©
Congressional featherbedding has kept alive an unnecessary and unwanted second source for F-35 Joint Strike Fighter engines, despite opposition from two White House administrations and the Pentagon.
On Wednesday, tea party Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives joined forces to kill the program. General Electric and Rolls Royce, which make the engine, say they'll ask the Senate to resurrect it.
Here's hoping they fail, and not just because it would save $3 billion over the next several years. The folks running the F-35 program have decided nobody needs it.
The Pentagon long ago concluded that it couldn't afford the luxury of an alternate engine, especially when any savings would be slight. The White House under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama concluded the same.
But the program remains popular in Congress, both because its spending is spread across many districts and because Congress is hesitant to cut defense spending, even when it's unnecessary. Hampton Roads' delegation to the House all voted to continue the program, which also had the support of Speaker John Boehner and dozens of other representatives.
They were outvoted by a 233-member coalition of lawmakers from both parties. Thanks largely to the new freshman class, twice as many Republicans voted to end the program this week as voted to kill it back in May.
That's progress.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Twitter
Google
Yahoo
Common Sense Budget Cuts
It’s sad to see so many legislators try and defend keeping some of these unneeded defense projects. How can Riggell and other Republican Representatives claim to be fiscally responsible and vote to keep a project that the Secretary of Defense said is useless and a waste of money? When are these politicians going to get serious? Military spending and the wars in the Middle East are going to amount to almost 1 Trillion dollars this year. The US government brings in approximately 2 Trillion dollars in revenue. Obviously this does not work. Our deficit this year alone is going to be 1.65 Trillion dollars. We need to put everything on the table and start trying to balance the budget. Senators and Representatives can't keep trying to cut everything except what affects their district. Everyone is going to feel the pinch and that includes the military. We should start by pulling out of the middle east, closing 60-80% of the 1100 FOREIGN BASES the USA currently has around the world, Cutting back some of our social programs to 2003-2004 levels, Reform Social Security, Completely overhaul the tax system to a simplified code (Like the Fair Tax), Cut redundant and useless departments like Dept. of Education, Dept. of Energy, Bring in the Coast Guard under the Dept. of Homeland Security, and trimming back every other dept or at least freezing their budget. These cuts may hurt a little but they are far better than a complete collapse of our economy!