Congress Won’t Consider Defense Spending as Separate Issue, Durbin Says
Richard Durbin, the U.S. Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, said the Defense Department spending bill for 2011 won’t be passed separately from a larger package funding the government.
Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who serves as assistant majority leader, said that including the defense spending bill is critical to passage of the overall spending package funding the government through Sept. 30, when fiscal year 2011 ends.
The U.S. government, including the Pentagon, has been funded through a series of stopgap bills, called continuing resolutions, for five months while Congress debates long-term budget-deficit reduction.
It’s time to bring “this ugly chapter” of stopgap bills to an end, Durbin said. The defense appropriations bill needs to be part “of the conversation.”
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called on Congress to finish the 2011 defense spending bill while broader budget policies are debated.
Under budget rules, the Pentagon can’t start new programs under a continuing resolution, which extends spending levels from the previous year. The Pentagon would have to scrap $2.8 billion in contracts that would have started in 2011, according to a Bloomberg analysis. It may also have to fund some areas where the military says more money isn’t needed, such as for more mine resistant ambush protected vehicles, or MRAPs.
Both the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-led Senate have proposed spending packages for the rest of 2011 including the defense appropriations bill. The two chambers haven’t reached a compromise on those proposals.
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Congress by the end of this week is expected to send President Barack Obama another continuing resolution expiring April 8. That measure is expected to give the House and Senate more time to negotiate.
Two Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain of Arizona and Susan Collins of Maine, said they will try to carve the 2011 defense appropriations bill out of the rest of the spending package and offer it as an amendment to other bills which the Senate will take up.
Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who leads the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he would support a separate vote on a defense-spending bill for 2011.
“It is fine to have a separate vote on it,” Levin said in a brief interview today. “I do not like this whole process.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Roxana Tiron in Washington at rtiron@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net
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