By Emelie Rutherford
President Obama declared yesterday he will sign the defense authorization bill into law this week, quashing any lingering speculation he could veto the legislation because it supports an aircraft engine Pentagon leaders do not want.
This continued legal authorization of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s second alternate engine bodes well for the program’s inclusion in the pending defense appropriations bill, which actually sets the Pentagon budget, congressional aides said.
Obama told sailors yesterday at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Fla., that to “make sure you can meet the missions we ask of you, we are increasing the defense budget,” adding: “This week, I’ll sign that defense authorization bill into law.”
Pentagon and White House officials have repeatedly objected to the General Electric [GE]-Rolls-Royce second-engine effort and said Obama would be advised to veto fiscal year 2010 legislation that would “seriously disrupt” the overall F-35 aircraft program. When the Senate granted the final approval to the policy-setting authorization bill last week, some critics of the alternate engine held out hope that those ambiguous words meant a veto was still possible.
Yet supporters of the engine effort, including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), argued the final defense authorization bill would not seriously disrupt the multi-nation F-35 program because the legislation would fully support the administration’s request for buying the actual aircraft.
“So we don’t reduce the number of planes, we don’t have a negative effect on the program by continuing and including the development of the second engine,” Levin said at the Capitol last Thursday night after the Senate passed the authorization bill.
Many Republicans voted against the defense authorization measure that also expands the legal definition of hate crimes to include gays and lesbians.
Yeah observers predicted Obama would not veto the bill because of provisions he supports, including that hate-crimes expansion.
The Senate approved the final authorization legislation via a near-party-line 68-29 vote. The House passed it on Oct. 8 via a 281-146 margin, with 131 Republicans voting against it and only 44 from the GOP backing it.
The fate of the alternate engine, which Congress also funded over Bush administration objections, now rests with defense appropriators. As Levin, a congressional authorizer said: “We can authorize, but if they don’t appropriate a second engine then that’s not going to happen.”
The House-passed defense appropriations bill funds the second engine but the Senate version does not. However, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) has said on multiple occasions he would like to see the alternate engine funded in the final bill that emerges from the House-Senate conference committee.
However, it is not clear when that conference committee will officially convene and Congress will vote on the final defense appropriations legislation.
House Democrats have considered using the defense appropriations measure as a vehicle to carry other government funding or legislation related to District of Columbia voting rights.
Three House Republicans–Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Jerry Lewis (Calif.), Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Ranking Member Bill Young (Fla.), and Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Buck McKeon (Calif.)–in an Oct. 21 asked Democratic leaders to wrap up work on the defense bill.
“This critical defense funding bill must not be held up any longer or bogged down with irrelevant items,” the GOP trio wrote.
The Defense Department and other government agencies have been running on temporary stopgap funding since FY ’10 began on Oct. 1. Congress is expected to consider another continuing resolution this week that would further extend temporary government funding past Oct. 31, because the annual appropriations bills still are not approved.