The funding agreement comes after months of haggling by lawmakers over whether to tap the war-related Overseas Contingency Operations account to fund everyday defense priorities. | Getty Images House passes $619 billion compromise defense bill

The House handily passed a $619 billion defense policy bill Friday, approving a compromise to fund U.S. wars in Afghanistan and against the Islamic State, fill gaps in military readiness and halt reductions in military manpower.

The vote was 375 to 34, well above the two-thirds majority needed to override any presidential veto. The Senate is set to consider the National Defense Authorization Act next week and is expected to easily send it to President Barack Obama.


The legislation, hammered out over months by the members and staff of the House and Senate Armed Services Committee, adds $3.2 billion over the president's budget request in war funds to mitigate readiness shortfalls in the Pentagon's base budget.

It also incorporates the administration's $5.8 billion supplemental defense spending request for more troops in Afghanistan and stepped-up operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The funding agreement comes after months of haggling by lawmakers over whether to tap the war-related Overseas Contingency Operations account to fund everyday defense priorities. The House version of the bill tapped $18 billion in war funds to pay for base budget programs, while the Senate version did not.

The funding maneuver, which didn't include spending increases for domestic programs, drew a veto threat from the president.

The compromise bill funds a higher 2.1 percent troop pay raise above the 1.6 percent increase proposed by the administration.

The measure also would authorize more troops than requested by the administration, setting 476,000 troops for the Army, 16,000 more than requested. And it would authorize a 185,000-troop active-duty Marine Corps, 3,000 more than requested. Both proposals were popular among lawmakers.

But equally popular weapons programs faced cuts. Additional F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, F/A-18 Super Hornets and a Littoral Combat Ship above the administration's request were authorized in the House bill, but were left out of the final measure, instead maintaining the levels requested in the president's budget.

Also dropped from the final bill were controversial provisions on listing the greater sage grouse as an endangered species and workplace protections based on sexual orientation.

Additionally, the compromise scrapped another hot-button proposal requiring women to register for the draft. Instead, the Selective Service System would be studied.

House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) lamented that many of the additions his panel had made to weapons procurement were left out at the end. And despite the extra $3.2 billion, he said during the floor debate Friday that he hoped President-elect Donald Trump will submit a supplemental spending request for many of those items.

"That's not nearly enough," Thornberry said of the increase. "And my great hope is that the new incoming administration will submit to Congress a supplemental request that can really get about the job of rebuilding the military, which is so essential."

Still, Thornberry praised the legislation as a down payment on building up readiness and reversing the military drawdown.

"It stops the layoffs of military personnel, which have been going on and at least prevents it from getting any worse," he said. "It starts to stabilize the readiness problems that area making it more and more difficult for our troops to accomplish their mission and increasingly represents a danger to their lives."

Democrats, too, generally supported the final bill.

"We put together an excellent product," House Armed Services ranking Democrat Adam Smith of Washington state said on the House floor. "It prioritizes the men and women who serve in the military to try to make sure that we provide for them all the training they need and all the support they need, so that when we ask them to do something they are trained and ready to do it."

As in previous years, the bill would bar transferring detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the U.S., virtually guaranteeing the president's pledge to close the prison will go unfulfilled.

The compromise legislation would also overhaul of the Pentagon's organizational structure and the military commissary and health systems.

It also includes a controversial provision, similar to one pushed by Senate Armed Services John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the Senate-passed bill, that would split the responsibilities of the Defense Department's undersecretary of acquisition, technology and logistics — the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer — into an undersecretary for research and engineering and an undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment.

In a statement, McCain said the provision "firmly establishes innovation as a primary mission of the Department of Defense."

"I am tremendously proud of this NDAA," he said. "Thanks to these provisions and many more, the NDAA will enable our troops to rise to the challenges of a more dangerous world."

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