Lawmakers' projects, disparities slow defense spending

Adding another twist to a fiscal 2004 appropriations process that is increasingly showing signs of a fall slowdown, aides face the unusual predicament of obstacles in negotiations on defense spending measures during the August recess.

Appointees to formal House-Senate conferences on the fiscal 2004 Defense and Military Construction appropriations bills have not yet been named-despite both chambers having approved their versions-a routine yet crucial formality to be observed before final negotiations begin. Last year, those two bills were the only two out of the 13 annual spending bills to escape the morass resulting in a huge fiscal 2003 omnibus.

On the usually noncontroversial Military Construction spending bill, for which each chamber allocated about $9.2 billion for fiscal 2004, differences over earmarked projects are stalling staff-level talks over the measure, aides said. The Senate version contains almost $300 million more in earmarks than the House bill for a total approaching $600 million in projects not requested by the White House, an aide said. Funding for those projects is provided by the committees' decisions not to fund administration requests for construction at U.S. bases in Germany and South Korea, freeing up extra funds for lawmakers' pet projects.

The House version generally supports the administration's overseas efforts, but also contains a number of unrequested home-state projects tucked in by appropriators funded by rescissions elsewhere. An aide noted that the discrepancy totaled about $900 million in different projects separating the bills. For example, while the House version contains no Air Force funds for Alaska, Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, will no doubt fight for the $4.4 million in construction projects at Alaska's Elmendorf Air Force Base in the Senate bill. And appropriators will be under pressure from the administration and GOP leaders to make sacrifices in conference, rather than simply add to the bottom line behind closed doors, as has occurred in the past.

Talks over the fiscal 2004 House and Senate Defense appropriations bills, each totaling close to $369 billion in discretionary spending, also have stalled. The Senate bill shifts about $3.2 billion from the administration's request to fund other domestic spending bills, while the House version only diverts $2 billion for other purposes. Appropriators found that money by rescinding funds from the $63 billion fiscal 2003 supplemental for Iraq, a move opposed by the administration. And the Senate bill contains close to $100 million less than the House version, another sticking point.

Compounding matters for both defense spending bills is the fact that the Armed Services committees have not completed the fiscal 2004 Defense authorization bill, which limits what can be spent on all Pentagon programs, an aide said. While appropriators generally forge ahead without waiting for the go-ahead from authorizing committees, the defense bill is "historically the one authorization bill that moves first," the aide said. "They have guarded that relationship jealously over the years."