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US to give Pentagon $460bn
05/08/2007 12:05 - (SA)
Washington - The US House of Representatives early on Sunday approved more money for the Pentagon but not the unpopular Iraq war, which is expected to
be the subject of a major legislative clash this fall.
The defence appropriations bill passed by the House 395-13 provides $459.6bn for the Pentagon for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, and maps out spending priorities.
The Senate has already left Washington for an August recess, and is not scheduled to vote on the defense spending bill until the autumn.
The House version pays for everything from new ships and
more soldiers to a 3.5% pay raise for the military - half a percentage point more than the Pentagon sought.
It does not include an extra $147 billion in Iraq war funds that the Bush administration wants Congress to approve this autumn, around the time US Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus
reports to lawmakers on the war. Over $600 billion in war
checks have already been written for Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Democrat-majority House has voted three times this year
for timetables to end US involvement in Iraq, and initially
some lawmakers wanted to append pullout proposals to the
Pentagon spending blueprint.
But they backed down after Democratic leaders decided to
hold their fire on Iraq until September.
The House did challenge Bush's conduct of the Iraq war with
one vote earlier in the week, requiring US troops get more
leave at home between deployments to Iraq. Bush has threatened
to veto that measure, and its future is unclear in the Senate.
More soldiers
The Pentagon spending blueprint approved on Sunday is $3.5bn less than Bush requested. The White House has
criticised many provisions but stopped short of a veto threat.
The bill strikes $139 million from a missile defence project the Bush administration plans for Eastern Europe. House aides said the cut would prevent construction on a missile
interceptor site in Poland, the most controversial part of the
project, which has angered the Russian government.
The spending bill provides funding for an additional 7 000
Army soldiers - bringing the total to 489 000 - and 5 000
Marines, raising them to 180 000.
It also provides for improved health care for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was one of the last bills lawmakers approved in a late-night session before joining the Senate on recess, and followed days of partisan bickering over House rules, exacerbated by little sleep.
Before the vote, several lawmakers sought unsuccessfully to strike some of the many "earmarks" - pet projects that benefit lawmakers' home districts - from the defense bill.
"This bill has more than 1 300 earmarks. The notion that
these had proper review is simply not reasonable," declared
Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican.
One earmark he sought to cut provides $2.5m to
restore a military parade ground in San Francisco, represented
by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It stayed in the bill.
Flake challenged Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the House
defense spending panel, to explain the process for awarding
earmarks. A watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense, said
recently that Pennsylvania Democrat Murtha had sponsored more
than $150m worth of earmarks in the legislation.
"We try to vet them the best we can," Murtha replied. "I
don't make apologies for having earmarks ... Less than one
percent of the $459bn budget was projects for members of
Congress, and I think members of Congress know as well as the
bureaucracy over in the White House what has to be done."
- Reuters
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