The House of Representatives made clear for the second time in six weeks that it will not allow the Air Force to retire its A-10 fleet, even though the Pentagon and two defense committees’ leadership supported the cost-saving measure.
The House Appropriations defense subcommittee debated the A-10 issue during the full committee markup earlier this month, but subcommittee chairman Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) and ranking member Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.) urged members to allow the Air Force to retire the aging planes to free up money for more modern platforms.
But during the full House floor debate on Wednesday evening, Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) proposed an amendment to prohibit money from being used to divest, retire, transfer or place in storage any of the A-10s. Her amendment ultimately passed in an overwhelming 300-114 vote on Thursday night.
“I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the troops on the ground, any one of which will tell you the champion, workhorse aircraft in theater in both Iraq and Afghanistan has been the A-10,” Miller said on the House floor when she proposed her amendment. “The Air Force wants to save money, but they don’t have an adequate follow-on at this time, and with what’s happening in Iraq and the Middle East, eliminating the A-10 is the absolute wrong move.”
The outcome was reminiscent of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, which ultimately banned the retirement of the A-10s as well. House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) had proposed putting the planes in storage and keeping them at a lower readiness status – a compromise that would allow savings in personnel and operations and maintenance accounts, but would keep the planes around in case of an emergency. But during the full committee markup, rank and file members went against the committee leadership and voted 41-20 to save the A-10s.
As the bill was getting through appropriations committee earlier this month, Frelinghuysen argued that it was necessary to allow the Air Force to retire the aircraft.
“I think everybody has a huge admiration for the service of the A-10 for the last 30 or 40 years – we had a member here on the committee on our side who actually flew the plane,” Frelinghuysen told Defense Daily after the June 10 markup. “And we know it’s been part of our defense posture for a long time. People are reluctant to give it up.”
But, he added, “we are the committee that pays the bills, and we do need a new generation of aircraft. The Air Force recommended it, and we followed the Air Force’s recommendation – there have been quite a lot of recommendations and we didn’t follow all of them, but this one we did.”
The A-10 amendment was part of a defense appropriations bill that passed 340-73 on Friday. It allows for $491 billion in base budget spending but does not include an Overseas Contingency Operations account, since the administration has not yet sent its request to Congress.
On Friday morning, as the full House continued to amend the defense appropriations bill, House Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) took to the floor to warn against wasteful spending.
“We need as a Congress, as a country, as a people, to have the courage to come to grips with rationally passing a defense appropriations bill consistent with the advice of our military leadership and consistent with our willingness to pay the price for what we buy,” he said, noting that neither the defense authorization bill or spending bill did that. “We cannot and will not be able to continue to maintain the security of this country if we continue to pass bills with the pretense that we could pay a lot of attention to acquisition and not nearly as much attention to man-force and training and equipping unless we want to jettison this sequester. We have to stop pretending that national security or education or infrastructure or health care can somehow be magically created and maintained without having a fiscally sustainable overall policy. Or that we can pretend on a basis both in this appropriations bill and in the authorization bill that we can simply fund that which the Department of Defense says we don’t need, is no longer relevant.”
Also during the floor debate, the House agreed to ban the retirement of the KC-10 aircraft fleet in FY ‘15, which the Air Force said it would need to retire beginning in FY ’16 if sequestration kicks back in.
In a complex series of votes, the House agreed on a narrowly worded ban on funding to send combat troops to Iraq, though they did not agree for broader bans related to Iraq and the authorization for use of military force.
The House agreed to an amendment proposed by HASC readiness subcommittee chairman Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) to ban funding to plan for or begin a new round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) in FY ’15. Lawmakers banned spending money on biofuel refineries, putting Navy Patrol Boats in storage, awarding contracts to companies based in the Bahamas or Cayman Islands, among others.
“Beyond sustaining our men and women in uniform and their families, our goal throughout this bill is to support our warfighters now and in the future, wherever and whenever the next crisis arises,” Frelinghuysen said in a statement after the bill passed. “At the same time, we clearly recognize the nation’s debt crisis and found areas and programs where reductions were possible without adversely impacting our Armed Forces. It is important that we make every dollar count without harming readiness or increasing the risks incurred by our troops.”