Appropriators supply funds for alternate fighter jet engine

Over protests from the Pentagon, the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee has approved $480 million in the fiscal 2008 defense spending bill to pay for a second engine for the Joint Strike Fighter program, a House aide said Thursday.

Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha, D-Pa., confirmed that his panel followed the lead of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, which in the spring denied the Defense Department's repeated requests to scrap the alternate engine in their annual defense authorization bills.

Pentagon officials want to cancel the second engine, which would be built by General Electric Co. and the British firm Rolls Royce, to save $1.8 billion in the international fighter program over the next five years. United Technologies' Pratt & Whitney unit in Connecticut builds the primary engine.

But lawmakers have argued that competition between engine suppliers would ultimately lead to cost savings and a better final product. They also have been sympathetic to the concerns of other nations that intend to buy the plane, including Great Britain, that their companies have not received enough work on the program.

During its closed-door markup last week, Murtha's subcommittee also trimmed roughly $400 million from the Army's $3.7 billion request for the Future Combat Systems, the core of its technology transformation efforts, the chairman said.

The FCS cut, though still more than 10 percent of the budget request, is far smaller than the $867 million cut in the House-passed version of the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill.

Murtha last month said he thought he would trim roughly the same amount from the program as his authorization colleagues. But he said Thursday he had discussed the program with Army Chief of Staff George Casey over the last several weeks.

Still, Murtha has reservations about the $160 billion program, which he believes may be too expensive at a time when the Army is scrambling to pay for urgently needed equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It's not ... one of my favorite programs," Murtha said. "It's not that I don't see the point. I just that I don't think we have the money to do it."

On another spending front, Murtha said he intends to include 10 C-17 Globemaster III cargo planes in the fiscal 2008 wartime supplemental appropriations bill, which he said the subcommittee will mark up in September. A House aide said the add-on would be at least $2.4 billion.

The House Appropriations Committee will mark up the annual defense spending bill next week, with floor action expected at the end of the month.

Murtha, one of the most outspoken critics of the war in Iraq, said he intends to offer several Iraq-related amendments during floor debate on the defense appropriations bill, potentially including language requiring the Bush administration to begin reducing the number of troops deployed to Iraq within 60 days.

Acknowledging President Bush's opposition to setting a date for ending operations in Iraq, Murtha said lawmakers are "trying to stay away from that." The language has not been finalized, he added.

"We want to pass something that hopefully he'll sign," Murtha said.