The Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) approved a $516.4 billion Pentagon budget bill Thursday by a 22-8 vote, just as Congress prepared to leave Washington for five weeks and return less than a month before the new fiscal year starts.
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Lawmakers and aides expect the Pentagon to start fiscal year 2014 on Oct. 1 operating under a “continuing resolution” that simply extends defense funding and gives military officials little flexibility.
The SAC’s bill still would need to be passed by the Democrat-led Senate and reconciled with a very-different $512.5 billion Republican House bill before being sent to President Barack Obama. Both the House and Senate plans would work around the $500 billion in decade-long sequestration cuts to defense spending, but in different ways.
The Senate committee’s bill would grant a $516.4 billion base budget, which is just a tad larger than the $515.9 billion spending plan Obama proposed, and a $77.8 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) war budget, which is $2.9 billion less than the White House requested. Obama wants to replace the defense sequestration cuts with $150 billion in military reductions in later years.
The SAC bill would add boost the Pentagon’s proposed procurement funding by $215 million and decrease its research and development request by $1.7 billion.
Specific changes proposed by the Senate panel include the addition of $227 million for the Virginia-class submarine and $100 million for the DDG-51 destroyer, so the Navy can fund 10-ship multi-year contracts for both ship programs. It also calls for starting the modernization of nine ships the Navy wants to retire.
The SAC-D legislation also would cut advance-procurement funding for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter intended for a significant ramp-up in building aircraft the Pentagon has planned for FY ’15.