House panel defies veto threat, OKs F-35 engine - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

House panel defies veto threat, OKs F-35 engine

A veto threat hanging over the 2011 defense budget is being taken to heart by the chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, but not by most of the other panel members.

By an 11-5 bipartisan vote, the subcommittee decided Tuesday to include $450 million to build an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that the Obama administration and Defense Department don’t want.

Both President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have warned Congress that the president will veto defense legislation that includes money for the alternate engine, and Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., the defense subcommittee chairman, believes them.

Dicks, a new panel chairman, doesn’t think the administration is bluffing, and is disappointed he could not talk the subcommittee out of approving the money. “I felt I did not want to get my first bill vetoed,” Dicks said. “I am convinced. Mr. Gates was very persuasive that they would veto the bill.”

The alternate F-35 engine isn’t the only potential problem with the bill. The $681.8 billion measure is $7 billion less than the administration requested, which could be another sticking point with the White House.

Dicks said the reductions are mostly pain-free, made by trimming budget accounts in which the Defense Department either had a history of not spending all of its funds in a single year or when there was reason to believe the Pentagon was asking for something it was not ready to buy.

He called the cuts “little bits and pieces that added up,” and stressed that there was “nothing [done] to health care or anything to hurt the troops in any way.”

The bill does, however, include only enough funding for the 1.4 percent pay raise requested by the Obama administration, slightly less than the 1.9 percent raise approved earlier by the full House as part of the separate 2011 defense authorization bill.

The Defense Department and White House had opposed the bigger pay raise, calling the $377 million difference an unnecessary expense considering that the services are not having recruiting or retention problems.