By Emelie Rutherford
Though House-Senate negotiations on the supplemental war-funding bill have slowed, the two sides have agreed to including funding for eight C-17 cargo planes and some but not all of the C-130J transport aircraft and Stryker vehicles sought by the House, aides said.
Lawmakers mid-week planned to convene a conference committee yesterday to finalize a compromise version of the supplement. Yet the meeting was canceled Wednesday because of Republican opposition to funding in the supplemental for the International Monetary Fund. Still, the defense-procurement portion of the bill appears to be set.
The supplemental will include $2.2 billion for eight of Boeing‘s [BA] C-17s, according to multiple sources. The Pentagon wants to stop buying the cargo aircraft and the Obama administration did not include funding for them in its supplemental request.
“We took care of the C-17s,” House Appropriations Defense subcommittee Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) told reporters on Wednesday. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) told Defense Daily on Tuesday he supported adding funding for all eight of the cargo aircraft, which were in the House-passed supplemental but not the Senate’s approved version.
Still, other defense-procurement funding the House called for tacking on to the administration’s supplemental request had to be scaled back in the compromise House-Senate version, Murtha said.
Thus, sources said the compromise includes some but not all of the other funding added by the House, including $904.2 million for 11 of Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] C-130Js and $338.4 million for 225 of General Dynamics‘ [GD] Stryker medical-evaluation vehicles and 35 Stryker engineering-squad vehicles. The new, reduced rundown for C-130s and Strykers was not available yesterday.
“We made some cuts in almost everything,” Murtha said, emphasizing that the compromise still includes additional defense-procurement funding not requested by the White House.
“If you look at it from the House side, we decreased the budget; if you look at it from the Senate side, we increased the defense budget,” he said. “We got more than the president asked for.”
The supplemental conference committee may meet next week, sources said.
The emergency-funding measure is intended to cover war-related operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan through the end of fiscal year 2009 on Sept. 30.
The Senate voted 68-3 on May 21 to pass a $91.3 billion supplemental, after the House passed its $96.7 billion version on May 14 by a 368-60 vote.