Congressmen on Sunday morning passed the 2008 defense appropriations bill by a vote of 395 to 13, just squeezing it in before heading off for their August recess. The measure provides funding for 20 F-22 Raptors and 12 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (six for USAF and six for the Marine Corps) and, as we noted earlier, restores health care funding to offset the Administration’s proposed Tricare fee hike for retirees. The Senate will take up the spending measure after the break.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer to have budget certification authority over the military services’ research and development accounts—a move the services say would add a burdensome and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.
