Pentagon Gets More Than It Asked Senate Approves Military Spending Bill With $11 Billion More Than Requested

The Senate passed a massive defense authorization bill Wednesday that would give the Pentagon $11.1 billion more than it requested, setting up an election-year confrontation with President Clinton, who has threatened to veto the legislation.

Defying the administration, senators voted 68-31 to approve a defense authorization bill that paves the way for $265.5 billion in military spending in fiscal 1997, blunting Clinton’s plans for a final whack at the Pentagon budget that would have trimmed it by $8.9 billion.

In line with Republican priorities, most of the extra money would go for modernizing weapons and equipment - about half of it through speeding up projects that the individual armed services had planned for later years and the rest by adding new programs.

The action is part of a broader GOP effort to embarrass the president by seeking to portray him as “soft” on defense, while at the same time cutting spending sharply in measures affecting foreign aid, transportation, energy and agriculture.

The bill now goes to a joint House-Senate conference committee, where senators will battle over a series of provisions added to the House bill but not the Senate’s. Those provisions include a ban on abortions in military hospitals and discharging service members who have the AIDS virus.

Senators continued working into the night Wednesday on a separate bill that actually would appropriate the money that the defense measure authorized for fiscal 1997, which begins Oct. 1. The Senate is expected to approve that measure sometime today.

Clinton vetoed a similar defense authorization measure last December that covered fiscal 1996 - which ends Sept. 30. That veto gave Republicans the opportunity they wanted to criticize him for “shortchanging” the defense budget. Lawmakers later passed a bill that Clinton signed.

The $11.1 billion increase voted by the Senate is massive by almost any standard. The House approved a similar bill providing for about $13 billion more than Clinton is seeking, but that will have to be trimmed back to meet new congressional budget ceilings.

The extra funding will buy the F/A18C/D jet fighters, an array of helicopters, a new oceanographic ship, WC-1303 weather aircraft, new maritime pre-positioning ships and multiple-launch rocket system launchers.

Clinton has argued that many of the items added by the Republicans are not needed, including an additional $300 million for developing a national missile defense system, $75 million for anti-satellite technology and $70 million for development of a space-based laser.

However, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff publicly have expressed apprehension that unless the armed services get more money for modernization, they may not be able to maintain adequate preparedness.