2005 defense bill beginning to take shape.

• Author: Steffes, Peter M.
• Position: Government Policy Notes

Congress is making progress on the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2005.

The Senate and the House Committees on Armed Services each completed differing versions of the legislation in mid-May and sent them on to their full bodies for consideration.

The House quickly approved its bill, H.R. 4200, by a vote of 391 to 34. The Senate, however, was unable to agree on its measure, S.2400, before the Memorial Day congressional recess and was scheduled to take up the bill again in mid-June, after National Defense went to press.

Once the Senate has passed its version, the House and Senate will meet in a conference committee to work out the differences in each bill. The chairmen of both committees have said they want to complete work on the legislation before the August District Work period, which is scheduled to begin on July 25th.

Both the Senate and the House committees authorized $422.2 billion for the Department of Defense and national security programs of the Department of Energy for fiscal year 2005. This is $20.9 billion above the amount authorized for 2004.

In addition, both committees authorized $25 billion in additional supplemental funding that will be needed early in the next fiscal year for un-programmed costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The defense authorization bill sets policy and funding levels. After Congress and the administration agree on authorizations, Congress enacts an appropriations bill, which assigns specific amounts of money to each program. The main defense authorization legislation includes military construction, but the appropriation for military construction is provided in a stand-alone appropriations bill.

Both the Senate and House bills include a 3.5 percent across the board pay raise for military personnel; additional funding (nearly $2 billion) for increased force-protection equipment, such as body armor and up-armor HMMVVs and other vehicles, and an increase of 30,000 Army personnel to be added over the next several years.

One of the major differences in the two bills concerns the next round of base realignment and...