By Emelie Rutherford
The Senate passed a veto-proof supplemental defense spending bill yesterday with $165.4 billion in war funding for systems including C-17 airlifters, C-130 transport aircraft and mine-resistant vehicles, but no funds to continue the F-22 jets’ production in the future.
The Senate broke the supplemental bill–for fiscal year 2008 and bridge funding for FY ’09–into sections. It passed, via veto-proof votes, war-funding and domestic-spending measures. Yet most senators voted against a package of war-policy changes.
The focus of the war supplemental funding debate now shifts back to the House. Congress will be in a week-long Memorial Day recess next week, and the House is not expected to take up the legislation until after members return.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Tuesday if the supplemental is not passed by Memorial Day, DoD on May 27 will send Congress requests to reprogram funds from Navy and Air Force military pay account to the Army. Then, on June 9, guidance on employee furlough planning would be issued within the DoD, he said. Without the FY ’08 war supplemental funds the Army military personnel account would run out of funds after June 15, and around July 5 operations and maintenance funds would be depleted, starting with the Army, he told Senate appropriators.
The Senate-passed war funding legislation has the same procurement and research and development rundowns in the version of the bill the Senate Appropriations Committee marked up last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) office said. The procurement and research and development details also largely match what was in a $162 billion war- funding provision that failed in the House last week, when members passed policy and domestic funding portions of the overall legislation but shot down the amendment with war- related expenditures.
The White House has threatened to veto earlier versions of the House and Senate war supplemental bills, issuing statements of administration policy citing concerns including added domestic spending and war policy changes.
“Our work is not done yet, we are calling on the president to make sure that he allows this legislation to pass,” Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) told reporters yesterday after the Senate passed two of three parts of the supplemental bill. He joined Reid and Sens. John Warner (R-Va.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) in celebrating the passage of a GI Bill expansion within the domestic-spending section.
The Senate-passed bill for FY ’08 calls for an array of systems, including: 15 C-17 Globemaster airlifters, 34 C-130 aircraft, 13 F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters, three EA-18G Growlers, four MH-60 helicopters, 18 MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft, two V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft for the Navy, $375.9 million for the Air Force’s Osprey, and $313.9 million P-3C Orion anti-submarine and reconnaissance airplane repairs. It also includes, for FY ’08, $388.6 million for M1 Abrams tank upgrades, $2.3 billion for the Army’s Family of Heavy Tactical Vehicles, $1.6 billion for Army Humvees, $793.6 million for the Army’s Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles.
The FY ’09 funding includes $1.7 billion for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, $2 billion for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat fund and $87.6 million for five MQ-9 Reapers.
Proponents in the Senate and the House of the Lockheed Martin [LMT]-built F-22 jets had talked of trying to include advance-procurement funds in the war supplemental to keep the production line running past fiscal year 2010. But the war bill that cleared the Senate yesterday and the one the House took up last week did not include the extra F-22 funds not sought by the White House.