Defense appropriations subcommittee led by Inouye increases war funding 20%

Post Date September 09, 2009
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Category Afghanistan, Iraq, Military Appropriations, Earmarks, Military-industrial-academic complex, The Military in Hawai'i (All Islands), War and Peace

As reported in the Washington Post, Senator Inouye pushed for more funding for C-17s:

In a separate action Wednesday, the subcommittee joined the House in adding funds to the appropriations bill to purchase an additional 10 C-17 transport airplanes. The Obama administration has said it does not need the planes.

“We expect that in re-examining its airlift fleet the Defense Department will eventually conclude that purchasing additional C-17’s … is the right solution” for meeting the increasing need for airlift, Inouye said.

But according to an article in Politico.com,

Senate appropriators have backed the White House and bucked the House over two major Pentagon programs – a fleet of helicopters for the president and an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The Senate and the House found common ground in supporting the F-22:
There is nothing to resolve regarding the F-22 Raptor. The Senate subcommittee followed the House’s lead, providing over $560 million for maintenance of the fifth-generation fighter jet.

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Updated at 2:38 p.m., Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Senate subcommittee led by Inouye OKs 20% increase in Afghan funding

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post

WASHINGTON – A key Senate subcommittee on Wednesday trimmed $900 million from the amount requested by the Obama administration to support Afghan security forces next year, but the $6.6 billion approved in the funding measure will still permit a 20 percent increase over this fiscal year to help train and equip the army and police in Afghanistan.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has indicated that improving the Afghan security forces is central to defeating the Taliban insurgency, providing security for the country’s population and permitting broader reconstruction to take place.

In announcing details of the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill, Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on defense, said Wednesday: “While we strongly concur with the administration that increased funding is needed to train and equip our Afghan army and police forces, it makes no sense to provide more funding than can be spent when other shortfalls exist.”

Members of the subcommittee said the administration had agreed that the $7.5 billion it originally requested for Afghan security forces could not be spent in the 2010 fiscal year. The committee decided instead to increase by $1.2 billion the amount to be spent on so-called “baby MRAPs,” all-terrain vehicles used to safeguard troops from improvised explosive devices.

In broad terms, the subcommittee’s bill, which provides $636.3 billion for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, is $3.9 billion less than the amount requested by President Obama. Of the amount approved, $128.2 billion is for “overseas contingency operations,” essentially meaning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under the Bush administration, funds for Iraq and Afghanistan were approved in supplemental appropriations bills, a process that critics said obscured the full cost of the fighting.

In a separate action Wednesday, the subcommittee joined the House in adding funds to the appropriations bill to purchase an additional 10 C-17 transport airplanes. The Obama administration has said it does not need the planes.

“We expect that in re-examining its airlift fleet the Defense Department will eventually conclude that purchasing additional C-17’s … is the right solution” for meeting the increasing need for airlift, Inouye said.

Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., who noted that 4,000 Boeing workers in Long Beach will now keep their jobs, hailed the subcommittee’s decision as “good news for our workers and our military service members.”

Inouye said the subcommittee had cut by $300 million from last year the value of earmarks pushed by members, reducing the number overall by “nearly 200 projects.”

He said, “I hope that that our colleagues can support this package with its streamlined approach to earmarking.”

Because Inouye is chairman of the full Senate Appropriation’s committee, his subcommittee’s decisions are expected to easily pass the full panel on Thursday and be sent to the Senate floor.

Source: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090909/BREAKING01/90909076/Senate+subcommittee+led+by+Inouye+OKs+20++increase+in+Afghan+funding+

Senate votes down funds for F-22 jets

Post Date July 21, 2009
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Category Military-industrial-academic complex

Senate Votes Down Funds for F-22 Jets

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 21, 2009; 12:53 PM

The Senate voted Tuesday to kill the nation’s premier fighter jet program, embracing by a 58-40 vote margin the argument of President Obama and his top military advisers that the F22 is no longer needed for the nation’s defense and a costly drag on the Pentagon’s budget in an era of small wars and growing counter-insurgency efforts.

The decision was a key policy victory for Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who has been campaigning against the plane since April as a centerpiece of his effort to “fundamentally reshape the priorities of America’s defense establishment and reform the way the Pentagon does business — in particular, the weapons we buy, and how we buy them,” as he put it in a Chicago speech last Thursday.

Gates had depicted the F22, which was conceived in the 1980’s, as a “silver bullet solution” to a high-technology aerial warfare threat that has not materialized. He said other warplanes will adequately defend the country for decades to come, and won support from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Air Force’s two senior leaders. But his view was strongly opposed by others in the Air Force and by military contractors and unions that have benefitted from the $65 billion program.

Although lawmakers debated over several days, as they have for many decades, whether the fighters are needed to counter a military threat from Russia or China, the nation’s current economic travails may have played a larger role than military strategy in the vote. Although the plane’s supporters worried that its cancellation would eliminate thousands of jobs at a time of economic hardship, its critics argued just as passionately that the plane deserved no additional funds at a time of pressing social needs.

The debate crossed party lines and was punctuated by a promise by Obama that he would veto any defense bill that included funds for more than four additional F22’s, which cost an average of $350 million a copy. The Senate Armed Services committee by a two vote margin had supported spending an additional $1.79 billion to buy at least 12 more planes than the administration sought, while the House of Representatives had supported spending $369 million for extra planes.

While the decision today formally leaves the two chambers at odds, lawmakers on both sides of the issue had predicted the Senate position will prevail when the defense bills are reconciled in a conference committee. If it does, the program would be halted at 187 planes, which is kess than half what the Air Force had once sought.
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The chief critics of the F22 were armed services committee chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and the top Republican, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) McCain, who has long attacked pork barrel spending for weapons that he says the military does not need, said the vote was a bellweather of congressional willingness to abandon “business as usual.”

The current weapons procurement system, he said in a floor speech Tuesday morning, “is out of control,” and went on to recall President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning of excessive influence in Washington by the military-industrial complex, suggesting a tweak to “military-industrial-congressional” complex.

The plane’s proponents were led by Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R.-Ga.) and included lawmakers from many of the more than 40 states where F22 components have been manufactured. Democrats such as Patty Murray (Wash.) and Chris Dodd (Conn.) argued passionately that killing the program would undermine the nation’s defense by idling highly trained engineers and mechanics.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/21/AR2009072100135.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR

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