By Emelie Rutherford
The Senate is slated to take up two competing budget bills today that, while not expected to pass, both would cut the White House’s defense request by more than $10 billion and zero out funding for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter second engine.
The lack of support for the F136 General Electric [GE]-Rolls-Royce engine program in the two tenuous bills, one that already passed the House and one released by the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) last Friday, does not bode well for its future; its exclusion could be indicative of how a final defense appropriations plan for fiscal 2011 comes down on the hotly contested program, observers said.
Still, alternate-engine supporters note legislation impacting the F136 is moving through a complex legislative process. And one notable supporter of the second engine is House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), in whose district the engine is being built.
“If a bill must be hashed out in a conference of House-Senate leaders, they carry the weight of a heavy decision with longterm strategic consequences if the F136 isn’t in the budget,” General Electric spokesman Rick Kennedy said yesterday. “We’ll have to see how these leaders respond.”
The Senate is poised today to take up two different versions of a FY ’11 defense appropriations bill, both of which are attached to continuing resolutions (CRs) that would fund the federal government after a current CR expires March 18 and run through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. The CR the Democratic-controlled SAC unveiled last Friday calls for cutting President Barack Obama’s proposal for the base defense budget by $17.3 billion, down to $513.6 billion. The CR the full Republican-led House approved last month, though containing larger overall cuts to Obama’s budget than the Senate plan, would provide $2.13 billion more in defense funding than the SAC would.
The Senate committee, though, noted aspects of the defense budget that it would fund higher than the House bill would. For example, the House plan would cut more for nuclear- weapons-related activities.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) reiterated yesterday that he does not think either bill will pass the Senate.
“Tomorrow, we hope the Senate will vote on the Republican response to the president’s budget, and also vote on the Democratic response,” Reid said. “We’ve all done the math and we all know how these votes will turn out: neither proposal will pass, which means neither will reach the president’s desk as written. We’ll go back to square one and back to the negotiating table.”
The SAC bill would add funding for weapon systems including Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles. It also calls for additional monies to accelerate production of Army and Air Force helicopters urgently requested for troops in Afghanistan, and to test and buy so-called double-V hulls for Stryker vehicles.
The Senate committee’s measure also includes 759 reductions to defense programs requested by Obama.
“These cuts are made as a result of program terminations or delays, changes to policies or programs since submission of the budget in February 2010, inadequate justification, or corrections to poor fiscal discipline in the Department of Defense,” the SAC said in a summary.
Cuts include a $1.871 billion reduction to the overall F-35 program “due to production and testing delays.” Requested funding for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization would drop by $672 million, the Army manned ground vehicle by $473 million, and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense by $272 million.
The Senate measure also would reduce operation and maintenance accounts by $9 billion “due to programmatic adjustments, historic under-execution, and unsupported requests for civilian personnel increases,” the Senate panel said.