OVERNIGHT DEFENSE: Budget fight; panel approves defense bill

THE TOPLINE: The House on Thursday passed a Republican budget that boosts defense spending and won over security hawks with a $90 billion addition to the Pentagon’s war fund.

The passage delivered a victory for GOP leaders but also highlighted the sharp divide between defense hawks and fiscal conservatives, who vow to roll back the extra war funding. Opponents call it a slush fund that’s used to circumvent the spending caps put into place in the 2011 debt ceiling deal.

{mosads}Those critics tried again to cut the fund later Thursday evening when the House also passed its first appropriations bill for fiscal 2016. Lawmakers rejected an amendment that blocks the Pentagon from using the war funds for military construction from Reps. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.).

Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) earlier in the said efforts to reduce defense spending would “strike at the heart of our national security challenges today.” 

DEFENSE BILL: The row came just hours after the House Armed Services Committee passed a defense policy bill that authorizes $612 billion in funding for the Pentagon in 2016. 

The bill, which was passed by a 60-2 vote after 19 hours of debate, authorizes funding based on Republican spending proposals, which would leave in place federal budget caps known as sequestration. 

The administration had requested Congress lift the caps and spend $561 billion on the base defense spending, and $51 billion on war funding. 

The committee’s bill, however, ignores that request and authorizes $523 billion in base defense spending and $89 billion in war funding — leaving in place the spending caps on both defense and non-defense spending. 

The White House had previously threatened to veto any bill that left in place the sequester, but stopped short of that in a statement on the House bill, only criticizing “some provisions.”  

The bill adds more restrictions on the Obama administration’s ability to transfer detainees housed at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, something the White House has protested. 

The panel also rejected a number of cost-saving proposals requested by the Pentagon, including retiring the A-10 attack jet. 

The legislation rejects Pentagon proposals to close excess military bases and infrastructure and plans to trim support for military grocery stores and housing allowances for troops. The legislation backs pay raises for troops at 2.3 percent, versus a Pentagon call for 1.3 percent.  

However, it does adopt a major reform to the military’s retirement system that is expected to lower personnel costs for the Department. 

The bill now heads to the House floor for a vote in May and will have to be conferenced with the Senate, where the White House might have more luck in trying to undo some of the House’s provisions. 

STATE GIVES 4,000 DOCS TO BENGHAZI PANEL. The head of the House Select Committee on Benghazi announced that the State Department has handed over 4,000 pages of new documents to the panel.

“The Benghazi Committee continues to build the most comprehensive and complete record on what happened before, during and after the Benghazi terrorist attacks,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C) said in a statement.

The documents come from the State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB) investigation into the deadly assault on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

They include, among other things, emails and interview summaries, according to a congressional source.

“Getting this production from State’s Benghazi ARB is an important part of ensuring the committee has access to all the facts,” according to Gowdy.

The development came the same day Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the panel’s top Democrat, chided the GOP for fundraising off the committee’s work.

A new fundraising entity, called Stop Hillary PAC, has launched an online petition to support Gowdy’s work on the committee and halt Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“Stop Hillary PAC was created for one reason only – to ensure Hillary Clinton never becomes President of the United States,” the committee’s web site states.

Cummings said the “shameless new fundraising effort reveals just how closely intertwined the Benghazi Select Committee is with Republican political attacks against Hillary Clinton.”

“Raising political cash off the deaths of four brave Americans is offensive and sickening, and Chairman Gowdy should put an end to it immediately,” he added.

HOUSE MEMBERS WANT ISIS VOTE. A bipartisan coalition of 28 lawmakers pressed House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to take action on a war powers resolution against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The group — led by Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Tom Cole (R-Okla.) — fired off a letter to Boehner asking him to instruct the appropriate committees to mark up the proposal and schedule a floor debate so they can vote on it.

The missive ends a more than weeklong lobbying effort by Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and Cole, one of Boehner’s top lieutenants, to get debate moving again on President Obama’s proposed war measure.

The president sent his war powers resolution to Capitol Hill in February, and it was promptly panned by lawmakers.

Signatories to the bipartisan letter included Democratic Reps. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) and Charlie Rangel (N.Y.) and Republican Reps. Walter Jones (N.C.) and Mark Sanford (S.C.).

NAVY TO PROTECT US CARGO SHIPS FROM IRAN: U.S. Navy ships have begun escorting U.S.-flagged commercial vessels traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, according to a defense official.

The move is in response to increasingly provocative behavior by the Iranian navy in the strait within the last week, the official said.

Early Tuesday morning, Iranian navy vessels approached and fired warning shots across the bridge of the Maersk Tigris, a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship, and subsequently boarded and detained it and its crew.

On Friday, the same types of Iranian ships surrounded and harassed a U.S.-flagged cargo vessel named the Maersk Kensington.

The official said “this is being done as a result of the interception and the detainment of the Maersk Tigris on April 28,” as well as the incident with the Kensington.

The commercial vessels are being accompanied by “combat ships to prevent harassment or possible interdiction,” said the official.

The official did not say how many U.S. warships would accompany each merchant vessel but said “we have [a] sufficient number of forces to meet the accompanying mission.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: 

— Conservative senators sandbag McConnell, jeopardizing Iran bill

— House panel votes to keep the A-10 Warthog flying another year

— Defense hawks mobilize against spending proposals

— House panel kills delay to military lending rules

— Armed services panel reduces delay for women in combat

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This story was updated on May 1 at 7:42 a.m.