President signs defense budget

October 26, 2008 by Matthew Potter · Comment
Filed under: Congress, Federal Budget Process 

The last step for any of the appropriation bills passed by Congress is the approval of the President. This year after going through the House and Senate, and then Conference; before finally being rolled into a large omnibus spending bill the defense bill was signed by President Bush in early October. Last week he signed the companion Authorization Bill. The Authorization Bill comes out of the House and Senate Armed Services committees and specifies what the money given in the Appropriation Bill can buy. This is the largest Defense budget in US history, and based on comments by Congressional Democrats looking forward to a Democratic President may be the peak. Read more

Gates gives up

The Secretary of Defense today canceled the KC-45 re-proposal. He decided that there was not enough time to do this before the end of President Bush’s second term. The announcement was made via a press release this afternoon. Secretary Gates stated that ““It has now become clear that the solicitation and award process cannot be accomplished by January,” he said. “Thus, I believe that rather than hand the next administration an incomplete and possibly contested process, we should cleanly defer this procurement to the next team.”

This decision ends temporarily a seven year saga that started with Boeing being given a lease for 767 tankers, through a proper competition that was thrown out by the GAO, and what was expected to be a quick recompete starting this month.

See the actual release at DefenseLink.mil.

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