The Warthog may live to fly another day—or another year, for that matter. The A-10 Thunderbolt II, the venerable Cold War era attack plane built by the now-defunct Fairchild Aerospace Corporation, has fans in Congress pushing for its continued funding despite the threat of a presidential veto of the entire Department of Defense budget.

As part of its budget plans for 2015, the Air Force had planned to retire its entire fleet of A-10 attack planes. But the Senate Armed Services Committee appears poised to throw a monkey wrench into that strategy, which was aimed at freeing money to boost spending on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.

On May 20, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, told reporters that he and a group of other Armed Services committee members have found a way to move hundreds of millions of dollars from other parts of the Air Force’s budget to keep A-10s flying. Levin said that the budgetary moves stayed within the total budget presented by the Department of Defense and did not pull from the Pentagon’s overseas contingency operations funding.

The A-10 is the product of an inter-service rivalry over the close air support mission in the 1970s. Designed to take on Soviet armor and ground targets, the A-10 was practically designed around its main weapon—a seven-barrel 30-millimeter Gatling-gun cannon. The aircraft became a favorite of soldiers on the ground during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because of its firepower. But because of its shrinking budget, the Air Force sought to cut the plane in favor of more general-purpose aircraft—in other words, in favor of the F-35—because maintaining multiple single-mission aircraft would be more expensive in the long term.

The senators’ move is similar to one taken by the House Armed Services Committee, which included language in its version of the National Defense Authorization Act that would keep the A-10 fleet active—the main difference being that the House version taps into the overseas contingency funding. But both versions of the plan run contrary to a White House position statement on the budget, and President Barack Obama could be put in the awkward position of vetoing the entire DOD budget.

In a “Statement of Administration Policy” issued by the Office of Management and Budget on May 19, administration officials wrote, “Divesting the A-10 will save over $4.2 billion through FY 2019. The joint force will retain several multi-mission aircraft capable of performing the close air support mission. The Administration also objects to the Committee authorizing Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding for the continued operation of the A-10 fleet. Longstanding criteria for OCO eligibility clearly exclude such uses.”

The A-10 funding is just one of a number of issues the White House has with the budget being moved forward to the House—the budget also pushes to keep a number of ships the Navy planned to retire active and restricts the military’s use and development of alternative fuels.