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2010 defense policy bill faces uphill battle

The compromise version of the $681 billion 2010 defense policy bill announced Wednesday by House and Senate negotiators may face an uphill battle becoming law.

The bill, containing an all-ranks 3.4 percent military raise, a 30,000 increase in the size of the Army and a repeal of Tricare fee increases that took effect last week, is HR 2647, the 2010 defense authorization act.

The report on the bill is being filed today, setting the stage for a vote on the compromise bill in the House of Representatives as early as Thursday.

Inclusion of hate crimes legislation in the bill presents problems getting the final measure through Congress.

If Congress clears the measure, there is a risk President Barack Obama might veto the legislation because negotiators included a provision, opposed by the administration, authorizing the purpose of an alternative engine for the Joint Strike Fighter.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate’s chief Republican negotiator on the bill, said many Republican participants in the negotiations are refusing to sign the final conference report because of the hate crimes legislation, although he signed the report because he believes the bill includes important provisions to support troops and their families and improvements in national security.

The Hate Crimes Prevention Act included in the bill prohibits crimes “based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person,” according to a Senate Armed Services Committee summary. It also provides federal support for the criminal investigation and prosecution by state and local law enforcement. To give the hate crimes provisions military relevance, it would prohibit attacks on U.S. service members based on the fact they are in the military.

Strong opposition among Senate Republicans could be enough to delay and possibly derail a final vote on the bill.

Authorization for an alternative engine for the Joint Strike Fighter is one of the issues that President Obama and administration officials warned could lead to a veto of the bill, but Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman and the Senate’s chief negotiator, said that might be avoided.

While it is clear the Obama administration sees an alternate engine as a waste of money, Levin said the veto warning from the administration included a specific warning that it did not want money for a second engine source to lead to fewer Joint Strike Fighters being built, something that could have happened under the version of the defense bill passed earlier this year by the House. The compromise doesn’t endanger fighter production, Levin said.

The veto risk is the result, Levin said, of insistence by House negotiators that the alternate engine be in the final bill. “It was a concession we had to make to get the bill passed,” Levin said.

The Defense Department and White House have not said whether they will accept the Joint Strike Fighter engine compromise.