Senate OKs Defense spending bill

The Senate Wednesday night passed the fiscal 2008 Defense appropriations bill by voice vote after unanimously approving an amendment that would provide $794 million in emergency spending for the National Guard's mission on the southwest border.

The amendment, sponsored by Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee ranking member Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is aimed at providing funding to keep 6,000 National Guard troops along the border for fiscal 2008.

Neither the Defense Department nor the Homeland Security Department included money for so-called Operation Jump Start in their fiscal 2008 budget requests, despite long-standing administration plans to reduce by half the 6,000 Guard troops on the border this summer to keep a residual force there until the mission ends in July 2008.

But the funding approved Wednesday would more than double the $336 million the National Guard has said it needs for the reduced border mission.

The National Guard believes the primary responsibility for border security can be shifted to the Border Patrol, which has been increasing its personnel strength over the last year. But Sessions, echoing comments from other lawmakers who are opposed to reducing the Guard's presence along the border, argued that it is too soon to withdraw troops.

President Bush announced in May 2006 an initial deployment of 6,000 Guard troops mainly for border surveillance missions and construction. Troops would be withdrawn after the first year "as new Border Patrol agents and new technologies come online," Bush said.

In other action on the Defense bill Wednesday, the Senate unanimously approved several amendments, including bipartisan language that would boost funding for the sea-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense program by $75 million.

The amendment, sponsored by Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Sessions aligns the funding for sea-based missile defense with the money prescribed in the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill, which the Senate approved earlier this week.

The funding approved for Aegis would be offset by other research and development programs in the missile defense budget.

The Senate spent much of the afternoon debating an amendment offered by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., which would have appropriated $10 million for the missile defense space test bed -- an experimental phase intended to test the concept of firing missile interceptors or "kill vehicles" from space.

Democrats opposed the amendment, warning that the program could ultimately weaponize space. They also argued that funding had not been authorized or appropriated in the House-passed defense spending measure for the space test bed.

Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, moved to table the language, and Republicans promptly withdrew the amendment.