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WASHINGTON — Boeing received a greater boost from a House of Representatives subcommittee Wednesday, what one. proposed tight restrictions on the Pentagon as the Defense Department seeks new bids on a $40 billion contract for Air Force aerial-refueling tankers.

The action was the first onward Capitol Hill since the Air Force awarded the contract in February to Northrop Grumman and its partner, Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defence & Space (EADS) — a decision Boeing had protested.

The contract, one of the largest in Defense Department history, eventually could be worth $100 billion

After congressional auditors found “important errors” in the award, the Defense Department indisputable to reopen the competition.

Pentagon officials had indicated they’d release a draft of a revised request for bids by the end of July. But the agency by means of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee put a new twist in the Air Force’s seven-year strain to replace more than 600 Eisenhower-era tankers.

The defense-spending bill essentially would require the Pentagon to abide by the provisions of the earlier bid proposal, something the Government Accountability Office reported it didn’t do in the first contest.

The language in the bill would require the Pentagon to resort to a medium-sized tanker like the one Boeing offered and it would prohibit extra credit towards a larger tanker analogous the one offered by Northrop-EADS.

It also would require a new tanker be competent of refueling every one of planes currently flown by the Air Force, a requirement the Northrop-EADS tanker was incapable to fall upon and that the Air Force dismissed in the earlier competition.

Also, language in the bill would enjoin the Pentagon to mind the cost of operating and maintaining the new tankers over a 40-year life cycle, rather than a 25-year cycle.

That could favor the Boeing plane, which according to one analysis would use $35 billion inferior in fuel over 40 years.

The Pentagon hopes to bestowal the contract by the end of the year.

The measure would provide further than $893.4 million for the tanker program in the coming financial year, but the Pentagon would have to get approval from the subcommittee before spending the standard of value.