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The House on Thursday bucked President Barack Obama’s veto threats and overwhelmingly approved a $636 billion Pentagon spending bill for fiscal 2010. The bill, passed on a 400-30 vote, does meet Obama’s demand to cap the F-22 fighter jet program, something he personally lobbied for. But the measure still contains funding on two programs that have drawn veto threats from the administration. In particular, the White House this week threatened to veto the bill over $560 million for an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as well as $485 million for new helicopters to fly the president on...

Federal Spending: With the money spent on honeybee insurance in the stimulus package, the Army could buy nine utility helicopters and employ 1,200 skilled workers. Have we forgotten that the nation's interstate highway system was a defense project?The repairing of the nation's roads, bridges and infrastructure is touted by supporters of the stimulus package as a way of creating jobs that America needs to revitalize its economy. The interstate highway system initiated by President Dwight Eisenhower is cited as the kind of job-creating infrastructure work we need to do. What isn't noted is that when Eisenhower announced the program, he...

Tucked into the voluminous congressional plan for U.S. military spending next year is a $160 million pot of money intended to help Mexico's police buy American-made police radios.It's a major purchase that one radio manufacturer got rolling, 12 members of Congress formally requested and a powerful defense appropriations chairman championed, according to records and congressional staff. But details of the plan to pump Pentagon funds into Mexico's crime-fighting efforts are cloaked in vaguely worded language in the House defense bill. The program is a one of many congressional requests in the bill, which also includes 1,080 projects worth $2.7 billion...

America, Israel and Japan are now at a crossroad. America may not be able to sell an export version of the best fighter in the world, the F-22, to Israel and Japan. The reason is the Administration's current insistence on holding fast to a DOD-budgeted production run of F-22s that will stop soon at 187. The harsh reality of stopping F-22 production will be two American allies who are in increasing mortal danger will not have access to the absolute best when they really need America's help. It has been argued that the F-35 is a great substitute for the...

Defense Spending: The TARP bailout may hit $24 trillion, but the Senate says the F-22 is too expensive to build and maintain. So why are the Japanese so desperate to buy this "unnecessary" Cold War weapon?By a vote of 58-40, the Senate on Tuesday voted to remove $1.75 billion set aside in a defense bill to build seven more F-22 Raptors, adding to the 187 stealth technology fighters already in the pipeline. After some hope the production lines would be kept open, the Senate succumbed to arguments by the administration and others that the fighter was too expensive, too hard...

The most senior retired military officer to back President Obama's run for the White House says the president is making a "real mistake" in terminating F-22 production. Retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, who was the Air Force chief of staff during the 1991 Operation Desert Storm and who credited air power with winning the war, was the first four-star officer to endorse the one-term senator in his presidential campaign. McPeak traveled with Obama to bolster the candidate's commander-in-chief credentials, much to the chagrin of the general's fighter pilot colleagues. But now McPeak is breaking with Obama on the president's most contentious...

Defense: By a narrow margin, a House subcommittee has voted to keep open the F-22 Raptor production line. The future of American air dominance and the fate of the world's most capable fighter hang in the balance.On May 30, with North Korea huffing and puffing about nuclear war, the first of 12 high-tech U.S. F-22 Raptor fighter jets landed at Kadena Air Base on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. It was just days after North Korea unnerved the region by detonating a nuclear device. There were reasons the F-22 was deployed to Japan. The stealthy, radar-evading fighter jet is...

Without congressional intervention, the Air Force's ability to conduct air superiority missions will be increasingly at risk over the next three decades. President Obama's fiscal year (FY) 2010 defense budget request would stop production of the F-22A Raptor at just 187 aircraft and permanently shut down this production line.In reality, the F-22A program would actually end production at 186 fighters and not 187, because the March 2009 crash of an F-22 at Edwards Air Force Base involved a test aircraft not part of the official program of record. President Obama's decision to cap F-22A production at 186 fighters would in...

Upping U.S. Defense by: Emily Kanyi, May 29, 2009 Recently, newsrooms were abuzz with news of North Korea’s underground detonation of a nuclear bomb. Two days later even before the news had died down, and despite an outcry from the international community, North Korea defiantly tested two more short-range missiles. At the time of testing the nuke, media reports indicated that the White House was caught unaware by North Korea’s actions. Since then, as reported by The Hill, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Retired Marine Corps General Jim Jones, has said that North Korea’s nukes “are not ‘an imminent...

