The Senate cleared the conference report on the fiscal 2007 defense authorization bill early Sept. 30, Congress’ last significant action before adjourning for a pre-election recess.

The House adopted the conference report (HR 5122 — H Rept 109-709), 398-23, on Sept. 29. The Senate adopted it by voice vote.

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Several senators blocked the bill for hours over grievances that were not disclosed, aides said. The only obvious issue stalling the bill was a row over efforts by Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to identify earmarks in Pentagon spending.

The measure was adopted by the Senate but removed from a Pentagon appropriations conference report (HR 5631 — H Rept 109-676), which the Senate had cleared a short time earlier. Coburn had threatened to block the defense authorization bill until he obtained an agreement from Republican leaders in both chambers to take up a new version of his measure when Congress returns for a lame-duck session in mid-November.

“It’s all about transparency and the American people knowing where we’re spending their money,” Coburn said on the Senate floor in the early morning hours of Sept. 30.

The defense authorization bill would authorize $532.8 billion for national security programs in the Defense and Energy departments. It would set changes in the military’s spending on weapons, health care, and more.

Among the measure’s most significant provisions is one that would require the administration to request funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with its regular defense budget, starting this February, rather than asking for combat money in emergency supplemental spending requests.

Lawmakers have grown increasingly frustrated with the administration’s use of emergency measures to pay for the wars.

“It’s the beginning of the beginning of the end,” said New Jersey Democrat Robert E. Andrews, a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Whether and when supplementals will actually end, however, depends on how the White House implements the legislation and how Congress responds to President Bush’s next budget request.

“I don’t know how that’s going to be greeted downtown,” said Alaska Republican Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

War Costs

The Senate in June adopted, 98-0, the amendment to the defense authorization bill that would require war costs to appear in the regular budget. The White House suggested that day, though, that the provision would not cause a big change in how the administration budgets.

“We’ll continue to identify war costs as soon as they are known and work with Congress to make sure our troops in the field have the resources they need to fight the war on terror,” said Scott Milburn, press secretary for the Office of Management and Budget, on June 15. The office did not reply to a call requesting comment Sept. 29.

Even Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who wrote the amendment, did not think it would end supplementals entirely, but he did hope it would significantly reduce them.

But many congressional Republicans do not believe McCain’s measure will have a significant effect, largely because the costs of war are so unpredictable.

“It’s a great idea if you can do it,” said Terry Everett, R-Ala., a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee. “The problem is how concrete you can be.”

California Republican Jerry Lewis, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said, “I doubt it will change the process that much.”

Equipment and Personnel

Besides requiring the change in war budgeting, the defense bill authorizes spending for a number of initiatives that affect troops in battle.

Atop the list are programs that help shield soldiers and Marines from roadside bombs, which imperil them daily in Iraq. The bill would authorize $2.1 billion for a Pentagon organization devoted to this mission, including for devices that jam the electronic signals that set the bombs off from remote locations and for surveillance aircraft to patrol roads. It also would require that all vehicles traveling outside a base in Iraq or Afghanistan have such a jammer.

While the conferees were generous in authorizing gear for the ongoing wars, they also backed purchases of newly developed equipment. For example, the bill would authorize the Pentagon to contract for 60 F-22A Raptors, a new fighter aircraft, and to start building two destroyers of a new class, the DDG-1000, in two different shipyards. The measure would limit the Pentagon’s ability to retire several types of older aircraft, including B-52 bombers and U-2 spy planes.

For the troops and their families, the measure would provide a 2.2 percent raise, the level requested by the president. The number of soldiers and Marines in uniform would increase in the coming year. The active-duty Army would grow by 30,000, or 6 percent, to 512,400. The Marine Corps would increase its ranks by 5,000, or 3 percent, to 180,000.

The legislation would reject increases the administration had proposed in enrollment fees and pharmacy co-payments for participants in the military’s Tricare health network.

It would expand access to Tricare to almost all reservists without regard to when they were called to active duty. And it would protect military personnel from high-interest loans, including by capping the annual interest rates at 36 percent.