House Approves $692bn Defense Bill

The House on Tuesday voted 356-70 to approve the $692 billion compromise National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) reached after negotiations between the House and Senate, The Hill reports.

The bill will authorize $626.4 billion for the base defense budget and $65.7 billion for a war fund known as the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account. The funds would go toward a 2.4 percent pay raise for troops, an increase of 20,000 active duty and reserve troops across the services, bulked up missile defense, increased operations in Afghanistan, and more ships, planes and other equipment. The bill is moving forward without an agreement in Congress to raise budget caps, which NDAA funding levels burst through, The Hill notes.

House Armed Services Committee leaders acknowledged a budget agreement is needed to back it up.

“As the world grew more dangerous, we cut our defense budget, and we added to burden borne by the men and women who serve us. We will not rebuild and fix our problems in one year or one bill even when it is matched by an appropriations bill, which this will need to be. But we can head in the right direction. That’s what this conference report does,” committee chairman Mac Thornberry said.

According to representative Adam Smith, ranking member of the committee, the bill “is a very good product.”

“The challenge that we have going forward is what the chairman mentioned at the end there. This bill… goes roughly $80 billion over the budget caps. The bill can’t do that on its own. Unless the budget caps are lifted and the appropriators pass the appropriations bill that doesn’t happen. And we haven’t made a lot of progress on that.” Smith underscored.

Moreover, the bill makes a number of reforms to the military’s space operations, though it does not go as far as the House’s original proposal for a Space Corps, The Hill adds. The bill would also further give Air Force Space Command sole authority for organizing, training and equipping all space forces within the Air Force.

“This year’s bill takes the first step to fixing the broken national security space enterprise within the Air Force. It’s the first step in a long path to getting space right for the betterment of our warfighters. Hopefully, over the coming year, the Senate will focus on the chronic problems facing national security space and work with us to establish a separate Space Corps.” said Representative Mike Rogers, one of the chief backers of the Space Corps proposal.

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