Levin knocks House plan to stave off A-10 retirement

The Senate Armed Services Committee will not copy a plan adopted by House lawmakers to delay the retirement of the A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft fleet, the panel’s chairman said on Tuesday.

Last week the House Armed Services panel unanimously approved its version of the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act that blocked the Pentagon’s request to mothball the A-10, affectionately called as the “Warthog” by troops. Defense Department officials argued the move would save $3.5 billion over five years and that the aircraft’s close air support mission could be carried out by other platforms.

{mosads}The House panel approved an amendment by Rep. Ron Barber (D-Ariz.) to keep the Warthof flying for at least another year by allocating $635 million in funding from the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget, which is used to pay for operations in Afghanistan.

“OCO is not a legitimate offset because it’s not even in the budget,” Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told reporters, adding the fund is “not subject to being used for any other purpose because it’s an emergency appropriation which doesn’t count against the caps.”

“You can’t take from something that isn’t in the budget, you can’t take it from something which is an emergency fund which doesn’t score” with the Congressional Budget Office, he added.

Levin said the attempt to save the 283-plane A-10 fleet was one of “many cases” where the House panel went over the budget caps set by the Budget Control Act.

“We’re not going to use unreal money,” he told reporters.

He declined to predict what his committee will do when it marks up its version of the defense policy bill next week.