House Drops Curbs On Women GIs

[David]

AP


The $491 billion defense measure passed by the House leaves the issue of where military women can serve in war zones in the Pentagon's hands ? as long as Congress gets notice of any changes beforehand.

On a 390-39 vote Wednesday, the Republican-controlled chamber approved the bill that sets Defense Department policy and plans spending for next year. The Senate is to vote next month on its own defense bill, an early version of which does not address women's jobs in the military.

In the House bill, Republicans abandoned their effort to curb the role of women in combat zones after running into opposition from the Pentagon and lawmakers from both parties.

Instead, the House approved on a 428-1 vote a watered-down provision that lets the Pentagon continue to determine military jobs for women as long as it gives Congress 60 days notice ? twice as much time as is currently required.

"There will be no restrictions in statute for how the Army can assign women in the military," said Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M. The only female veteran now serving in Congress, Wilson was a leading opponent of the plan that was dropped.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, had initiated a wider-ranging restriction that would have required an act of Congress to open up new positions to women in combat zones.

"It has always been our intent to inject Congress into any policy changes that the Department of Defense may propose regarding the assignment of women to units such as infantry, armor and artillery. This provision does that," Hunter, R-Calif., said.

Overall, the House measure allows the Bush administration to spend $491 billion for defense in the budget year that begins Oct. 1, though the actual money will be provided in later legislation. The total includes $49 billion to support operations in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and fight terrorism.

The bill permits the Pentagon to spend billions on military supplies, including armored vehicles, night vision devices and jammers to defend against roadside bombs.

It also allows the Army to increase its ranks by 10,000 and the Marine Corps to grow by 1,000. The measure also would allow 3.1 percent pay increases for military personnel.

Hoping to rein in skyrocketing costs, the bill also calls for revamping the way the Pentagon buys weapons systems. It requires the Defense Department to submit to Congress an annual review of its Future Combat System program, a high-tech family of fighting systems.

"By and large, this is a good bill. We worked hard on it," said Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the lead Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. His GOP counterpart, Hunter, said the bill gives U.S. troops "the tools they need to get the job done."

Before passing the bill, the House defeated an attempt to delay the current round of domestic military base closings for one year and rejected an effort that would have called for the president to develop a plan for the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq.

By adopting the softer women-in-combat provision, the House killed the Hunter-initiated restriction that would have made law a 1994 Pentagon policy barring women from serving in direct ground combat positions.

Hunter was forced to give ground this week after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld objected and a bipartisan group of lawmakers prepared to try to kill any reference to women in combat in the bill.

Critics had argued the provision would have caused confusion among military commanders and soldiers, hurt recruitment and retention of women and hindered the military's ability to make staffing decisions in the battlefield.

Currently, there are 2,823 military occupations open to women. That includes Army jobs in which women provide medical, maintenance and logistics support to units in combat zones.

An additional 191 positions are closed to women. These are mostly infantry, armor, artillery and special forces jobs.

The 11-year-old Pentagon policy allows the services to open some positions to women in combat zones as needed as long as the military informs Congress of the change 30 days beforehand.

Under the House bill, that period would be 60 days. The Pentagon also would be required to study how it assigns women to jobs and report back to Congress.