Appropriations Committee Approves 2010 Defense Spending Bill

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted unanimously today “for a $636 billion spending measure funding next year’s Pentagon budget,” the AP reports.

This includes “President Barack Obama’s $128 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the budget year beginning in October.”

The war funding would implement Obama’s order earlier this year to add 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, which would bring the total number of U.S. forces there to 68,000 by the end of 2009.

Other provisions, per the article:

• “The panel also generally followed Obama’s recommendations to kill or cut several weapons systems, including the F-22 air-to-air combat fighter and the VH-71 replacement helicopter for an aging presidential transport fleet.”
• “But in twin victories for the Boeing Co., the Senate measure includes $2.5 billion to fund 10 C-17 cargo planes assembled in Long Beach, Calif., which were not requested, and $512 million for nine more F-18 Navy fighters than Obama requested. They would be assembled in St. Louis, Mo.”
• “The bill would cut $900 million from Obama’s request for Afghan security forces, though the $6.6 billion provided still represents a 17 percent increase over current spending. Inouye says the Pentagon acknowledges the full budget request wouldn’t be spent in the coming year and instead devoted the $900 million to bomb- and mine-resistant vehicles.”
• “The bill also strongly rejects Obama’s $100 million request for the Pentagon to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba. It also contains stiff language that blocks any transfer, release or incarceration in the United States of any detainees held at the prison in Cuba. That’s stronger than current restrictions, which allow transfer into the United States to stand trial.”
• The measure would “kill a program to develop an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Air Force’s major new weapons system.”
• Also “contains $20 million for the development of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate on the campus of the University of Massachusetts-Boston; the funding was inserted by Inouye at the request of John Kerry, D-Mass.”