National Security Legislative Wrap-up, June 25-29 2007

Congress is out of session this week for the 4th of July break. Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee completed action on two bills: the Fiscal Year 2008 Energy and Water Appropriations bill and the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill. It is not clear when these bills will be considered by the Senate. When the Senate returns from the break, its first piece of legislation is slated to be the Fiscal Year 2008 Defense Authorization bill, which will bring up a number of votes on the Iraq war.

KEY NATIONAL SECURITY BILLS IN 2007

- ENERGY AND WATER APPROPRIATIONS BILL:

On June 26, the Senate Energy and War Appropriations Subcommittee approved a $32.3 billion bill. The Subcommittee appropriated $66 million of the $88.8 million requested for a new generation of nuclear weapons (the Reliable Replacement Warhead program), cut all $24.9 million for a new plant to build plutonium pits (Consolidated Plutonium Program that focuses on the core of nuclear weapons), increased non-proliferation funding by $200 million and cut funding from $405 million to $242 million for the plutonium reprocessing program (Global Nuclear Energy Partnership) to extract nuclear weapons-usable material from nuclear waste.

On June 28, the full Senate Appropriations Committee approved the bill with no change from the Subcommittee level.

- STATE, FOREIGN OPERATIONS APPROPRIATIONS BILL:

On June 27, the Senate State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee approved a $34.2 billion bill. The bill includes $4.5 billion for foreign military aid and $2.9 billion for economic assistance, $4.2 billion for the HIV/AIDS initiative. The bill also appropriates $1.4 billion for U.N. peacekeeping, $1.4 billion for the Millennium Challenge Corporation and zero for Iraq assistance -- although the President could draw funding from a $1.7 billion pool of economic aid. The Committee also approved $28 million for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBO) International Monitoring System, $10 million more than requested and $18 million more than the House in order for the U.S. to pay its arrears to the CTBO.

- DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS BILL:
The House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee is scheduled to mark-up or write its Fiscal Year 2008 bill on July 12.

- DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION BILL:

The full Senate is scheduled to consider the bill when it returns to work on July 9.