By Jen DiMascio
The House yesterday approved, 370 to 49, a bill to authorize Pentagon spending in the next fiscal year.
Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the legislation “authorizes critical funds to restore readiness and protect our forces in the field, making sure that our service members have the equipment and training they need to meet current and future threats. The bill also increases accountability to the American people through additional oversight of our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and reforms to the contracting process.”
The bill now moves to the Senate, where leaders hope to pass the measure before Christmas.
Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), the chairman of the HASC air and land forces subcommittee, told Defense Daily the subcommittee’s single most important policy change was language on the retirement of airplanes (Defense Daily, Dec. 10).
Those provisions disrupt a movement to avoid making decisions and sets in motion a process for retiring aircraft that is reasonable and rational, Abercrombie said.
That will also press the case for moving to capital budgeting so the Defense Department in the future will not be “trapped in this kind of squeeze,” where it does not have enough money to do what it has to do.
Meanwhile, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), in a floor statement yesterday, celebrated a provision that requires the Navy to integrate nuclear propulsion systems on future Navy combatants.
“The conferees decided that we could waste no further time because these investments must begin to be made next year for the CG(X) next generation cruiser,” Bartlett said. “Therefore, this conference report requires integrated nuclear propulsion for future major combatants, unless the Secretary of Defense notifies Congress that nuclear power in such ships would not be in the national interest.”