U.S. lawmaker worried by sag in support for defense

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The powerful head of the House of Representatives subcommittee that controls the purse strings of the Pentagon said on Wednesday he was troubled by ebbing support for defense from fellow lawmakers.

Representative John Murtha, chairman of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, said defense spending was clearly going to decline in coming years, but the country faced new threats that needed to be addressed.

He cited waning support for defense among U.S. lawmakers, saying the recent fiscal 2009 war spending bill nearly failed but for the strong intervention by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"Defense is going to start to go down. The public has lost interest," the Democrat from Pennsylvania said.

"You're going to see a change, a sea change. I'm surprised myself at how little interest there is in what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet we've got troops deployed."

Democrats could even refuse to fund war bills if the Obama administration failed to make good on its promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, Murtha said. "It's quite possible that we could lose the war funding. If it hadn't been for the speaker, we would have lost it this time."

The U.S. House narrowly passed the $106-billion bill to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with the measure garnering only five Republican votes and 32 Democrats voting against it.

Murtha said he met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday and the two men agreed that the biggest threat to the United States was the growing Taliban influence in Pakistan.