CAPITOL HILL: Senate Armed Services Committee leaders released a 100-plus-page report on the administration’s Asia strategy today, including — perhaps inadvertently — four pages of comments from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Congress commissioned the study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in the authorization bill for fiscal year 2012. SASC chairman Sen. Carl… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Congress must act by fall — before the election — and pass some sort of answer to sequestration, says the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sen. Carl Levin told reporters that his colleagues are beginning to focus on the fact that layoff notices for hundreds of thousands of defense and government jobs… Keep reading →

UPDATED CAPITOL HILL: The $669 billion set aside by defense lawmakers for fiscal 2012 is $24 billion short of the White House’s initial request but will be enough to finance several of the Pentagon’s high-profile programs. The Pentagon will get $554 billion in its baseline budget and $115.5 billion to continue fighting the wars in… Keep reading →

UPDATED WITH PENTAGON RESPONSE Capitol Hill: Faced with a torrent of counterfeit parts that pose a serious risk to the lives of American servicemen and to the performance of sophisticated weapons, Sen. Carl Levin pledged today to push for new laws and policies to help curb the problem. Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services… Keep reading →