Gates Backs Omnibus Spending Bill
Politico reports:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates threw his support Wednesday behind the Senate’s omnibus spending bill, saying it would be far better for the military than subjecting the Pentagon to a yearlong continuing resolution passed by the House last week.
The endorsement was striking both for the strength of Gates' wording and the fact that he entirely skipped over his ongoing dispute with the Senate Appropriations Committee over a second alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
While the lead F-35 engine is made by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp (UTC), the Senate omnibus defies the secretary by including $450 million to continue work on an alternative built by General Electric Co. and Rolls-Royce.
Yet for all the furor and veto threats this year, Gates’ four-paragraph statement says nothing on the matter. Defense spokesman, Geoff Morrell, insisted this silence signals no change, but when compared to the omnibus, the House CR would actually put Gates in a stronger position to kill the second engine program by starving its funding.
“Secretary Gates’ position on the extra engine is well-known and unchanged: The department does not need it and cannot afford it,” Morrell told POLITICO. “Opposition to the extra engine and support for the omnibus spending bill need not be mutually exclusive.”
Part of the equation is surely the extra Pentagon dollars in the omnibus.
As filed Wednesday, the giant Senate bill restores about $8 billion cut by the CR from President Barack Obama’s 2011 budget request — money that makes it easier for Gates to meet the Pentagon’s operations costs without undercutting procurement and R&D programs.
Hundreds of millions are included for additional helicopters in Afghanistan, for example, and at a time when the Senate is focused on the START arms control treaty with Russia, the omnibus restores smaller but sensitive sums to secure nuclear materials under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program.
“I strongly support Congress approving an omnibus appropriation bill, rather than requiring that the Department of Defense operate under a yearlong continuing resolution,” Gates said in his statement. “To do otherwise would leave the Department without the resources and flexibility needed to meet vital military requirements.”
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