The Senate has approved the Defense Department authorization bill for fiscal 2006 (S-1042), which like the House-passed version (HR-1815) contains several “soft landing” provisions designed to aid DoD civilian employees affected by base closings, reorganizations and other downsizing actions. The bill would extend by four years, through fiscal 2010, DoD’s authority to offer “voluntary RIFs”—in which employees not affected could volunteer to leave with many of the same benefits as in a RIF in order to free up a slot to save someone else’s job—its authority to pay severance pay as a lump-sum rather than biweekly, and its authority to keep paying the employer share of federal health insurance benefits for separated employees for up to 18 months.