CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Dec. 12, 2011 – 9:03 p.m.
Conferees Sign Off on Defense Policy Bill, Hope to Avoid Veto
By Megan Scully, CQ Staff
Negotiators on Monday signed off on a final version of the annual defense authorization bill, including revisions to Senate-passed detainee provisions that leaders hope are enough to avert a veto.
The House is expected to vote on the conference report for the fiscal 2012 bill (
But supporters of the measure, which has become law every year for the last half-century, still could have a tough time getting it enacted if the changes made to detainee provisions in the Senate’s version of the bill do not satisfy the concerns of Obama administration officials.
White House officials have repeatedly voiced strong opposition to language that would require terrorism suspects to be held in military, rather than civilian, custody.
The Senate Armed Services Committee, which drafted the original language, inserted a national security waiver and has made other changes to the provision at the Obama administration’s request since it was written in June. But the veto threat remained in place after the Senate passed its version of the bill Dec. 1.
The provision in the final bill closely resembles the Senate version, but it contains new language intended to mollify the administration and other critics concerned that requiring military custody could interfere with civilian law enforcement.
Specifically, the conference report states that the section would not affect “existing criminal enforcement and national security authorities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or any other domestic law enforcement agency,” whether the detainee is in military custody or not.
“We can’t say it more clearly than that,” Senate Armed Services Chairman
The final bill also renames the section “Military Custody for Foreign al Qaeda Terrorists,” presumably to underscore the fact that the provision does not apply to U.S. citizens, and gives the waiver authority to the president rather than the secretary of Defense.
Rejected Provisions
Conferees rejected several other controversial terrorism-related provisions in the House version of the bill. Among those was a provision that would have updated the 2001 law that authorized the war on terrorism (PL 107-40), a move that opponents argued would have given the commander in chief nearly open-ended authority to wage war. That language had also provoked a veto threat.
The final bill also does not include House GOP language that would have required the United States to consider all foreign terrorists enemy combatants and to prosecute them in military tribunals rather than in civilian courts.
Conferees Sign Off on Defense Policy Bill, Hope to Avoid Veto
House Armed Services Chairman
House and Senate negotiators also agreed to a Senate provision, with some tweaks, that would create new sanctions targeting the Central Bank of Iran, a move intended to produce an economic collapse that would force the country to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
The Senate adopted the language, which was sponsored by
Resolution of F-35 Issues
Levin said the language adopted by conferees is “96 percent” of what was in the Kirk-Menendez amendment. But it does give the administration some new flexibility, including changing the conditions for a waiver from “vital national security interest” to simply “national security interest.”
“We’ve written this language so it’s tough,” Levin said. “We want it to be tough.”
Meanwhile, conferees on the Pentagon policy measure agreed to a compromise provision setting new policy for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the largest weapons program on the Pentagon’s books and one whose history has been marked by a burgeoning price tag and technical difficulties.
The Senate bill had included stringent language that would have required the contract for the next batch of F-35s, Lot 5, to be a fixed-price deal in which Lockheed Martin Corp., which makes the stealth fighter, would absorb all cost overruns.
But House negotiators worried that the Senate language could delay the next contract by six months or longer and force the Defense Department and Lockheed Martin to alter a tentative agreement already in place. As the first step toward a contract, both sides announced last week that they have agreed to a fixed-price deal, with the government and contractor sharing the cost burden for overruns.
After much negotiation, the leaders of the two Armed Services committees agreed to require Lockheed Martin to pay out of pocket for all cost overruns on Lot 6 and future aircraft but will abandon efforts to dictate the type of contract required for the next batch.
With plans to procure 2,443 F-35s to replace aging fighters in the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy fleets, the Defense Department expects to spend $380 billion to buy the planes. Support and operations costs over the life of the program could drive the total price to $1 trillion.
Before the conference on the bill, the House conferees had agreed to strip nearly $652 million for member add-ons out of their version of the authorization measure, a committee spokesman said Monday. House members argued that the funding for the special projects amounted to policy provisions that were required to be competitively awarded.
But others, like Sen.
Conferees Sign Off on Defense Policy Bill, Hope to Avoid Veto
Frances Symes and Eugene Mulero contributed to this story.