The House National Security Appropriations Subcommittee completed work on a $248 billion fiscal 1998 spending bill Thursday that includes $331 million for a controversial plan to buy nine more B-2 bombers, LEGI-SLATE News Service reported.
The House already has gone on record as favoring nine more B-2s, having recently approved the purchase in its FY98 defense authorization bill. But none of the Senate defense budget bills includes money for more B-2s.
"That will be a real sticking point" in the House-Senate conference on the bill, House National Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman C.W. (Bill) Young, R-Fla., said after a closed-door subcommittee session.
The radar-evading B-2 fleet was capped at 21 planes last year, and the Air Force has not requested any more.
Young said that, for the most part, the FY98 appropriations measure follows the lead of House authorizers, except on the Navy's F/A-18E/F fighter jet program. The appropriations subpanel approved the administration's request for 20 copies of the fighter at a cost of $2.4 billion. The authorization bill cut that figure to $1.6 billion.
Besides the conflict over the B-2 funds, the overall price tag of the appropriations bill also looms as a conference issue. The measure approved Thursday by the Senate Appropriations Committee comes in at about $247 billion, $1 billion less than the House bill.
The Senate measure, approved by a 28-0 vote during a 25- minute markup session that Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, called "record time," closely follows the recommendation of the Defense Subcommittee.
Defense Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, praised the bill for keeping "a proper balance between defense needs and fiscal reality." The measure is about $3 billion more than the Clinton administration's request, but about $1 billion less than the House's version of the spending bill and $1.5 billion less than the Senate authorization bill.
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