The House Appropriations Committee passed the 2008 defense spending bill, cutting nearly $3.6 billion from the Administration request. As promised, it does include enough money to continue development of an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. And, like their authorization counterparts, the House appropriators put money back in the DOD medical coffers to offset a proposed fee hike for military retirees on Tricare. In their words, “rejecting the President’s proposal to inflict $1.9 billion in Tricare fee and premium increases on our troops.” The spending bill, which should go before the full House next week, also would provide—as authorizers did earlier—a 3.5 percent pay raise for military personnel instead of the 3 percent requested by the President. And, it slices about half of the Administration request for funding for the Eastern European missile defense sites.
Happy Birthday US Air Force: 78 Today
Sept. 18, 2025
Seventy-eight years ago today, on Sept. 18, 1947, Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Vinson swore in Stuart Symington as the first ever Secretary of the Air Force, and the Air Force officially became the first new military service since the Revolutionary War.
