By Emelie Rutherford
The fate of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s second engine and the overall size of the fiscal year 2011 defense budget remain in question as Capitol Hill waits for action by a key House panel.
House Appropriations Defense subcommittee (HAC-D) Vice Chairman Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.) acknowledged yesterday uncertainty regarding whether the subpanel will be granted a smaller defense allocation than the Pentagon’s $708.3 billion FY ’11 budget and war funding request.
It “is another indication unfortunately (that) our system is fragile,” Visclosky said at a defense-industry conference in Arlington, Va.
HAC-D Chairman Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) said last week that the HAC-D’s allocation from the full House Appropriations Committee (HAC) for Pentagon spending may reflect “a substantial reduction from the president’s budget request.” (Defense Daily, June 7)
Visclosky, who also chairs the HAC’s Energy and Water subpanel, said the House appropriations subcommittee chairs do not know what their allocations will be for the budget bills for FY ’11, which will start in Oct. 1.
“This is June, we should be bringing the bills to the floor,” he said at Defense Requirements, Resourcing & Acquisition Conference, sponsored by McAleese & Associates, P.C., and Credit Suisse Equity Research.
HAC Republicans called yesterday for action on the 12 FY ’11 appropriations bills, as well as the pending FY ’10 war-funding supplemental legislation, in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and HAC Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.).
“Short of immediate action, this year will mark the first time in more than 15 years that the House Appropriations Committee has failed to move any of its regular bills out of full Committee by the end of June,” HAC Ranking Member Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) and other Republicans say in the letter.
Pentagon watchers are anxious to see if the HAC-D calls for funding the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s alternate engine, developed by General Electric [GE] and Rolls-Royce.
The second engine’s fate in the initial committee bill is doubtful; both Dicks and Obey voted against funding it during House floor debate on the FY ’11 defense authorization bill.
Visclosky, who voted in favor of the alternate engine during the May 27 House vote, declined to predict yesterday how the alternate engine will fare with House appropriators (Defense Daily, May 28). He said he supports the engine program to ensure competition.
The FY ’11 defense authorization bill the House passed May 28 backs the alternate engine, while the Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the policy-setting legislation does not authorize it.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chairman of the House Armed Services Air and Land Forces subcommittee, said yesterday at the conference he remains steadfast in supporting the second engine, despite a White House threat to veto the authorization bill if it includes the provision.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has argued continuing to develop the alternate engine would be a waste of $3 billion and that problems may exist with its design and cost estimates. Supportive lawmakers, though, argue continuing to compete the F-35 engine effort would yield multiple operational and business-related benefits, and that continuing the General Electric-Rolls-Royce engine would cost the Pentagon roughly the same as canceling it.
Smith told reporters he has talked with Pentagon and White House officials about his support for the second engine and hopes such talks continue.
“The debate here is, ‘What’s the best way to save money,'” he said. “It’s something that should not, frankly, be subject to a veto threat. It is a legitimately very close policy decision.”
The Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee also has not unveiled its FY ’11 defense bill.
On the FY ’10 supplemental, the Senate passed a bill with $33.5 billion in war funding on May 27, but the full HAC canceled its markup of the supplemental that had been planned for the same day. The HAC version has $32.5 billion in war funding, the amount President Barack Obama requested, and notably includes funding not in the Senate version for a research program to make so-called double-V hulls for General Dynamics‘ [GD] Stryker vehicles.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Wednesday the House may skip a HAC markup of the supplemental and instead consider the Senate-passed bill. Lewis and the other HAC Republicans called yesterday for a HAC markup of the supplemental, saying they are concerned to hear House and Senate Democratic staff have been told to negotiate differences between the Senate bill and the version House Democrats wrote.