Last week the broke that John Murtha's nephew created a company, Murtech that received $4,000,000 worth of Pentagon contracts without having to bid on them. At the time the junior Murtha (Robert C. Murtha Jr) said that his defense contracts had nothing to do with his Uncle, the King of Congressional pork: Murtha said he does not advertise being the nephew of John Murtha and considers it "unfortunate" that some will unfairly assume Murtech received its federal contracts because of his uncle's influence at the Pentagon. New information has been discovered that indicates that Robert Murtha may not have been...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview aired on Sunday that he is optimistic his recommendations for overhauling defense spending can survive an upcoming budget fight in Congress. Gates told CNN that he has been surprised by the limited scope of criticism aimed so far at his recommendations for the Pentagon budget for fiscal year 2010, which begins October 1, and had heard some "important voices raised in support." "I'm relatively optimistic, actually," he said in the interview, which was taped last week. "I think we've presented, as one news magazine referred to it, a...

Congressman John Murtha, the King of Congressional Pork acts as if he is invulnerable. A few months ago, the FBI raided the offices of the PMA group, founded by a Murtha aide, and one of the Pork King's favorite Lobbying firm. What they found out suggests that Murtha and his buddies at the PMA Group operated their own little Earmark Factory. A recent report, the FBI may be zeroing in on the relationship between Murtha and PMA. Despite the FBI putting the Heat on Murtha and his PMA relationship, the Porkmeister is is still accepting money from PMA clients and...

Washington, D.C. ­– U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) today released the following statement in response to Secretary Gates' announcement on a fundamental shift in Defense spending and priorities: “I strongly support Secretary Gates' decision to restructure a number of major defense programs. It has long been necessary to shift spending away from weapon systems plagued by scheduling and cost overruns to ones that strike the correct balance between the needs of our deployed forces and the requirements for meeting the emerging threats of tomorrow,” said Senator John McCain. “Today's announcement is a major step in the right direction. I believe...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Senate defense committee chairman says Pentagon budget will include large, painful cuts. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said Tuesday that major program cuts will not be pushed off until the 2011 budget, but will be included when Defense Secretary Robert Gates sends his spending plan to the president later this month.

One of the problems with liberals, as conservatives know, is that no matter how much money they are given to spend, it's never enough. The social and economic problems they lament are impossible to eradicate entirely, so more spending is always in order. After all, it is bound to do some good. Spending less? Never an option. But it turns out conservatives are not immune to that impulse. They just apply it to the programs they like instead of the ones liberals like. And their favorite of all is defense spending. The Wall Street Journal's editorial writers fear that any...

The Pentagon said Wednesday that top military officers and civilians had to sign a letter promising to keep details secret as they work on the military's budget. Defense Department press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters that Secretary Robert Gates made the unusual request out of concern for national security. He said the department didn't want any leaks to "unravel" the budget process.

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=53223 President Says Budget Signifies New Way Forward for Defense By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2009 – Americans are not quitters, and the country can overcome the difficulties facing it, President Barack Obama said tonight in his first speech before a joint session of Congress. In a speech mainly dedicated to the economic crisis facing the world, the president also honored the nation's men and women in uniform, vowing to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps, raise military pay and provide the medical care veterans...

Like pensions and insurance, defence is one of those subjects to which too many people only pay attention when things go wrong. You might think, in the light of the past decade, that this would have changed. But you would be sadly mistaken. Even today, even after Iraq, few mainstream MPs without an immediate personal or constituency interest in the subject turn up in the Commons for defence debates. Many politicians who are thoughtful about a range of domestic issues still pass by on the other side when the conversation gravitates to the military. In this they reflect the British...

Russian defense spending to grow 20% in 2008, to $40 bln 18:29 | 26/ 02/ 2008 MOSCOW, February 26 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Defense Ministry will spend around one trillion rubles ($40 bln) of federal budget funds in 2008, 20% more than in 2007, a ministry official said on Tuesday. "The Defense Ministry will spend a little less than one trillion rubles in 2008, which is about 20% more than last year," Deputy Defense Minister Lyubov Kudelina said. She also said that in 2008-10, military spending would account for 15.5-16% of aggregate federal budget expenditure. She said most of the...

It’s called the Dream Act, and it offers a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants’ children after they graduate from high school and complete two years of military service or college. Its Senate sponsors, including Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Richard Lugar of Indiana, have championed it as a way to open a future to talented children whose opportunities are closed because of their parents’ decision to immigrate here illegally. They also see it as giving a needed boost to the military by opening a new stream of high-quality recruits. The idea is modest and smart, but modest and...