House approves defense billions

Bill spares outdated weapons

— The House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a $633 billion defense bill for next year despite Pentagon complaints that it spares outdated but politically popular weapons at the expense of the military’s ability to fight.

The vote was 315-107 and sent the legislation to the Senate, where leaders hoped to wrap up the measure. The White House had threatened a veto of earlier versions of the bill, and spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that the threat still stands.

The far-reaching policy bill that covers the cost of ships, aircraft, weapons and military personnel would authorize $528 billion for the Defense Department’s base budget, $17 billion for defense and nuclear programs in the Energy Department, and $88.5 billion for the war in Afghanistan.

The bill is $1.7 billion more than President Barack Obama requested.

House Republicans and Democrats debated the measure against the backdrop of high-stakes talks to avert the “fiscal cliff” and the loud cry for a sweeping deal to reduce the deficit.

The fiscal cliff is a combination of automatic spending cuts and tax increases set to go into effect in January unless Congress acts before then.

Democrats argued that the bill runs counter to demands for fiscal discipline.

“This bill is more money than the Pentagon wants,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. “We’re just throwing money at them.”

Specifically, the bill spares a version of the Global Hawk unmanned aircraft, includes upgrades for tanks and money for armored vehicles.

The bill also lifts freezes on airplane and personnel moves across the Air National Guard that had been in the House and Senate defense authorization bills, leaving the 188th Fighter Wing in Fort Smith vulnerable to an Air Force plan to take away its planes.

Arkansas Republican Reps. Rick Crawford, Tim Griffin and Steve Womack were joined by Democrat Mike Ross in voting for the bill Thursday.

The Air Force developed a force structure plan earlier this year that included replacing the 188th’s A-10 close airsupport jets with a mission of remotely piloting unmanned aircraft. The reconfiguration would result in hundreds of aircraft maintainers losing fulltime jobs at the Fort Smith Air National Guard base.

The 188th just returned in the fall from its second deployment to Afghanistan, where it flew missions protecting ground troops from enemy attack.

The bill calls for an independent commission to be developed to look at future force structure moves. It also calls for a cost-benefit study on an avionics upgrade of the C-130 fleet that was placed on hold in January. The C-130AMP program is based at the Arkansas Air National Guard’s 189th Airlift Wing at Little Rock Air Force Base.

The bill halts what had been the imminent cancellation of the program developed to extend the life span of older C-130 models. The cost benefit study will determine whether the current program, which was about to start the final testing phase when it was frozen, should continue or be replaced by a less-extensive upgrade.

In a speech this week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta criticized the pressure on the Pentagon to keep weapons that it doesn’t want. “Aircraft, ships, tanks, bases, even those that have outlived their usefulness, have a natural political constituency. Readiness does not,” Panetta said.

“What’s more, readiness is too often sacrificed in favor of a larger and less-effective force. I am determined to avoid that outcome,” he said.

Panetta said members of the House and Senate “diverted about $74 billion of what we asked for in savings in our proposed budget to the Congress, and they diverted them to other areas that, frankly, we don’t need.”

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., insisted that the bill “safeguards military readiness in times of declining budgets.”

The bill responds to the new threats and upheaval around the globe while still providing billions for the decade-plus war in Afghanistan. The measure would tighten sanctions on Iran, increase security at diplomatic missions worldwide after the deadly Sept. 11 raid in Libya and presses the military on possible options to end the bloodshed in Syria.

The final measure, a product of negotiations between the House and Senate, addresses several concerns raised by the Obama administration. It eliminates restrictions on alternative fuels that the White House had complained about and jettisons limits on the administration’s ability to implement a nuclear-weapons reduction treaty.

The bill does limit the president’s authority to transfer terror suspects from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for one year — a provision similar to current law. That had drawn complaints from the White House.

Election-year politics and changes in society shaped the final measure. Negotiators kept a Senate-passed provision sponsored by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., that expands health-insurance coverage for military women and their dependents who decide to have abortions in cases of rape and incest.

Previously, health coverage applied only to abortions in cases where the life of the mother was endangered.

Democrats argued throughout the election year that Republicans were waging a “war on women” over contraception and abortion, which the GOP denied.

Negotiators jettisoned a House provision that would have banned gay marriage on military installations, weeks after the chapel at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point held its first same-sex marriage. A senior Army chaplain conducted the ceremony. The bill does include a conscience clause for chaplains.

The measure includes a 1.7 percent pay raise for military personnel and provides money for new ships, aircraft and other weapons.

The sanctions would hit Iran’s energy, shipping and shipbuilding sectors as well as Iran’s ports, blacklisting them as “entities of proliferation concern.” It would impose penalties on anyone supplying precious metals to Iran and sanctions on Iranian broadcasting.

The bill eliminated a House provision barring the military from buying alternative fuels if the cost exceeds traditional fossil fuels, a measure that had drawn a veto threat. Instead, negotiators said the Pentagon could move ahead on the project as long as the Energy and Agriculture departments make their financial contributions to the work.

The bill also watered down a House effort to require construction of an East Coast missile-defense site, instead pressing the Pentagon to study three possible locations.

Months after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, the bill would provide an additional 1,000 Marines for embassy security.

Reacting to relentless violence in Syria, the bill would require the Pentagon to report to Congress on possible military options.

The bill would authorize nearly $480 million for the U.S.-Israeli missile defense, including $211 million for Iron Dome, the system designed to intercept short-range rockets and mortar rounds fired at southern Israel by Palestinian militants in Gaza.

One of the thorniest issues in negotiations was the handling of terrorist suspects. Lawmakers finally agreed on language that says “nothing in the authorization for the Use of Military Force or [the current defense bill] shall be construed to deny the availability of the writ of habeas corpus or to deny any constitutional rights” to an individual in the United States who would be entitled to such rights.

The agreement retained a Senate provision that stops the Pentagon from sending additional spies overseas until Congress has answers about the cost and how the spies would be used.

In other developments on Capitol Hill, the government’s authority to intercept electronic communications of foreigners — both spies and terrorist targets — will expire at year’s end unless the Senate extends a law that is under challenge from a bipartisan group of senators.

In a case in which national security bumps up against privacy, more than a dozen senators say they’re concerned that conversations and e-mails of Americans are swept up in the monitoring. Americans, they contend, can then become targets of surveillance without the protection of a court warrant.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid struggled Thursday to get the five-year extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before the Senate, but those questioning the law blocked any action until they could get votes on their proposals to modify the bill.

The Obama administration strongly defended the law, saying in a statement that it has been “invaluable to the U.S. government’s efforts to detect and prevent threats to America and its allies, while providing robust protections for the civil liberties and privacy of U.S. persons.”

The House in September approved a five-year extension of the law by a vote of 301-118.

Information for this article was contributed by Donna Cassata, Julie Pace and Larry Margasak of The Associated Press and by Amy Schlesing of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/21/2012

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