Two months after the Senate first passed their version of the war supplemental, the House passed the final version of the bill yesterday, 308-114.  Now all that stands between the military and a delicious $37.1 billion is the stroke of President Obama’s pen, coming in the next few days.

We’ve reported on this bill twice already, tracking its progress through Congress.  

A quick recap:

The Senate version of the bill, passed May 27, contained $58.8 billion in spending, including $37.1 billion for the war, over $13 billion for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange, $5.1 billion for FEMA, and $2.9 billion for Haiti disaster relief, as well as a host of smaller expenditures.

The House then passed its version of the bill on July 1, which accepted the Senate version while adding $22.8 billion in spending fully offset by $23.5 billion in cuts and law modifications.  This included a $10 billion education jobs fund, $1 billion for youth summer jobs, $5 billion in Pell grants, $4.6 billion to settle two class-action lawsuits, and $701 million for border security.

The bill then got sent back to the Senate, which was unable to invoke cloture on the new amendments on July 22 and ended up passing…the exact same bill they passed back on May 27.  

Ultimately, the House decided to play along, passing the original Senate version of the bill yesterday.  Thus, despite the title, the bill contains no funding for summer jobs and quite a bit for the war.

The bill created quite a bit of controversy, becoming a flash point for pro- and anti-war members of Congress.  Indeed, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI), despite steering the bill through committee, voted “no.”  The bill’s passage was not helped by the release of secret war documents on Wikileaks just a few days before, but ended up clearing the House in a bipartisan vote.

Update 7/28/10: The House approved the war supplemental later on Tuesday by a vote of 308-114. Obey was among the nays.

As the House nears a vote on the war supplemental, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey says he will not vote for the bill.

“I would be willing to support additional war funding – provided that Congress would vote – up or down – explicitly on whether or not to continue this policy after a new National Intelligence Estimate is produced. But absent that discipline, I cannot look my constituents in the eye and say that this operation will hurt our enemies more than us.”

Since President Obama first requested $33 billion in supplemental fiscal 2010 funds for the Pentagon in February, Congress’ concerns about the war in Afghanistan have increased.  Not helping, of course, is the recent leak of over 90,000 internal military documents detailing the war… the night before the vote.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer stated that despite concerns about the war in Afghanistan, members should vote for the funding bill.

“We may want to reconsider [the mission of the U.S. forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan], but the fact is those troops are there now.”

As you know, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and the Heritage Foundation have been frequent guests on NoH.  See here and here for some of our recent collaborative work.  In the spirit of continued friendship, I thought I’d share a few thoughts on their latest contributions to the New START debate.

Sen. Inhofe

In today’s Roll Call, Sen. Inhofe argues that the 15 hearings held to date on New START in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee have been unbalanced because they have yet to include a witness who opposes the treaty.  Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that no sooner had the ink dried on Obama and Medvedev’s signature of the treaty than Sen. Inhofe declared his opposition to it (which belies his suggestion that he could make a more informed decision if only he could hear from witnesses who oppose the treaty.)  Let’s also set aside the fact that the Senator has only showed up for two of the thirteen public hearings on the treaty to date, including neither of the hearings with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, and STRATCOM Commander Kevin Chilton.

The Senator’s core argument – that the witness list has been unbalanced – is ludicrous.  Just look at the witnesses who have testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on New START…

Under the category of “Republican” and/or “assumed their position under the Bush administration” and/or “worked for a Republican Senator” and/or “is a lab director” there is: former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, Gates, Adm. Mullen, former Secretary of State James Baker, for Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, Gen. Chilton, Missile Defense Agency Director Patrick O’Reilly, former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, DTRA Director and former Lugar staffer Ken Myers III, Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Michael Anastasio, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Director George Miller, and Sandia National Laboratory Director Paul Hommert.  If you’ve lost count, that’s a total of 15 witnesses.

Under the category of “Democrat” there is: former Secretary of Defense William Perry, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance and Implementation Rose Gottemoeller, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Jim Miller, Secretary of Defense Representative to Post-START Negotiations Ted Warner, and Mort Halperin.  That’s a total of 6 witnesses.

