House chairman seeks to speed talks on Defense bill

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., wants an accelerated schedule for conference talks on the fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill, possibly calling members back to Washington next week to hammer out some major policy differences in the rival House and Senate measures.

Hunter's goal is for the House to vote on the bill the week of Dec. 5, with the Senate a week later when it returns from recess. "The intent is to get the defense authorization bill done," a spokesman for the House Armed Services Committee said today. "Since we have a condensed timeframe to do the bill, we have to think outside the box."

Much of the rush to wrap up work by the end of the year is because the authorization bill authorizes military personnel accounts, including bonuses that would expire before Congress returns in January, the spokesman said.

Speeding up the process would mean more staff-driven conference negotiations, with less time than usual for discussions among conferees. But the spokesman said conferees still would deliberate issues that have generated "a little more heated discussion."

Those include an amendment offered by Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., that bans the abuse and torture of wartime prisoners and other detainees held by the U.S. government. The Senate overwhelmingly added the amendment to the fiscal 2006 Defense appropriations bill, and McCain later attached it to the authorization bill amid fears it would be erased from the appropriations conference report.

McCain also has said he believes the authorization bill might never become law, especially given the high priority congressional leaders have placed on passage of spending bills. The White House has threatened to veto either defense bill if it includes the detainee language.

Hunter has not directly opposed the McCain language, although he issued a press release earlier this month stating that detainee torture already is banned by U.S. law.

"Chairman Hunter has agreed to give the Senate provisions a fair hearing, and the Senate has agreed to do the same for the House provisions," the spokesman said.

A spokesman for the Senate committee would not comment on the specifics of the conference schedule but said a quicker timetable for conference discussions would not adversely affect consideration of the McCain amendment or other major issues. Members actually began talks last week with plans to resume after the current recess.

But a senior House Armed Services Democrat asserted Tuesday that an accelerated conference would not give members enough time to debate the McCain language, increasing its chances of being dropped from the authorization bill and perhaps leaving the issue to appropriators, who have not yet begun their conference on the spending bill.

"Because of the way the schedule is being done, the majority of the members of the House Armed Services Committee will have no opportunity to discuss or have input into the decision," said House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee ranking member Vic Snyder, D-Ark. "And I think that would be a mistake. The McCain amendment deserves attention, the country thinks it deserves attention and it ought to be done in the authorization bill."

Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, was one of only nine senators to vote against the McCain language, and his House counterpart, Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young, R-Fla., has said he has reservations about some, but not all, of the amendment's provisions.

Late last week, the moderate-to-conservative Blue Dog Coalition of House Democrats came out in favor of the amendment, which already had been endorsed by several retired top military leaders, including Colin Powell and John Shalikashvili, both former Army generals and chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.