Senate Acts on Missile Defense -- Sort Of
6/26/02
Missile defense: In the blink of an eye, the Senate by unanimous consent adopted both the Warner amendment and the Levin second degree amendment. There was no recorded vote on either amendment.
The Warner amendment would restore the entire $814.3 million that the Senate Armed Services Committee cut from missile defense, with the President given the option of spending the $814.3 million on either missile defense programs or on combating terrorism. Warner offered no program cuts to offset the additional money in the Defense Authorization bill; instead, Warner used a highly questionable “revision of assumptions regarding inflation … as a result of the mid-session review of the budget by the Office of Management and Budget [from text of amendment].”
The Levin second degree amendment states it is the Senate position that if there is additional money available due to revised inflation estimates, combating terrorism is the top priority over missile defense.
With the adoption of the two amendments — if it survives in the House-Senate conference on the Defense Authorization bill and if the funds are appropriated in separate bills — the President would still have the option of determining how to allocate any additional funds between combating terrorism and missile defense.