The Senate on Tuesday passed annual funding for the Pentagon, sending the legislation to the House and putting an on-time defense budget within reach.
The $674 billion appropriations legislation, approved on a 93-7 vote, gives a nearly $20 billion hike to the military’s current budget. It increases troop numbers and includes more F-35 joint strike fighters and Navy littoral combat ships than the Pentagon requested.
House lawmakers return to Capitol Hill next week and must vote on the defense bill, which is included in a minibus funding package, before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 to avoid the stopgap continuing resolutions that have plagued the Pentagon’s annual budget for a decade.
“Critically, after subjecting America’s all-volunteer armed forces to years of belt tightening, this legislation will build on our recent progress in rebuilding the readiness of our military and investing more in the men and women who wear the uniform,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the chamber floor.
The military’s troop levels would increase by 16,400 under the legislation, and those service members would get a 2.6 percent pay raise, which is the largest in nearly a decade, according to appropriators.
House negotiators including Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, the defense subcommittee chairwoman on House Appropriations, also pushed through the purchase of 93 F-35 fighters, which are made by Lockheed Martin. A production facility for the aircraft is in Granger’s district.
The Pentagon had requested 77 of the advanced fighters.
The Navy would get $24 billion to buy 13 new battle-force ships. The purchase includes three littoral combat ships despite Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer’s insistence that the service needs just one of the ships, which are made by Lockheed and Austal USA.
Two shipyards that build the LCS in Alabama and Wisconsin warned of layoffs if only one ship is purchased in 2019. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and other lawmakers from those states championed the larger purchase.
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