Whopping defense bill passes

waltky · Jun 15, 2013

Defense bill passes after some haggling...

Senators propose 1% pay raise, new sexual assault measures in defense bill
June 11, 2013 WASHINGTON Troops would get a 1 percent pay raise next year, Tricare users health care expenses would hold steady, and military prosecutions of sexual assault and other serious crimes would change dramatically under draft legislation proposed by senators on Tuesday.

The 1 percent troop pay raise, although in line with the Pentagons budget request earlier this year, sets up a possible confrontation with the House Armed Services Committee, which has proposed a 1.8 percent raise in its version of the NDAA. The full House of Representatives is expected to vote on the bill later this week. The hearing Tuesday the first time that the personnel subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee passed its section of the National Defense Authorization Act known as a mark in public. Before this year, the sessions were closed, and the publics first view of the process came only when the entire committee debated the complete NDAA bill.

Senators on the subcommittee were in agreement with their House counterparts in refusing to approve the Obama administrations request for increases in Tricare fees and copays for working-age retirees. That drew a response from subcommittee co-chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who said military health care fees must rise to offset cost increases for the Department of Defense that he called just unsustainable. And once the full committee takes up the NDAA bill, Graham said he would revisit sections of the mark championed by subcommittee chairwoman Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., that would revise the way the military prosecutes sexual assault.

In accord with a bill introduced by Gillibrand, the mark would remove prosecutions for sexual assault and other serious crimes from the chain of command where they occurred, placing them under a separate convening authority. It would also bar commanders from considering the character of someone accused of a crime when deciding how to handle the alleged offense, and require commanders to report all allegations of sexual assault to authorities for investigation. Among other measures to deal with sexual assault, the subcommittee mark would prevent commanders from changing findings in serious offenses, retain reports of sexual assault for 50 years and improve the training of workers in sexual assault response programs.

The subcommittee mark also reduces active-duty end strength by 40,000 next year, as requested in the administrations budget request. Also included in the draft legislation are plans to allow servicemembers to contribute to special needs trust funds for disabled children incapable of self-support, a requirement for the Pentagon to track and report to Congress on the number of suicides among military dependents, and $30 million to support civilian schools with large populations of children from military families.

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/sena...ual-assault-measures-in-defense-bill-1.225424
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House passes sweeping $638 billion defense bill
June 14, 2013 WASHINGTON The House overwhelmingly passed a sweeping, $638 billion defense bill on Friday that imposes new punishments on members of the armed services found guilty of rape or sexual assault as outrage over the crisis in the military has galvanized Congress.

Ignoring a White House veto threat, the Republican-controlled House voted 315-108 for the legislation, which would block President Barack Obama from closing the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and limit his efforts to reduce nuclear weapons. The House bill containing the provisions on sex-related crimes that the Obama administration supports as well as the detention policies that it vigorously opposes must be reconciled with a Senate version before heading to the president's desk. The Senate measure, expected to be considered this fall, costs $13 billion less than the House bill a budgetary difference that also will have to be resolved.

The defense policy bill authorizes money for aircraft, weapons, ships, personnel and the war in Afghanistan in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 while blocking the Pentagon from closing domestic bases. Shocking statistics that as many as 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted last year and high-profile incidences at the service academies and in the ranks pushed lawmakers to tackle the growing problem of sexual assault. A single case of a commander overturning a conviction a decision that even Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel couldn't change drove Congress to act swiftly.

Both the House and Senate were determined to shake up the military's culture in ways that would ensure victims that if they reported crimes, their allegations wouldn't be discounted or their careers jeopardized. "This is a self-inflicted wound that has no place in the military," Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who lost both legs and partial use of an arm in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Iraq, told her colleagues in the final moments of debate on Friday.

The House bill would require a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison for a member of the armed services convicted of rape or sexual assault in a military court. Officers, commissioned warrant officers, cadets and midshipmen convicted of rape, sexual assault, forcible sodomy or attempts to commit those offenses also would be dismissed. Enlisted personnel and noncommissioned warrant officers convicted of similar crimes would be dishonorably discharged. The bill also would strip military commanders of the power to overturn convictions in rape and sexual assault cases. Duckworth and several other Democratic women made a last-ditch effort to change the bill to allow a victim to choose whether the Office of Chief Prosecutor or the commander in the victim's chain of command decides whether the case would go to trial. They argued that the bill did not go far enough.

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Whopping defense bill passes

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Whopping defense bill passes

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