WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- The House and Senate defense committees completed work on their conference report for defense spending in 2006, with the appropriators tacking on a controversial rider to allow oil drilling in the Arctic.
The House of Representatives approved the drilling when it accepted the conference appropriations bill and report in a 308-106 vote early Monday. The Senate is expected to take up the $453.5 billion Pentagon spending bill Monday as well.
The Bush administration has asked for authority to open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- referred to by the committees as the Artic Coastal Plain -- for oil exploration, a centerpiece of its national energy plan. It would not yield oil for a decade, and would reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil by about 2 percent a year.
A number of senators have promised "to do whatever it takes" to defeat passage of the arctic drilling measure, according to Cindy Shogun, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League. That could include a filibuster of the defense spending bill, she said.
This is at least the third attempt made this year by Republican leaders to attach drilling to an unrelated bill. Republican leaders attempted to ride it on the back of both the budget resolution and the budget reconciliation bills.
Those bills were targeted for the drilling rider because filibusters are not permitted on budget bills. Had they been successfully attached, it would only have taken a 50 percent-plus-one vote to pass. However, moderates in the party rebuffed them and the provisions were stripped.
A standard spending bill like the 2006 defense appropriations has no such filibuster protection. A single senator can filibuster the bill, holding it up indefinitely, unless Senate Republicans can muster 60 votes to override the delaying tactic.
The gamble taken by the Republicans is that the Democrats either will not want to delay a spending bill during a war and allow it to pass, or will filibuster and suffer political damage in the 2006 election.
Congress has not yet passed a bill to finance military operations for fiscal year 2006, which started Oct. 1. The Defense Department has been working off a "continuing resolution" that allows continued funding of federal agencies at the previous year's levels.
The House has also accepted the conference version of the FY-2006 defense authorization bill. The Senate had not yet scheduled a vote on the $441.5 billion bill, according to the Senate Armed Services Committee Monday.
The appropriators agreed to $453.5 billion, about $4 billion less than what the Bush administration requested but considerably higher than what the Senate and House had originally budgeted.
Both the appropriations and authorization totals include an additional $50 billion as a "bridge supplemental" to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan until the Pentagon submits its 2006 supplemental request next year, probably in early February.
Although it has been fighting two wars since 2001 and 2003, the Pentagon does not fund them from its annual budget. Instead, the money is requested in a separate "emergency" account so its annual budget is not tapped for the cash. The maneuver also prevents war costs from being figured into budget caps imposed by Congress. The money does, however, get counted toward the actual deficit.
At the same time, the Pentagon declines to request the money when it is needed, choosing to wait until the annual budget cycle begins on Capitol Hill halfway through the fiscal year when it says it has a better idea what the actual war costs are. Therefore, Congress for the last three years has been forced to appropriate "bridge" funding for the war. The total now tops $220 billion.
The conference bill is heavy on funding needs that have arisen from the Iraq war. The defense authorization conference bill includes $1 billion for improvised explosive device countermeasures, including the Warlock jammer, and $610 million for new armored Humvees and upgrades. The bill also includes $229 million for Marine Corps night-vision equipment and $94 million for Army night vision equipment.
It also contains a provision releasing injured service members from having to pay for their meals while in military hospitals or outpatient treatment if injured on active duty. It funds transportation costs for family to visit injured service members, and it allows widowed spouses and families to remain in military housing for up to a year, an increase from the previous limit of six months. It earmarked approximately $100 million in combat medicine and blast injury prevention, mitigation and treatment research.
The bills do not stint on big-ticket weapons. The Army got $3.4 billion for Future Combat System development but will be forced to follow standard procurement procedures as the costs continue to rise. The service received nearly $918 million for 248 Stryker combat vehicles. The Air Force got $3.7 billion for 24 F-22 fighters and approval for 42 more C-17 cargo planes, including $3.3 billion to buy 15 in 2006.
The Navy was directed to maintain a 12-aircraft carrier fleet, shelving for a year any plans to retire the USS John F. Kennedy, and was directed to begin design and development of a new lower-cost attack submarine to replace the Virginia class, each of which costs around $2.5 billion.
The bills funded missile defense at the administration request of $7.8 billion but sliced into space programs like the Space Radar system and the Transformational Satellite Program, reducing them both by roughly half.
