Defense spending bill clears the Senate

The Senate voted unanimously Thursday to approve the fiscal 2007 Defense appropriations bill, wrapping up debate on a $469.7 billion measure that provided Democrats a strong election-year platform from which to hammer Republicans on the increasingly unpopular Iraq war. The vote was 98-0.

Indeed, the Pentagon's full menu of high-priced weapons systems, which typically dominate the discussion on the annual spending bill, took a back seat this week to often-heated debate over what Democrats billed as the White House's foreign policy missteps.

With just weeks to go before the election, Democrats sought to use this week's floor debate to show their commitment to winning the war against al-Qaida while accusing the Bush administration of diverting attention and resources to wage war in Iraq.

On Thursday afternoon, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., succeeded in passing his amendment to add $700 million to funding for the U.S. military's counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan.

And Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., worked with Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, to gain GOP support for an amendment that would require the Pentagon to send Congress a contingency plan to protect military and other personnel in Iraq should sectarian violence continue to escalate.

But even though Boxer and Stevens put partisanship aside to work out the language, she nonetheless used the brief debate on her amendment to chide the administration for its failure to develop a post-war plan in Iraq. "That's not a plan," Boxer said. "That's an admission of no plan."

The Senate also unanimously approved an amendment offered by Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., that would boost emergency wartime accounts by $65.4 million to pay for additional Predator unmanned aerial vehicles. Lawmakers also approved by voice vote an amendment by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., to add $275 million to accounts in the Interior and Agriculture departments to combat forest fires.

House and Senate appropriators will now negotiate differences in their versions of the Defense spending bills, in the hopes of completing conference negotiations before the Oct. 1 start of the new fiscal year.

Both chambers have stripped billions of dollars from Pentagon accounts to pay for increased domestic spending -- $4 billion in the House and $9 billion in the Senate. But the White House has threatened to veto any Defense bill that contains cuts greater than those proposed by the House, clearly complicating the task ahead for conferees.

Meanwhile, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees moved ahead with efforts to resolve their competing fiscal 2007 defense authorization bills, as the four Republican and Democratic committee leaders met behind closed doors.

The House formally appointed conferees for the authorization bill Thursday, signaling that conference discussions, which have been under way informally since the Senate passed its bill in June, are winding down.

Indeed, congressional aides said conferees will hold an official meeting early next week, and possibly file the conference report later in the week. Aides said most of the issues have been resolved during informal talks, though some differences remain, including lingering disagreements between the two chambers over the cost of TRICARE prescription co-payments.