and development by $1.1 billion and weapons procurement by $750 million.

“You have a certain amount of money, you’ve got to do a certain amount of work with that money. That was our problem,” Young said. “I would say we don’t have a high enough number for defense.”

The HAC’s report on the bill highlights the panel’s concern that the Navy isn’t boosting the size of its fleet fast enough, and explains why it is adding funding for a second Virginia-class submarine.

The Navy requested authority to pay for the second sub in FY ’14 through incremental funding, a setup Young has resisted. So the HAC measure adds $950 million to the Virginia-class program to fully fund both FY ’14 submarines under a traditional setup.

“The committee does not understand why funding requested for this particular submarine requires violating the Department of Defense’s long standing full funding policy,” the HAC’s report on the bill states, referring to the request for incremental funding. “The committee is puzzled by Navy claims of billions of dollars in savings for the taxpayers as it is the committee’s understanding that these savings come from the fact that the program is conducting a multi-year procurement of 10 submarines and not from the fact that one of the submarines is incrementally funded.”

Additional increases for weapons programs in the HAC bill, above the Pentagon’s request, include:

–        $146 million more for buying eight additional UH–60 Black Hawk helicopters;

–        a $135 million boost for UH–72A Lakota helicopter purchases;

–        $68 million more for buying MQ–9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles;

–        a $100 million boost for Humvee modernization for the Army Guard;

–        $75 million more for procuring M88A2 Improved Recovery Vehicles;

–        a $200 million increase for procuring MSE missiles for the Patriot missile system;

–        $2.2 million more for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; and

–        a $173 million a boost for Israeli Cooperative Programs.

Decreases the HAC seeks, below the Pentagon’s proposal, include:

–        $131 million less for buying EA–18G Growler electronic attack aircraft;

–        a drop of $23 million for buying V-22 Osprey aircraft;

–        a cut of $11 million to MQ–1 unmanned aerial vehicle procurement;

–        a $69 million decrease for the purchase of P–8A Poseidon Multi-mission aircraft;

–        a $29 million cut to UH–1Y/AH–1Z helicopter procurement;

–        $10 million less for buying Evolved Expendable Launch vehicles;

–        a $37 million cut to development of the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical;

–        $100 million less for developing the Next Generation Jammer;

–        $15 million less for the Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft’s development; and

–        an $18 million decrease to development of the Global Positioning System III operational control segment.

Young said he does not know when the full House will take up the HAC-passed defense appropriations bill.