WASHINGTON — A proposed 2017 Pentagon budget easily vaulted another Ccongressional hurdle on Thursday as the Senate Appropriations Committee voted 30-0 to send its defense spending bill to the full Senate.
Hewing to the 2015 Bipartisan Budget Act, the spending bill includes $515.9 billion for the Pentagon's base budget funding and $58.6 billion in the war budget. It falls below the president's budget request by about $1.7 billion and rejects the House approach of reallocating wartime funds for base budget needs.
"US national security interests receive necessary support within this bill, which has broad bipartisan support," said Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., who also leads the defense subcommittee. "The bill sustains a strong US force structure, and it makes significant investments in readiness, shipbuilding programs, aircraft procurement and missile defense."
"I especially appreciate that this conforms to the Bipartisan Budget Agreement and refrains from gimmicks that would not only shortchange non-defense priorities, but also our military — by creating, as the House has, a dangerous war-funding cliff for next year," Baldwin said.
In passing the spending bill, the committee approved a package of eight amendments. The amendments would among other things expedite procurement of UH-1N replacement helicopters protecting missile sites and elevate US Cyber Command to a combatant command.
It adds $1 billion to build a heavy polar icebreaker, as some lawmakers see an urgent need to compete with Russia and other nations in the Arctic. One of the lead proponents of building another icebreaker, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska., lamented the US has only one medium icebreaker, a research vessel.
"We need to get in the game, and what we are doing with the leadership of so many in this committee is stepping up," Murkowski said.
The bill also allocates $600 million, full funding, for all three US-Israeli cooperative missile defense programs (Arrow System Improvement Program, Arrow III upper tier interceptor, and David's Sling), as well as the Iron Dome system. Congress fully funded the program in 2015 at $620 million and in 2016 at $487 million, according to one of the provision's proponents, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill.
At the hearing, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., offered a low-key preview of the brewing floor battle between Republicans and Democrats over a planned GOP gambit to boost defense spending authorization.
The vote came as elsewhere in the Senate, it's 2017 defense policy bill remained stalled by Minority Leader Harry Reid, who said he wanted time to comb over the 1,600-page bill.
Reid's move triggered a war of words with Republicans, whose hottest moment came Wednesday when Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton, a Senate Armed Services Committee member, made a floor speech that blasted Reid's "corrosive leadership" and quipped bitterly the last bill Reid read was "probably an electric bill."
Reid effectively thwarted any major work on the bill ahead of the Memorial Day recess, including SASC Chairman John McCain's introduction of an amendment to authorize $18 billion more than his committee's $602 billion bill. Reid's maneuver, whether he intended to or not, saves Democrats expected to rally against it in the name of parity for spending, from voting against added defense dollars just before the military-oriented holiday.
By Thursday afternoon, senators had introduced dozens of amendments to the policy bill, and the Senate was expected to take up and pass a motion to proceed to consideration of the bill when lawmakers return from recess.
Email: jgould@defensenews.com
Twitter: @ReporterJoe
Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.
