By Emelie Rutherford
Congress is poised to tackle the fiscal year 2009 defense spending bill when it resumes its work next week, with the House Appropriations Committee’s (HAC) markup expected as soon as Monday and full House debate likely the following week.
In addition, Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee (SAC-D) staff have reported their markup of the defense appropriations legislation will be held next week, according to a Pentagon spokesman.
Before leaving for a five-week recess in early August, lawmakers and aides said they expected September’s legislative activity to be dominated by defense matters, before the new fiscal year starts Oct. 1. The Senate has not yet taken up the defense authorization bill, and the only action on the defense appropriations bill has been a markup by the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee (HAC-D) on July 30, shortly before lawmakers fled Capitol Hill.
Congress has not yet passed any of the 12 annual appropriations bills, in part because of fighting between Democrats and Republicans over energy legislation (Defense Daily, July 11).
In July, lawmakers predicted the defense appropriations bill could be one of the only, or the only, spending measure that passes in time. Some Capitol Hill insiders predicted it could be used as a vehicle for a continuing resolution (CR) for other government spending, while others predicted even the defense measure would not pass in time and thus Defense Department (DoD) spending also would have to be covered, temporarily, through a CR (Defense Daily, July 11).
Action on the defense appropriations bill could come as soon as Monday.
“As of (last) Friday, the HAC staff is indicating that full committee markup of the FY 2009 DoD appropriation bill is tentatively scheduled for Monday, September 8th,” said Navy Cmdr. Darryn James, a spokesman for Pentagon Comptroller Tina Jonas.
The full House is slated to take up the defense spending measure the week of Monday, Sept. 15, a senior Democratic aide said.
In general, the HAC is not expected to deviate much, if at all, from the $487.7 billion defense appropriations bill the HAC-D marked up in July. Yet there have been developments with two controversial defense efforts–the Air Force’s aerial refueling tanker competition and the Navy’s DDG-1000 destroyer program–since the HAC-D action.
The Navy has since said it is reverting to its original request for $2.55 billion to buy a third DDG-1000 in FY ’09, after some lawmakers reacted angrily to the sea service’s July proposal to truncate the destroyer line at two ships. The Navy is still preparing plans to reopen the line of its older DDG-51 combatants (Defense Daily, Aug. 20).
The HAC-D’s mark from July 30 did not include the $2.55 billion for a DDG-1000 that the Navy was seeking at the time, and distributed that money to other ship efforts including a 10th LPD-17 amphibious ship, at a cost of 1.6 billion.
HAC-D Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) told a small group of reporters following the markup he had concerns with the Navy’s plans to buy more of the DDG-51s (Defense Daily, July 31).
The House-passed FY ’09 defense authorization bill also rejects the Navy’s initial–and again current– request for buying one DDG-1000, but gives the service the option of using $400 million to either restart DDD-51 production or use for DDG-1000 advance procurement.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, the Navy’s plan to buy one DDG-1000 in FY ’09 has support from senior defense appropriators and authorizers.
Murtha in July said shipbuilding was his panel’s “biggest problem.”
For the Air Force’s troubled aerial refueling tanker program, the HAC-D included language in its markup–which Defense Daily obtained–saying it only would allow the air service’s full $893 million request if specific criteria are met in the new tanker competition (Defense Daily, Aug. 4).
Since the HAC-D markup, Vice Chairman Norm Dicks (D-Wash.)–who backs Boeing‘s [BA] tanker bid and fought the initial and flawed contract award to a Northrop Grumman[NOC]-European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS) team–has criticized a draft of a revised tanker request for proposals (RFP) that was released Aug. 6 (Defense Daily, Aug. 19). That draft RFP does not jibe with the criteria in the HAC-D’s bill.
The Pentagon is expected to release the final RFP as soon as today.
The HAC-D did not release many details on its marked up bill July 30, and only provided a summary.