Senate and House both pass defense bills

Associated Press WriterWASHINGTON (AP) -- The House on Thursday passed a $355 billion defense spending bill that includes a pay raise for military personnel and some of the biggest funding increases for the military in decades.

Minutes later across the Capitol, the Senate approved a $393 billion bill that maps out defense spending policy for the fiscal year 2003 beginning Oct. 1 and seeks to lay out a delicate compromise on the budget for a missile defense system.

In completing the two defense bills before leaving for its July 4 recess, Congress responded to the urgings of President Bush that it put defense at the top of its legislative list. "They don't need to delay the defense bill in a time of war," he said in a speech earlier this week.

The Senate bill, passed 97-2, authorizes or approves military spending programs for the Pentagon and other agencies, such as the Energy Department, with military functions: the House passed its version last month. The House spending bill, passed 413-18, details specific spending for the fiscal year.

It was the first of 13 appropriations bills that Congress must pass every year. The Senate has yet to act on it.

The Senate bill, some $50 billion above last year's legislation, includes a $10 billion contingency fund requested by the administration that would be available for the war against terrorism.

It approves a 4.1 percent pay raise for all military personnel and a new incentive pay of up to $1,500 per month to reward military members who agree to serve in difficult-to-fill assignments.

The Democratic-controlled Senate cut more than $800 million from the president's $7.6 billion request for development of a national missile defense system. Seeking to remove a veto threat, the Senate on Wednesday agreed to language stating that -- in the event extra money becomes available to the Pentagon -- the Senate believes that money should go to fighting terrorism but would give the president the option to use it for missile defense.

Despite the compromise on the missile defense budget, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a House hearing Thursday that the Senate restrictions were still unacceptable. The cuts, he said, would "severely delay" efforts to build a prototype defense system for long-range missiles and cripple the Pentagon's efforts to develop defenses that target missiles in their boost phase, shortly after they are launched.

The administration last month officially withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans missile defense systems and immediately began work on a rudimentary system in Alaska.

Separately, the Senate approved amendments by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Ted Stevens, that would ban research and development of nuclear-armed interceptors for missile defense systems, and by Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., requiring the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency to file classified and unclassified reports of its testing.

The Senate also approved a proposal by Sens. Max Cleland, D-Ga., and John McCain, R-Ariz., that would allow the services to raise manpower by some 12,000, or about 1 percent. The provision did not specify how the services should pay for the $500 million cost of a larger force, but Cleland, who lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam, and McCain, a Vietnam POW, said U.S. forces were seriously overdeployed in the war against terrorism. "I don't want this war to end like the war I fought in," Cleland said.

The House bill approves the pay raise and contains $7.4 billion for continuing work on missile defense, $74 million less than Bush proposed.

The House bill also eliminates funding for the $11 billion Crusader artillery system that the administration has sought to kill because it is too heavy and immobile. It does provide $648 million for work on new artillery systems, directing some of that money to contractors in Oklahoma and Minnesota where the Crusader was being tested and would have been produced.

It includes $4.7 billion to buy 23 F-22s and continue developing the stealth fighter which is slated to replace aging F-15s. The Joint Strike Fighter, a high-tech aircraft that Lockheed Martin is developing with U.S. allies, gets $3.5 billion.

------The House bill is H.R. 5010.

The Senate bill is S. 2514.

On the Net: Congress, bill text: http://thomas.loc.gov/