Defense Measure Stalls Without Assurance Of Quick Action

Wed. Jul 16, 2008


The top Republican on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee said Tuesday that he believes the markup for the FY09 Defense spending bill has been placed on indefinite hold because House leaders could not guarantee floor time before the August recess.

The subcommittee had scheduled its markup of the defense appropriations measure for today, hoping it would make it to the floor in the next several weeks. But appropriators unexpectedly scrapped those plans late Monday.

The concern with marking up the bill without any scheduled floor time before the month-long recess was that it would give lobbyists weeks to scour the bill and find ways to tweak the measure.

"Any time [the bill] hangs out there any longer than it has to, all kinds of pressure builds," said House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member C.W. (Bill) Young, R-Fla.

A defense source closely tracking the bill likewise said that the defense panel pulled the plug on the markup because they "couldn't get an agreement out of leadership for floor time."

But Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha, D-Pa., said Tuesday that the Pentagon's decision to reopen competition on a lucrative contract for aerial refueling tankers was a major reason behind placing the markup on hold.

Murtha told reporters his subcommittee, which had been working overtime until recently on the war spending package for Iraq and Afghanistan, had not completed work on several areas of the defense bill. But he listed uncertainty over how to address the tanker at the top of that list.

Last week, Defense Secretary Gates announced the reopening of the competition for the tankers, three weeks after GAO sustained a protest filed by the losing bidder Boeing Co. over the Air Force's decision to award the $35 billion deal to Northrop Grumman and EADS, the parent company of Boeing's European rival Airbus.

A spokesman for Rep. Norman Dicks, D-Wash., a defense appropriations panel member whose district includes the plant where Boeing planned to build the tankers, said Dicks and Murtha have discussed possible language addressing the tanker program.

The goal, the spokesman said, will be to "do what we can to push this competition ahead" and guide the Defense Department in how it should proceed.

One issue Murtha said he is considering is the cost of the new tanker competition. "I am trying to convince the Defense Department that they just can't ask for money when they make a mistake," Murtha said.

"I'll come up with the money [for the new competition], but let's have some assurance that we are not going to have another protest when this one is done."

Pentagon acquisition chief John Young, who is overseeing the new competition, has said he must anticipate that the losing bidder will again protest the decision to GAO.

In addition to tanker issues, Murtha said the panel is trying to make room in the bill for bonuses for troops who have received stop-loss orders preventing them from leaving the military.

Murtha also said his panel has not yet decided on language regarding the military's detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which some want to close.

Young said they reached a compromise on the language, but would not provide specifics on the agreement. Rep. James Moran, D-Va., said the language would phase out the detention facility, with the intention of eventually shutting it down.

by By Megan Scully and Humberto Sanchez