The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday that the Senate’s 2013 Defense Authorization bill would cost $634 billion.

The bill was reported out of Senate Armed Services committee last month.

The total includes $543 billion in discretionary funds for the Department of Defense and nuclear weapons programs in the Department of Energy and $89 billion in war funding, almost all of it in Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is putting a positive spin on this weekend's international meeting on the situation in Syria despite reports of a continued rift with Russia over the need for President Bashar Assad to leave office.

In interviews following the Geneva meeting called by United Nations/Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan, Clinton vehemently denied signing off on a transition plan that could keep Assad in place. The U.N.'s final communique, approved Saturday by the foreign ministers of the Security Council's permanent members and other nations, does not mention him by name.

“I couldn’t disagree with you more,” Clinton told CNN on Sunday when asked if the document fails to require Assad to step down. “I think that what the agreement clearly states is that there has to be a transitional governing body that will be constituted of people who are there by the mutual consent of the government and the opposition. Now, unless I am wildly off base, there is no way anyone in the opposition would ever consent to Assad or his inside regime cronies with blood on their hands being on any transitional governing body.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, however, told reporters after the meeting that nothing in the communique required Assad's departure. And the Syrian government has also touted the meeting as a success for Assad.

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Romney will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit—an attempt to shore up support with Jewish voters

The administration is betting another $62 million that biofuels can power the Navy, but lawmakers call the energy programs wasteful.

Philippines President Benigno Aquino could ask the United States to deploy spy planes to monitor the South China Sea, which could escalate tensions between the United States and China.

Aquino, in an interview with Reuters Monday, said that he might ask for the U.S. spy planes because the Philippines does not have the technological capabilities.

The South China Sea has long been disputed territory and a sore spot in relations with China.

Islamabad is claiming units of the Afghan National Army are carrying out attacks against targets inside Pakistan, sparking a number of cross-border clashes that could end up deepening the growing rifts between Washington, Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

Iran has launched a three-day war games exercise, during which missiles will be fired at targets modeled after foreign bases.

An Air Force C-130 cargo plane flying a firefighting mission in South Dakota crashed late Sunday night, as military and civilian authorities continue to battle the wildfires burning their way across the western United States. 

Senate Republicans are floating the idea to get lawmakers on the same page, regarding automatic defense cuts.