Defense Spending To Increase By $3 Billion Next Year

The House Armed Services Committee is proposing to increase next year's Defense spending by $3 billion more than the administration wants, and it rejected the Pentagon's call for military base closings. The committee meets today to mark up a bill that would provide a base budget of $554 billion, which would provide another $88 billion for the war in Afghanistan. Unless Congress says otherwise, automatic reductions of $50 billion a year will hit DoD starting in January.