The House Armed Services Committee approved the Pentagon's $310 billion budget for fiscal year 2001 Wednesday, but only after a series of thorny debates ranging from the extent of U.S. involvement in Colombia to the dismantling of inter-continental ballistic missiles.
The 56-1 vote in favor of the bill (H.R. 4205) came at the end of the daylong markup during which 30 amendments were offered. Nevada Republican Rep. James Gibbons was the lone dissenter as he protested the use of funds for the nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain in his home state.
Only a day after the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to limit future funds for the Clinton Administration's $1.6 billion anti-drug assistance plan for Colombia, the House panel voted to place a cap of 500 on the number of U.S. personnel deployed to the embattled country.
The amendment, introduced by the ranking Democrat on the Military Installations and Facilities Subcommittee, Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., was approved on a voice vote. "I don't want to see us stumble into an armed conflict in Colombia, and I think that is entirely possible," Taylor said.
The Senate panel approved $934 million for the Colombia plan Tuesday, while the House approved funds for the country in its emergency supplemental bill (H.R. 3908) passed March 30.
The committee did not address the U.S. troop deployment in Kosovo, another political hot potato, although that matter will likely be raised when the bill reaches the House floor, said Rep. John R. Kasich, R-Ohio. Kasich said that if he brought it up at the committee stage the bill would then have to be considered by the House International Relations Committee, where it would be "buried."
Both chambers have grappled with the issue of U.S. involvement in the international peacekeeping force in the Balkan country. The House narrowly defeated a proposal to withdraw troops March 30, while the Senate Appropriations Committee voted Tuesday to require congressional approval for continued involvement in the peacekeeping effort beyond July 2001.
At Wednesday's meeting, the House panel defeated a measure, introduced by Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, which would have allowed the Pentagon to dismantle 50 Peacemaker inter-continental ballistic missiles. Allen's amendment, defeated 17-40, would have allowed the Pentagon to reduce its strategic forces to levels allowed under the 1993 Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (START) II, after its ratification in April by the Russian parliament.
About $700 million will be spent over the next six years in maintaining the missiles, Allen said.
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., the House's indefatigable champion of missile defense, led opposition to the amendment. He argued that the reduction wasn't proper since protocols relating to the strategic arms treaty still had to be submitted to the Senate, where they will face very strong opposition. Weldon also said that the weapons should not be reduced while the United States and Russia are in the middle of disarmament talks.
"It's too expensive a bargaining chip," Allen told reporters outside the hearing room after the vote.
The panel defeated two amendments allowing U.S. servicewomen stationed abroad greater abortion rights. The amendments would have allowed the servicewomen to fund their own abortions, or receive abortions in the case of incest or rape.
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