Chuck Hagel warns that the military may cut back on training to comply with budget caps. | Getty House defies W.H., OKs defense bill

Defying a White House veto threat, the House on Thursday overwhelmingly approved its version of the annual defense authorization bill after considering more than 160 amendments and beating back a Democrat-led effort to ease restrictions on transferring inmates at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States.

The vote was 325-98.


The $601 billion measure, which sets defense spending next fiscal year at levels agreed to under December’s bipartisan budget deal, rejects a number of proposals put forward by the Pentagon to rein in its own spending, from base closures to troop benefits cuts to the retirement of the Air Force’s A-10 Warthog attack jets.

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The bill also requires the Navy to begin planning the costly refueling of its nuclear-powered USS George Washington aircraft carrier after the Pentagon said it was considering retiring it early to save billions of dollars.

The legislation would also force the Pentagon to hold onto its U-2 spy plane and scrap plans to lay up 11 Navy cruisers.

The moves are the result of a back-and-forth between Congress and the Pentagon over how it should grapple with declining budgets in the sequestration era.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned lawmakers that if they did not allow the Pentagon to carry out its cost-cutting plans, the military would have to skimp on training and maintenance to comply with the budget caps.

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But retiring House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) made clear he had no intention of allowing the military to advance plans to retire big-ticket weapons programs. Instead, he maintained the Pentagon must hold onto its force structure, in hopes of getting more money for defense in future years.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where the Armed Services Committee is finishing it’s markup of the defense bill.

The measure has passed Congress each year for more than half a century, though last year it had to be approved in December through a fast-track process after it became snagged in a Senate dispute over amendments.

The White House last night issued a new statement threatening to veto the bill because of its Gitmo restrictions, which have long been a sticking point, and urged support for an amendment by Rep. Adam of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. Smith’s amendment would have put in place a plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison by the end of 2016. But it failed on Thursday, 177 to 247.

The House bill authorizes $521 billion in defense spending, along with $79.4 billion in funds for the war in Afghanistan.

The funding levels, which adhere to the budget caps, presented a challenge for the committee as it sought to add funds for programs left out of the Pentagon’s budget, such as five Boeing Growler aircraft.

The committee also used some creative accounting to keep weapons programs. Over the objections of McKeon, the panel voted for an amendment from Rep. Ron Barber (D-Ariz.) to include $635 million for the A-10 fleet in the war spending budget, which is not subject to the spending caps.

Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) rejected that offset to pay for the Warthog fleet, but said this week his panel had found a different, unspecified offset to provide funding to keep the A-10s flying.

Smith, who voted for the overall bill, criticized his colleagues for reversing so many of the Pentagon’s budget-cutting measures.

Two of Smith’s amendments, one of which would have enacted a new round of base closures and another that would have allowed the Navy to move forward with its plan to lay up 11 cruisers, were tossed out by the Rules Committee and never got a vote on the floor.

“During general debate yesterday, a couple people commented they liked the bill for a variety of different reasons and said it made some tough choices, and I asked a couple times to name one,” Smith said. “I don’t believe we did make a tough choice. When you look at the issues that we face in terms of the budget, we ducked every single one of them.”

After the vote, McKeon said he believed the bill “went very well” this year, since it avoided any major floor fights.

“We didn’t get hit with some major controversy — it was all this year about money and about people’s districts,” McKeon said.

An amendment from Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) to grant young undocumented immigrants legal status by joining the military could have become a major fight. But it was tossed out by the House Rules Committee after Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said it shouldn’t be on the defense policy bill.

McKeon, who’s not seeking reelection this fall, said that he was hopeful the Senate was going to be moving its bill soon, but he didn’t yet have any assurances from Levin.

“Everybody I’ve talked to, I talk about it,” McKeon said. “I did hear somebody said to me that they thought they were going to try to get to it before the August break. That would be fantastic.”