On August 1, the Senate approved, 95-3, the FY2003 defense appropriations bill (H.R. 5010). The bill would provide $355.4 billion for the Department of Defense (DoD) in FY2003, a $35 billion increase over last year and $11.4 billion less than the President requested. The House-passed bill (H.R. 5010) would allocate $354.7 billion (see The Source, 7/19/02).
The Senate adopted, by voice vote, two amendments pertaining to domestic violence. The first amendment, introduced by Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN), would set aside defense-wide operation and maintenance funds for review and mitigation of domestic violence involving DoD personnel. During debate, Sen. Wellstone noted that domestic violence “is a problem that is by no means limited to the military, but its dimensions in the military are complex and need to be addressed.”
Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) sponsored an amendment that would provide additional funding to the Family Advocacy Program at the DoD with priority to be given to bases that are experiencing increases in domestic violence.
Both the House-passed and Senate-passed spending bills would level-fund peer-reviewed breast cancer and ovarian cancer research at the DoD at $150 million and $10 million, respectively. The Senate bill would provide $50 million for other peer-reviewed medical research. The committee report lists a number of projects to be funded, including research on bone-related diseases. The House-passed bill provided $1.5 million for bone health research. Last year, Congress allocated $2.8 million for osteoporosis research.
