The program is to get $11.5 million in fiscal 2008 under the 2008 defense appropriations bill passed last month. It is intended to attract and keep private contractors as paying tenants on the Rock Island Arsenal, which helps lower the government's fixed costs and make the Arsenal's products more competitive with other military suppliers.

The program also funds similar efforts at Watervliet Arsenal in New York, the nation's sole producer of heavy gun tubes, and Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas.

According to a new government Internet database of federal contracts, USASpending.gov, the ASPI program has awarded $10.5 million from fiscal 2003 through this summer to the Rock Island Arsenal Development Group, a non-profit group affiliated with the Quad-Cities Development Group. It has the rights to market unused space and capacity at the Arsenal.

The program has also steered $13.2 million to the similarly chartered Arsenal Business and Technology Partnership in Watervliet, N.Y., from fiscal 2002 through this summer.

Senate passage came on a 90-3 roll call vote. The bill includes a 3.5 percent salary increase for U.S. troops and increases military strength by 13,000 soldiers and 9,000 Marines, according to Congressional Quarterly. It also names the Navy and Marines Corps Reserve Center at the Arsenal in honor of former Rep. Lane Evans, D-Rock Island, who retired at the end of his term in January.

Congress is expected to turn its attention to a compromise on 2008 appropriations bills and continued funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a vote in the House expected as early as Tuesday. So far only the defense appropriations bill has been passed and signed by President Bush.

Delays in approving the latest White House request for emergency war funding, which is not counted as part of the budget, earlier this week led the Pentagon to inform Congress that it had begun planning for furloughs of civilian Defense Department workers.

Rep. Phil Hare, D-Rock Island, and Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Waterloo, issued a statement Thursday in which they chastised President Bush for what they said was needlessly raising the issue of furloughs during the Christmas season, months before the Pentagon would run short of operating funds. "The President's politics of fear only serve to intensify the partisanship that is already poisoning politics," Rep. Braley said.

A spokesman for the Rock Island Arsenal garrison, Eric Cramer, referred questions about furloughs to the Army, but said no notices or announcements have been made on the topic on Arsenal Island.

Mary DeSmet, president of Local 15, American Federation of Government Employees, which represents white collar Army workers, said workers have not been informed of any furlough possibilities, though they have been reading news accounts of the possibility.

"There is some upper-level planning being done," she said. "It's just introductory, perfunctory, get-your-ducks-in-a-row sort of things."