DoD's Budget Boost

EXECUTIVE MEMO

DoD's Budget Boost

t looks like the Pentagon will get another spending boost next year, thanks to a Defense-friendly Congress, which plans to add more than $12 billion to the Administration's $254.3 billion budget request for Defense programs. Most of the extra cash will be earmarked for weapons and research and development accounts.

The Defense authorization bill passed by the House in May would add $12.3 billion to the budget request; the Senate version, which was expected to pass in early June, would add $13 billion.

To thwart charges of adding pork to the Defense budget, House leaders have gone on the offensive: Reps. Floyd Spence, chairman of the House National Security Committee and C.W. Bill Young, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, issued a joint statement defending the additional funding before the House began deliberations on Defense spending. And for those who missed the House budget hearings, the two provided a seven-page compendium of quotes from the service chiefs and Defense leaders detailing the spending shortfalls and thanking Congress for last year's boost-$7 billion.

"There is no question that President Clinton's Defense budgets have been seriously deficient, especially when measured against real military requirements expressed by the military service chiefs," the statement said. "Last year we took the same approach to the Defense budget and all we heard was 'the Pentagon didn't ask for it' and that our quality of life and modernization initiatives were nothing but 'pork-barrel politics.'"