defense budget

Here’s Sen. Carl Levin’s (D-Mich.) statement on today’s passage of his amendment to strip F-22 funding from the defense authorization:
Today’s vote is a significant victory for our men and women in uniform, for the taxpayers and for reforming the way we do business in Washington. The Senate faced a simple question today: If not now, [...]

Just-released remarks from the Rose Garden on the Senate’s decision to strip funding for the F-22 fighter jet:
I want to say a few words about a very important vote that just took place in Congress.
Long before I took this office, I argued that meeting our greatest challenges would require not only changing policies in Washington, [...]

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.)’s amendment to strip funding for the F-22 fighter jet passed five minutes ago on the Senate floor. Levin’s office recorded the vote as 58 in favor and 40 against. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has just won his first major legislative fight over defense reform. It’s a significant [...]

In this corner: President Obama, Defense Secretary Bob Gates, (reluctantly) the service secretary and chief of staff of  the Air Force, this very smart Air Force captain, Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), and the current threat environment the U.S. faces. In that corner: Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), a [...]

Nancy Youssef at McClatchy reports that Defense Secretary Bob Gates has ordered incoming Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his deputy, Gen. David Rodriguez, to spend 60 days reviewing war strategy. The task is nothing new for McChrystal, who just finished a different review of war strategy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff earlier this [...]

Will Air Force Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz criticize Defense Secretary Bob Gates’ decision to cap the F-22 fighter jet in public, as Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) suggested today?
Find out on May 21, when Schwartz and Air Force Secretary Michael Donley testify to the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to a fresh committee release.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the defense budget, here’s the showdown you’ve been waiting for: Defense Secretary Bob Gates, who cut er, “completed” the Air Force’s F-22 fighter jet order at 187 planes, versus Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), a staunch advocate for the F-22, which is partially manufactured in his state. Chambliss [...]

Another broadside launched against Defense Secretary Bob Gates’ budget is that it unduly cuts missile defense. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) brought that up to Gates today during a Senate Arms Services Committee hearing on the defense budget and walked into a buzzsaw. At great length, Gates patiently replied that the majority of the cuts come [...]

Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are before the Senate Armed Services Committee to defend their defense budget in the face of GOP criticism over its program cuts. (Comptroller Robert Hale is in there too.) Their opening statements are careful attempts at disarming that criticism. [...]

We’ll know for sure imminently, but McClatchy reports Secretary Bob Gates’ full defense budget may cut purchases of the Marines’s V-22 Osprey aircraft — a kind of super-helicopter that can operate at long ranges –  which the service absolutely adores. Here’s the Marine Commandant, Gen. James Conway, speaking at his most recent Pentagon briefing last [...]