Free Republic

BREAKING: Senate vote on Planned Parenthood, health law funding, set for Thursday by Kathleen Gilbert Mon Apr 11, 2011 16:16 EST WASHINGTON, D.C., April 11, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Senate has scheduled a promised vote on whether to deprive the Planned Parenthood Federation of America of federal funding - a concession won by GOP budget negotiators this weekend, in exchange for their support for the federal budget bill. Americans United for Life (AUL) reported Monday that only days after cutting a budget deal that saved Planned Parenthood’s funding in the budget bill, Senate leaders have scheduled a vote on Thursday...

The dramatic upheaval in U.S. space exploration plans is having a ripple effect among NASA’s international and commercial partners, offering possibilities that were not there when the administration of then-President George W. Bush insisted on keeping the “critical path” from the surface of the Earth to the surface of the Moon inside the U.S. government. Beginning with President Barack Obama’s decision to extend U.S. funding for the International Space Station until at least 2020, NASA’s Fiscal 2011 budget request has given new life to old debates in Europe and elsewhere as the station partnership begins to understand what the greater...

With nearly $12.5 billion in the proposed U.S. Navy and Army rotorcraft budget for Fiscal 2011, it would seem the services are flush with funding. And yet there is an eerie theme common to the programs receiving dollars: None of them is new. The Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), released Feb. 1 in conjunction with the Fiscal 2011 budget request, puts availability of rotary-wing assets at the top of its list to ensure success in counterinsurgency, stability and counterterrorism operations. The UH-60M Black Hawk is the big winner for the Army, with $1.25 billion requested to sustain production of 74 aircraft....

This year’s report reflects the naval capabilities projected to meet the challenges the nation faces over the next three decades of the 21st century. The structure requirements articulated in this report are based upon the 313-ship force originally set forth in the FY 2005 Naval Force Structure Assessment that was reported to Congress and referred to by the Chief of Naval Operations in his FY 2009 budget testimony, as amended by decisions made by the Secretary of Defense in the FY 2010 President’s Budget as well as decisions made during the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). As such, the battle...

The big question for the Navy in advance of the QDR and the 2011 budget release was would DOD reconcile the growing gap between the Navy’s shipbuilding and funding plans? The answer is no. They didn’t even try. The QDR pretty much defers on the subject of tying future shipbuilding to strategy. There is some vague talk in the document about the need for the Navy and the Air Force to jointly develop an air-​​sea battle concept to ensure power projection, but it provides no further details. As for the Navy budget, the 2011 request increases funding for new ship...

The Defense Department agency responsible for U.S. missile defense systems has requested $8.4 billion for fiscal year 2011, an increase of about a half billion dollars. The request comes after an announcement last September that the United States would move away from a ground-based missile defense system to defend against Iranian and North Korean threats, to a sea-based platform. “The budget supports continuous emphasis on development, testing, fielding, sustainment,” David Altwegg, the executive director of the Missile Defense Agency, told Pentagon reporters yesterday. “We have shifted our emphasis from the ground-based defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles to the regional threat,...

President Obama's economic policies are promoting 'fiscal insanity' that is leading the nation down the path of insolvency, Sen. Judd Gregg (R)-NH told CNBC Monday. "We're going to get ourselves into deep, deep trouble here if we continue to pursue this course of fiscal insanity, in my opinion," said Gregg, a ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a live interview. "It's not just this year, which is the issue of stimulus," Gregg added. "It's the year after, it's the year after that and the year after, eight years out the president is projecting a trillion dollar defecit,...

$4 Billion Requested For New Strategic Bombers With the dust hardly settled on the federal government's FY2010 budget, a draft of the Obama administration's spending request for next year shows a request nearly for $11 billion in the next budget round for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It also seeks $4 billion over 4 years for development of a new long-range strategic bomber. Defense News reports that the budget, due to be sent to Congress by February 1st, will cut several programs as well, such as the C-17 and the F-136 alternate engine for the F-35. But the budget nearly...