OVERNIGHT DEFENSE: New CBO score for House VA bill

by Kristina Wong and Martin Matishak - 07/10/14 7:07 PM ET

CBO LOWERS SCORE ON VETERANS BILL: A House approved plan to overhaul the troubled Veterans Affairs Department will cost $35 billion to carry out through 2024, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office announced on Thursday.

The brand new figure is significantly less than an estimate the agency made last month that predicted the House bill to revamp the VA would cost at least $44 billion over five years.

{mosads}That same estimate also said a Senate VA bill would cost $50 billion a year to implement.

The new price tag could prove more palatable to fiscally conservative House and Senate lawmakers appointed to a 28-member panel tasked with hammering out compromise legislation.

Read the CBO estimate here: http://1.usa.gov/1q2sR6J and The Hill’s report here: http://bit.ly/1rZR3pZ

MILITARY NOMINATIONS: Senators heard from the president’s picks for several key military posts during their nomination hearing on Thursday.

The nominees included Army Gen. John Campbell for International Security Assistance Force commander in Afghanistan, Navy Adm. William Gortney for commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, and Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Votel for commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.

Senate Armed Services Committee members lobbed questions on Afghanistan, the jihadist reemergence in Iraq, missile defense, an influx of Central American immigrants into the U.S., and the mental health of special operations forces.

During the hearing, several lawmakers expressed worry that Afghanistan would go the way of Iraq.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said he worried that the president’s troop drawdown in Afghanistan would be based on “arbitrary timelines” instead of “facts on the ground.”

“The president tried the same failed policies in Iraq in 2011 and I fear we’re doomed to repeat the same mistake in Afghanistan,” he said.

“I watched and analyzed the mistakes of Iraq, and I think many of them are going to come to pass again in Afghanistan,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). “And then, I’m wondering if we’re going to do the exact same thing again.

“I think you are being given an impossible task in Afghanistan,” she told Campbell, Obama’s pick for Afghan war commander.

Gen. Campbell said he endorsed the president’s plan to drawdown forces to 9,800 by the end of the year, to 5,500 by the end of 2015 and then to a smaller embassy security force in 2016.

However, he said he would provide Congress with an assessment of whether that plan should be changed.

“I would provide my best military advice on the pace of the change, the pace of the draw-down,” he said.

F-35 ONE-OFF? An engine fire last month on a pricey F-35 Joint Strike Fighter may be a fluke, according to a top Pentagon official.

“There’s a growing body of evidence that this may have been an individual situation, not a systemic one,” Frank Kendall, the Defense Department’s chief weapons buyer, told the House Armed Services Committee.

“But we don’t know at this point,” he added. A June 23 blaze aboard one of the planes kicked off an investigation that led to a fleet-wide flight ban.

At nearly $400 billion and counting to develop, the F-35 is the most expensive weapons effort in U.S. history and has had a long history of technical issues.

The Pentagon had hoped to showcase the Marine Corps version of the pricey aircraft at a pair of world-renowned air shows in Great Britain and assure anxious international partners the jet is viable.

However, the fighter didn’t appear at day one of the Royal International Air Tattoo show in Gloucestershire, England, but it could still show up over the weekend.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, the site of the fire, but was mum on whether the F-35 would appear in the U.K. or when the bird might be in the air again.