Dec. 11, 2007 – 6:34 p.m.
The House is expected to adopt a defense authorization conference report Wednesday or Thursday that would authorize well over half a trillion dollars in national security spending while significantly rewriting the White House’s defense plan.
The $696.4 billion measure (
Several dozen House members might vote against the bill because of its war authorization, but they are likely to prove only a bump in an otherwise smooth road to adoption. And despite the conferees’ differences with the White House on a wide range of issues including military pay and overseeing contractors, they have sufficiently modified provisions to avert a veto threatened by the administration, members and aides predict.
“This defense authorization bill sets priorities that will support our troops in the field, enable our nation to meet immediate military requirements, and preserve our ability to deter and respond to future threats,” House Armed Services Chairman
The Military Officers Association of America called the conference report a “veritable Christmas tree of benefits enhancements for military personnel and their families.”
First, the measure would add to the number of people in the military services, which would spread the burdens of repeated deployments. Notably, the Army would expand by 13,000 soldiers to 525,400 and the Marine Corps by 9,000 to a total of 189,000. The administration, after years of resisting such increases, this year changed course and backed them.
The measure would authorize a 3.5 percent pay raise for the military services, which the White House “strongly opposes” as too high. And it would allow those considered 100 percent disabled to receive all of both their disability pay and retirement pay.
The conferees decided to block the administration’s proposed increases in out-of-pocket costs for participants in the Tricare health network.
In addition, the final bill would institute a number of overhauls for “wounded warriors” returning home to military health care facilities, including policies on electronic health records of housing inspections.
The wounded-warrior provisions alone “would be a major accomplishment for the year,” said
The conferees decided to make changes to the administration’s new human resources plan, the National Security Personnel System, which is being phased in and ultimately will affect 700,000 Pentagon workers. The conference report would block the administration’s attempts to revoke rights to collective bargaining, among other disputed actions.
The White House had threatened to veto House-passed changes to the personnel system that it considered extreme. It is unclear whether the conferees’ proposed changes go too far for the administration.
Levin, citing the bill’s many advantages for military personnel, said he could “not imagine” that the president’s “disagreement with us on that one issue would cause him to deny those benefits for the troops and their families.”
In addition, the final bill would institute many changes to the rules governing Pentagon purchases. It would mandate heightened attention to ensuring that weapons are acquired only after proving that they are capable of performing their mission.
With certain exceptions, the measure would ban, after fiscal 2010, the use of “lead systems integrator” contracts, which give companies oversight responsibilities traditionally reserved for the government.
The administration would have to write rules to govern security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as Blackwater Worldwide. Critics say employees of such contractors have escaped criminal prosecution because of the language in laws and regulations.
What’s more, whistleblowers who expose waste, fraud and abuse would be given new protections, over the White House’s strong objections. The conferees would set up a new inspector general to monitor spending in Afghanistan and would require a series of audits by the Pentagon’s regular inspector general of spending in that country and Iraq. The bill also would create a new version of the World War II-era Truman Commission to monitor wasteful spending in both war zones.
On weapons programs, the measure would authorize spending for a host of new ships, planes and ground systems, including $17.6 billion for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, which better withstand bomb blasts.
This year’s measure would restrict the Pentagon’s ability to retire aircraft such as the U-2 spy plane, the B-52 bomber and the C-5 transport. It would prohibit spending on deployment of an antimissile system in Europe until certain criteria are met, including approval by the Polish and Czech parliaments.
The bill’s policy directives also include several steps that would bolster the National Guard inside the Pentagon. The National Guard chief, for example, would become a four-star general instead of a three-star, although he would not be a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as some had proposed.
“It is frustrating that the Guard has had to fight for every policy improvement and scrap of equipment spending, while their vital expertise is often overlooked or ignored when it comes to dealing with domestic emergencies,” said
And the conference report would overturn a measure adopted last year that expanded the president’s power to invoke martial law by federalizing the National Guard even when governors opposed it during domestic catastrophes. The National Guard and U.S. governors had lobbied to reverse the law.