The US Senate approved a $318 billion defense bill early today that boosts pay for US troops and provides the Bush administration the full funding it sought for a national missile defense program.
On a voice vote, the Senate approved a fiscal 2002 defense spending measure that was delayed for weeks by wrangling over efforts to add emergency spending for homeland defense and New York's recovery from the September 11 hijacked plane attacks.
The measure dramatically increases spending for the military as it wages the war on terrorism, providing $27 billion more than the fiscal 2001 measure but still $1.9 billion below President Bush's budget request.
With lawmakers rallying around Mr Bush and the Pentagon during the US military campaign in Afghanistan, the bill sparked few political battles. Most notably, Republicans and Democrats set aside their differences over a planned national missile defense program.
Accepting a compromise worked out by the Senate Armed Services committee after the September 11 attacks, the measure grants $7 billion for development of the missile defense plan and gives Bush the option of using an additional $1.3 billion for missile defense or switching it to homeland security.
It also includes an across-the-board 5 per cent pay raise, the centerpiece of a broad effort to increase the quality of life in the armed forces.
Health care and retirement benefits also get a boost, and selected pay grades and positions receive pay raises higher than 5 per cent. The measure also reduces out-of-pocket housing costs for military personnel as part of a program to eliminate such expenses completely by 2005.
"We believe these increases will significantly aid our ability to recruit, and perhaps more importantly retain much needed military personnel," said Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye, chairman of the Senate Appropriation Committee's defense panel.
Added to the measure was a separate $20 billion package of emergency spending in response to the attacks in New York and Washington, but Democrats dropped an effort to add another $15 billion earlier yesterday.
The defense bill provides $61 billion for new weapons procurement, including eight additional Army UH-60 helicopters, nine MV-22 aircraft, 48 F-18 fighters, 13 F-22 fighters and 15 C-17 airlift planes.
Included is a provision allowing the Air Force to lease up to 100 Boeing 767s to replace an aging fleet of KC-135 air tankers that has been used heavily in the air campaign in Afghanistan.
The provision was pushed hard by Boeing, which has announced up to 30,000 job cuts since the attacks in New York and Washington and recently lost a lucrative Pentagon contract for the Joint Strike Fighter to competitor Lockheed.
Arizona Senator John McCain blasted the proposal as "corporate welfare" for Boeing but did not directly challenge it on the floor.
"This is a bailout for Boeing aircraft - nothing more, nothing less," said Mr McCain, who said the Air Force had not included the programme on its spending wish list this year and purchasing the planes would be cheaper than leasing them.
In a now annual floor speech, Mr McCain also decried what he identified as $3.7 billion in unnecessary "pork barrel" spending in the defense measure.
"Even in the middle of a war, a war of monumental consequences and with no end in sight, the Appropriations Committee still is intent on using the Department of Defense as an agency for dispensing corporate welfare," he said.
Supporters of the tanker deal rushed to its defense, disputing Mr McCain's figures and saying the Air Force had pushed for the program after seeing its tanker fleet exhausted by the heavy use in Afghanistan.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, said Mr McCain's claim that the lease arrangement was more expensive was "absolute, sheer nonsense."
The House passed its version of the fiscal 2002 measure last month without the Boeing lease provision. The House bill includes $150 million to buy one 767 and test it as a replacement for the KC-135s.
The Senate added a measure sponsored by Republican Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina that would block US cooperation with a proposed International Criminal Court in the Netherlands that Helms has described as a "permanent kangaroo court."
The House, which has endorsed a similar measure, does not have the court provision in its defense bill. Differences in the House and Senate defense bills must be worked out in a conference.