If you eliminate current administration officials and the lab directors, the ratio is 7 Republicans to 2 Democrats.

Thus, if there’s an imbalance, it’s heavily in favor of Republicans and former Bush administration officials!  Clearly the overwhelming bipartisan support for New START doesn’t matter to Sen. Inhofe; indeed it seems to have really upset him.  Not even Joseph and Edelman, who Inhofe commends for raising concerns about the treaty, said that they oppose the treaty.  

In sum, the Senator should be forced to answer a simple question: Why does he believe that our senior military leadership, all of whom assumed their current positions under the Bush administration, and statesmen in his own party have no idea what they’re talking about?

Baker Spring

Apparently the State Department’s New START verification assessment caused a bit of a stir at Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on New START, specifically the statement in the unclassified summary of the assessment that “any Russian cheating under the treaty would have little effect, if any, on the assured second-strike capabilities of U.S. strategic forces.”  Sen. McCain interpreted this trivial statement of fact to mean that we’d cavalierly accept any Russian cheating on the treaty.  But forget Sen. McCain.  Baker Spring smells a conspiracy:

The State Department’s report…effectively concedes that the Administration really favors a “minimum deterrence” strategic nuclear force, where a large disparity in the numbers of strategic nuclear warheads in favor of Russia is determined to be insignificant.

Baker, you can’t be serious!?  There’s simply no way one could read the Nuclear Posture Review or anything else the administration has said and come away from it thinking that the U.S. intends to start unilaterally disarming or that it would stand idly by if Russia began producing hundreds of additional missiles like salami.

A General Suggestion to the Heritage Foundation

The degree to which Heritage will say just about anything to cast doubt on New START is pretty amazing, though perhaps not surprising.  For example, yesterday Peter Brookes stated: “So we will cut our strategic nuclear warhead levels to 1,550, but Russia will keep 2,100. How does that advance American security?”  Also yesterday, Baker Spring opined: “Russia plans to maintain in excess of 2,000 real warheads [under New START].”  

But today Kim Holmes alleges: “Experts predict Russia’s strategic forces will drop to 1,000 warheads, which is below the 1,550 level of accountable warheads in New START, with or without the treaty.”  It would be nice if Heritage could at least get its story straight, even if they continue to have a little trouble with the facts!

As the tension builds, with a few even speculating that neither the C-17 nor the F-35 extra engine will make it in to final fiscal 2011 defense appropriations, things have heated up at the Farnborough International Airshow, taking place from July 19-25 in the UK.

Dave Hess, president of Pratt & Whitney, the manufacturer of the current F-35 engine, acknowledged at the show that his company was actively lobbying lawmakers on the issue.  He insisted, though, that the rival team of General Electric and Rolls Royce are spending “orders of magnitude” more.

While he acknowledged that the issue is an “enormous priority” for both GE and Rolls, Jean Lydon-Rodgers, president of GE Aviation’s military business and former head of the GE-Rolls engine team, rejected Pratt’s criticism as “unfair”.

Boeing and EADS also took their show on the road, each touting the size of their orders.  Bids for the $35 billion KC-X tanker contract have closed and a decision is due in November.

As the Pentagon’s belt gets tighter and tighter, the fierce competition for contracts is reaching a fever pitch.  PACs associated with both Lockheed and Boeing are on track to make record-level campaign contributions this election cycle, with each already well over the $2 million mark.  Both have already maxed out contributions to several lawmakers, as well as to party committees.

According to The Hill:

Lockheed’s PAC has maxed out its contributions to Reps. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who is facing a tougher reelection fight than usual; Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), Armed Service’s ranking member; Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), a new member of the House Appropriations Committee; Bill Young (Fla.), the top Republican defense appropriator; and Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.), who is running for the Senate. Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) also received maximum contributions.

Boeing’s PAC made the maximum $10,000 in contributions to Reps. Todd Akin (R-Mo.); John Boehner (R-Ohio,) the House minority leader; James Clyburn (S.C.), the Democratic whip; and Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee. Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) received $10,000 for his Senate run, as did Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.).

Contributions continue to increase.  From EADS to General Dynamics to Northrop Grumman, as talk of trimming the fat gets louder, so does the fight over what will remain.