House passes revised defense policy bill

“It is unfortunate that Congress was forced to make further cuts to the National Defense Authorization Act because the President chose to play politics with our military funding”, said Congressman Austin Scott.

“But”, he added, “You can’t get $5 billion by additional fuel savings, and things like that, so there will be programs that are cut, and that’s what we’re trying to finalize today, with the appropriates and the Senate”.

The House vote to pass the bill, 270-156, would not have been enough to override the veto, though Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said repeatedly in recent weeks that he thinks the House was in the “ballpark” of having enough votes. Many Democrats voted against the previous version, and President Obama vetoed it because it inflated Pentagon funding via the overseas contingency operations (OCO) wartime account to skirt budget caps but refused to include an equal increase domestic spending.

Congress passed the defense bill last month and sent it to the president to sign, despite a veto threat over its use of a war fund to skirt budget caps for defense spending.

The new bill provides nearly $607 billion including about $580 billion for total DoD, $18.6 billion for the Department of Energy (DoE) nuclear weapons program and $7.6 billion to meet the statutory requirements for DoD Concurrent Receipt payments.

The US House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to approve the 2016 defense policy bill that complies with the terms of the overarching budget deal between the president and congressional leadership, teeing up a vote in the Senate next week. “We can’t open it back up”.

The vote was 370-58 for the measure, which authorizes more than $600 billion in defense spending. The fixes are hoped to bring White House approval.

“Passed by both the House and the Senate, the conference report said the defence relationship between the United States and India is strengthened by common commitment of both countries to liberal democracy should continue to expand”.

“It’s going to cause [the Pentagon] to do so a few reprioritization and kick off a wave of planning, but it’s good to have solid numbers down”, said Brubaker, now a vice president at systems engineering firm IT Cadre.