The Continuing Resolution and assorted spending bills that the House and Senate put together to fund the remainder of Fiscal Year 2013 theoretically mimic the FY13 appropriations bills passed by both chambers last year but never signed into law. We know Congress never passes up a chance to throw bad money after good, however, so we’ve started looking through the bills to see where lawmakers added and subtracted dollars. The Defense, Military Construction/Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Commerce/Justice/Science, and Agriculture all got full bills while the other seven spending bills were rolled up in the CR. Here’s a quick look at some of the items.

Most of the Congressional additions to the defense bill are the same as those in last year’s appropriations bills, which added billions to the Defense Department’s budget request (lawmakers cut spending too, but the topline increased from the President’s request). Much of the additions resulted from appropriators adding money back for attempted DOD efficiency savings the committee considers “unrealistic,” but plenty of other adds represent pretty substantial re-prioritizations. Some of the biggest winners:

• National Guard – It’s no secret that the Guard successfully leveraged state governors and members of Congress to halt DOD’s attempt in its FY13 budget request to save money by retiring cargo planes – planes based at Guard bases around the country. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) complained about the bill’s funding for the C-23 Sherpa cargo plane, a Reagan-era plane that the Air Force wants to retire. Congress also adds back $282.5 million for “unjustified efficiency reductions” to the Air National Guard and $210 million to “retain Air National Guard force structure.” Finally, the Army National Guard gets $100 million to modernize Humvees plus money to replace various helicopters.
• Army combat vehicles – The bill adds $140 million for Bradley tanks, $62 million for M-88 Hercules vehicles, and $181 million for the infamous M-1 Abrams tank, which we highlight in our report on defense savings recommendations.
• The Navy –the bill cuts small amounts from several support line items in the shipbuilding account in order to add $1 trillion for an extra DDG-51 Arleigh Burke destroyer; $40 million for “shipyard capital investment;” and $777.7 million in advance procurement funds for another Virginia class submarine. As a bonus, the Navy also gets $605 million for 11 extra F-18 Hornet fighter jets and $130 million for two extra KC-130J tanker aircraft.

But wait, there’s more! In non-defense spending, the bill adds $2.6 million to begin repairs on the NOAA ship Ka'imimoana, homeported in Pearl Harbor; $15 million for Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery, a program highlighted by McCain; and millions for local FEMA programs. The administration’s request to reformulate a bunch of different the FEMA preparedness funds into a National Preparedness Grant Program was rejected and lawmakers stuffed funding back into old favorites: $93 million for a National Domestic Preparedness Consortium, which has several sites in historic appropriator states; $65 Million for a Center for Domestic Preparedness (a Shelby favorite), and $46.6 million for Operation Stonegarden, a border enforcement program that has been abused in the past.

And during the battles over the Sandy supplemental spending bill, Sen. Toomey got an amendment passed that removed the emergency designation from the Corps of Engineers construction funding in the bill. That meant that the more than $2 billion would count against the overall budget cap for energy and water spending. Never to fear, the appropriators appear to have robbed the MilCon/VA bill to backfill E&W. TCS will continue to dig into this bill as it wends it way through Congress.