The Senate passed the annual Pentagon policy-setting bill by a 98-0 margin last night, setting up battles with the House and White House over controversial hardware provisions related to everything from missile defense to aging aircraft.
Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) leaders, for their part, downplayed the White House’s threat last Thursday to veto the fiscal year 2013 defense authorization bill, noting they’ve negotiated with the executive branch to prevent presidential vetoes in the past.
SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told reporters yesterday he is “very optimistic” President Barack Obama will sign the final bill that a forthcoming conference committee of SASC and House Armed Services Committee (HASC) members will craft.
“I can remember many many occasions where there’s been veto threats and there’s been negotiations and we go to conference and all that,” SASC Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) said. “Hopefully we’ll resolve many of their objections. It’s always a very big step when a president vetoes the defense bill.”
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said in a Nov. 29 Statement of Administration Policy that the administration has “serious concerns with provisions” in the Senate bill that clash with the Pentagon’s FY ’13 budget request, limit the executive branch’s authorities, and “constrain the ability of the armed forces to carry out their missions consistent with the new defense strategy.” It says Obama’s advisers would recommend he veto the bill in its current form, pointing to eight sections to which it “strongly objects.”
Those sections include one banning the Pentagon from spending the $400.9 million it requested for the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS), a U.S.-German-Italian missile-defense program the United States previously weighed exiting. The House-passed defense authorization bill also denies the Pentagon authorization to spend the MEADS funding.
Lawmakers have struggled with what to do with MEADS, because if the United States leaves the tri-nation program it would have to pay a sizable termination fee, which earlier this year was pegged at more than $800 million. The prime contractor for MEADS, which has had cost and schedule overruns, is group dubbed MEADS International that includes Lockheed Martin [LMT].
“We feel strongly that it’s a waste of money,” Levin said about MEADS. “The Pentagon feels strongly they made a commitment…But part of the commitment is if we pull out of it then we’ve got to pay a penalty. So it’s a contest between whether we lose less money or more money.”
The SAP warns that not funding MEADS in FY ’13 could harm the United States’ relationship with Germany and Italy “on a much broader basis, including future multinational cooperative projects.” It also says a rejection of funding could prevent the completion of so-called Proof of Concept (PoC) activities intended to “provide data archiving, analysis of testing, and software development necessary to harvest technology from U.S. and partner investments in MEADS.”
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sent a Nov. 30 plea to Levin and HASC Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) seeking FY ’13 funding authorization for MEADS, noting that as part of the Proof of Concept effort MEADS successfully intercepted an air-breathing target “on time and within budget” on Nov. 29.
“In light of this solid success and the need to archive the data that will allow the United States and our partners, Germany and Italy, to capitalize on the demonstrated capabilities, we should provide the final year of funding to complete the PoC development and testing against ballistic missiles,” Panetta wrote.
Levin said yesterday that it’s not likely the final House-Senate defense authorization bill will drop the prohibition against MEADS funding. Still, he noted the SASC “always look at requests (from the defense secretary) seriously.”
There are seven other provisions in the Senate’s defense authorization bill to which the OMB says the administration “strongly objects,” including contentious language on military detainees that garnered heated debate on the Senate floor last week. Those matters that the administration strongly opposes also include one that would block the Air Force’s plan to retire or divest more than 200 Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve aircraft over the next five years–something the House-passed bill also rejects.
“These provisions would force (the Department of Defense) DoD to operate, sustain, and maintain aircraft that are in excess to national security requirements, as defined by the new defense strategy, and are not affordable in an austere budget environment,” OMB says about provisions in the Senate bill. “They also would impair the ability of the secretary to manage the department and, by retaining large numbers of under-resourced aircraft in the fleet in today’s fiscally constrained environment, could contribute to a hollow force.”
Levin stuck by the Senate bill, which calls for creating a commission on the structure of the Air Force to make recommendations for how to go about retiring such aircraft.
“They have to retire aircraft at some point,…the question is whether or not when they do that, particularly when they affect the National Guard, they should be in consultations with the governors and the National Guard,” the SASC chairman said. “That’s what the issue was with the Air Force, that they had a disproportionate impact on the National Guard, way out of proportion to the active duty,…and that they ought to consult with the governors and the National Guard folks, just consult, before they make decisions which have those kinds of impacts.”
OMB also threatened to veto the defense authorization bill the House passed in May.
HASC and SASC staff have already held informal pre-conference negotiations on a final version the Pentagon legislation. Yet some major issues remain for the committee leaders to decide, aides said. Those include whether to thwart the Pentagon’s alternative-energy development efforts, direct it plan an East Coast missile-defense site, and reject its attempt to kill the Global Hawk Block 30 unmanned aircraft effort.
SASC leaders prepared for the final vote on the defense bill yesterday by clearing a package of 11 amendments via a voice vote without debate. It held a series of similar votes during the previous four days of debate, when it approved more than 100 proposed amendments.
Only a handful of amendments, including those on biofuels and detainees, were acted upon in traditional roll-call votes.