Congress Bucks Obama On Defense Spending And Receives Veto Threat

On top of the House adding money to the 2010 Defense Budget for more F-22 fighters, the Senate has also done the same. To add fuel to the fire the Senate kept alive the second engine for the F-35.

The President and Secretary of Defense Gates’ had requested ending these programs in their proposed budget. The addition of this money actually brought a threat of a veto from Obama. Of course the whole bill needs to go through the full House and Senate and conference so there is still a good chance this money won’t end up in the final bill. Honestly, though, since one committee in the Senate and the full House now has voted to keep money in for more F-22’s in the Authorization Bill the end result probably will be some money for more then the 187 aircraft asked for by the Administration.

Obama can bluster a bit right now as the bill does not need to be passed for another three months, but in the end it will be hard to veto this whole bill. The total budget will be near what he requested and certainly the Air Force will welcome the F-22 aircraft when they are delivered. The spending bills almost always end up as some sort of compromise in this way between the legislative and executive branches.

The interesting thing was that the Democrats did not allow any funding allowed back in to the budget for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). This organization saw a twenty odd percent cut by Obama and Gates and one would assume there would be an attempt to put some of that money back into the budget. So in this case the Democrats in Congress and Obama are on the same page. There is a chance the Senate may return some of this funding, but that will be seen.