Senate OKs $368-Billion Defense Bill

The Senate approved a $368.6-billion defense spending bill Thursday after Republicans beat back a new Democratic push for an examination of how the White House handled intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs.

The bill is $3.1 billion below President Bush’s budget request for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 and represents a Defense Department budget increase of slightly more than 1%. That does not count a $62.4-billion emergency spending bill passed this year to cover the cost of war in Iraq. Congress is expected to make up the $3.1 billion in separate legislation.

The bill largely meets Bush’s budget request, and the 95-0 vote showed Democratic reluctance to challenge his defense priorities.

But Democrats used three days of debate to press unsuccessfully for investigations of the administration’s handling of prewar intelligence that go beyond the reviews underway by the House and Senate intelligence committees.

The Senate defeated 62 to 34 an amendment by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) to withhold $50 million in intelligence funding until Bush submits a report about how the White House handled the intelligence.

Durbin, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said closed-door testimony by CIA Director George J. Tenet on Wednesday made it clear that the White House pressured the CIA to allow discredited intelligence on Iraq’s nuclear program to be included in the State of the Union speech.

“The president has within his ranks on his staff some person who was willing to spin and hype and exaggerate and cut corners on the most important speech that the president delivers in any given year,” Durbin said.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Durbin’s “characterization is nonsense,” and a U.S. government official attending Wednesday’s meeting said it was another official, not Tenet, who discussed the exchanges with the White House.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) accused Democrats of “nitpicking.”

The defeat of Durbin’s amendment came a day after the Senate rejected a proposal by Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) for an independent investigation of the Iraq intelligence.

The defense bill does not include the costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush is likely to request that money in a separate bill.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, criticized the administration for not including “one thin dime in the budget” for Iraq and Afghanistan. He said the administration was trying to mislead Americans about the war’s cost.