President Clinton plans to veto a $265 billion defense bill just sent to him by Congress, a move that will require a scramble to save a military pay raise set to take effect Jan. 1.
White House press secretary Mike McCurry said the bill as approved by the House last week and by the Senate on Tuesday "would be subject to a veto."Clinton objects to provisions limiting his powers to deploy troops overseas, requiring the military to deploy a national missile defense system by 2003 and setting aside a half-billion dollars to begin expanding the B-2 bomber fleet.
He also opposes provisions requiring the discharge of service members with the AIDS virus and banning abortions at overseas military hospitals.
But Republicans have placed Clinton in a difficult position because the bill also includes a 2.4 percent military pay raise and a 5.2 percent housing allowance increase for married service members.
The veto would come as television news carries images of U.S. troops trudging into snowbound Bosnia for a year's peacekeeping deployment.
"What kind of signal do we send to those troops right now who are trying to fight the fog and the snow?" said Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind.
The Senate sent the fiscal 1996 defense authorization bill to the White House on a 51-43 vote. The $265 billion measure is only slightly larger than last year's defense bill but $7 billion more than what Clinton requested.
Although the pay raise and other benefit increases were included in a separate appropriations bill that the president signed, the authorization bill is required for the raise to take effect Jan. 1.
Congress is expected to go home for the year at the end of this week, leaving little time to grapple with the disagreements over the defense bill.
As a stopgap measure, Congress could attach the pay raise to a stopgap spending bill it may pass this week to keep the federal government running in the absence of a budget agreement.
Only a handful of lawmakers crossed party lines. Among them, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., opposed the increase in defense spending and voted against the bill. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., whose state would benefit from a Seawolf submarine construction contract, supported the bill.