The President signed the defense authorization bill yesterday, which including LGBT-inclusive hate crimes legislation that has been in the works for a decade. The White House touted all the defense savings in the bill, with canceled projects that the Pentagon didn’t want or need.

Terminates the F-22 program: Savings – $2.9B
Terminates Transformational Satellite: Savings – $768M

Terminates the VH-71 program: Savings – $750M

Reduces Aircraft Carrier Rebuild Schedule: Savings – $727M

Terminates Future Combat Systems Manned Ground Vehicle: Savings – $633M

Reduces Ground Based Midcourse Defense Program: Savings – $504M

Terminates the Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) program: Savings – $387M

Terminates the multiple kill vehicle (MKV): Savings – $283M

Cancels the second Airborne Laser (ABL) aircraft, and refocuses the ABL program as a technology research effort: Savings – $214M

Terminates Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR-X) Helicopter: Savings – $144M

These are all noble cancellations. But there still remains much of the kinds of waste that Obama wanted out of the bill, like the new engine for the F-35, to be made by General Electric. The President actually threatened a veto over this project, but then signed the bill. As I noted last week, with the hate crimes measure in there, he was backed into a corner and could not credibly veto the bill.

In addition, there’s still a defense appropriations bill to come (this bill authorizes the funding, the appropriations bill designates it specifically), and some of the projects Obama wanted terminated may crop up there. Overall, this is a decent victory for the White House, but there needs to be some vigilance.

One other point – it’s the defense appropriations bill that includes that amendment from Al Franken, banning contractors from forcing their workers into binding arbitration contracts that denies them a day in court for sexual assault (the so-called “Jamie Leigh Jones amendment.”) There were reports last week that this may get stripped from the defense bill. Franken aide Casey Aden-Wansbury sent along this statement:

Unfortunately, the appropriations bill is still in the conference process to reconcile the House and Senate versions so we are not out of the woods yet. Because Senator Franken is not one of the conferees, we don’t actually know how the conference process is going, but we’re hearing positive things from Chairman Inouye, who would like to see this preserved. We also know that a number of Civil Rights groups are lobbying the conferees, the White House and the Pentagon to try and keep the amendment in the bill.

Stay tuned on that.