House appropriators approve $369 billion Defense spending bill

The House Appropriations Committee signed off Thursday on a $369.2 billion defense spending bill, after trimming some $3 billion from President Bush's request for the military in fiscal 2004.

Although force strength for all the uniformed services will remain virtually the same in 2004, pay and benefits expenses will rise by $4.7 billion to $98.3 billion next year. And the operations and maintenance budget will increase by $583 million to $115.3 billion.

Despite the hefty price tag, which consumes almost half the entire federal budget for discretionary programs, the bill is likely to be just the first cut for military purposes in this spending cycle. Persisting military activities in Iraq, and to a lesser degree in Afghanistan, are likely to add billions more to the Pentagon's costs of doing business in the foreseeable future. And that money is likely to be requested later on in a supplemental appropriations bill.

Even as the committee sped the pricey bill to the House floor, where it is likely to be taken up in early July, it engaged in a sharp colloquy over emerging reports that the Pentagon's civilian leaders have set up a special intelligence analysis office that allegedly has shaded CIA and other intelligence estimates to conform to preconceived strategic policies hatched by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and White House officials.

The subject was first broached by the committee's ranking Democrat, David Obey of Wisconsin, but some Republicans expressed concern that "subjective" interpretation of intelligence data, in support of pre-cooked policy preferences, could plunge the nation needlessly into dangerous military ventures.

Chairman C.W. "Bill" Young, R-Fla., acknowledged that "this issue was discussed in a classified setting" before the spending bill was shuttled to Thursday's public markup session. "Intelligence must never be politicized," he said, to fit preconceived policy options. As a result of reports that this might have been the case in the run-up to the Iraq war, Young indicated that his committee intended to look into whether Rumsfeld's innocuously named "Office of Special Plans" at the Pentagon had massaged intelligence information to justify the administration's policy preferences.

The bill was approved and sent to the floor by a voice vote. The committee also approved by voice vote two other amendments-one by defense appropriations subcommittee chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., that mainly adjusted the dollar amounts slightly for several line items, and the other an amendment by Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., that calls on the Navy to clean up its onshore target practice range on Vieques Island in Puerto Rico.

Apart from that, the bill calls for:

• $460 billion to the Army's Special Operations Command to counterterrorism abroad; the money represented a 35 percent increase over the current year's spending for SpecOps.
• $8.9 billion to continue development of a national ballistic missile defense system. The sum is $1.3 billion more than this year, but $193 million less than the president requested.
• $458 million to speed the Army's transformation to a lighter, quicker force capable of moving swiftly to hot spots in remoter parts of the globe. That money will be used in part to buy 144 upgraded Bradley Fighting Vehicles and 43 Abrams tanks to modernize the Iraq-deployed 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. It also pays for three new fast-moving Stryker Brigades.
• $11.5 billion for new Navy ships, including a Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarine, two Trident sub conversions, and three Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyers. Of that sum, $175 million is advanced as partial payment for a new LPD amphibious ship; $1.5 billion for a new nuclear aircraft carrier; $928 million for design of a new class of fast-moving destroyers, and $168 million for design of a new Littoral Combat Ship for use in coastal waters for special operations and homeland security. The committee rejected a plea by the Navy for advance, multi-year funding for seven Virginia-class subs, at $216 billion a copy. The Navy insisted it could save at least $115 million over several years by contracting for more than one boat at a time, but the committee said it was "premature at this time" to commit to long-term financing for the new subs.
• $1.3 billion to bolster chemical and biological defenses.
• $74.7 billion to buy 19 Army Blackhawk helicopters; 42 Navy F/A-18E/F fighters; $1.5 billion for 11 V-22 Osprey aircraft (9 for the Marines, 2 for the Air Force); $485 million for 450 ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles; $724 million for Navy and Air Force smart bombs; $3.6 billion for 22 F-22 Air Force fighters, and $2.1 billion for 11 Air Force C-17 cargo planes. The committee turned down a $107.3 million Air Force request to modernize several of its KC135E aerial tankers, noting that the Pentagon intends to eventually retire the aging 'E'-version planes and instead lease up to 100 Boeing 767 civilian planes for conversion to military tankers.
• $64.6 billion for further research and development of the Army's Comanche helicopters ($1.1 billion); the all-service Joint Strike Fighter ($4.2 billion), along with several other programs for enhancing military early-warning, communications and space-based detection system.