There was a dog fight in Washington
Let’s face it…jets are cool. Everybody knows this, and Tom Cruise proved it.
But are jets $1.75 billion cool? That’s the price tag for seven of the super-awesomely-ridiculously expensive f-22 fighters.
So when some members of congress were thinking of building seven more of these budget busters…suddenly Washington became a no-fly zone. We here at USDemocrazy have the rundown:
August Cole at the Wall Street Journal Online gives us the gist of what happened:
In a 58-to-40 vote, the Senate approved an amendment that would remove the $1.75 billion that the Armed Services Committee added to the 2010 Pentagon budget to buy seven more F-22 Raptor fighters for the Air Force. The F-22, made by Lockheed Martin Corp., was designed for Cold War-type battles and is widely regarded today as the world’s most maneuverable and lethal fighter.
The BBC sets up the political showdown on the issue:
Both parties were split on the issue, with some Republicans – including Senator John McCain – siding with Mr Obama against the programme…Mr Obama had threatened to use his presidential veto if the vote had gone against him.
Jeffrey Smith at the Washington Post tells us that Defense Secretary Robert Gates was probably doing a happy dance after the Senate amendment was passed:
The decision was a key policy victory for Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has been campaigning against the plane since April as a linchpin of his effort to “fundamentally reshape the priorities of America’s defense establishment and reform the way the Pentagon does business — in particular, the weapons we buy and how we buy them,” as he put it in a Chicago speech Thursday.
Christopher Drew at the NYTimes tells us some strange bedfellows lined up against the amendment:
The plane’s supporters, who ranged from hawkish Republicans to Democrats close to organized labor, also voiced concern over the possible loss of high-paying manufacturing jobs at a time when the economy was in turmoil.
The Huffington Post is calling the President Dwight D. Obama. An interesting correlation:
The vote had become a proxy fight against the power of the military-industrial complex, a term coined by President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address.
Well, there’s the rundown folks! With all the Health Care Hullabaloo this one is runnin’ under the radar. We here at USDemocrazy want to know what you think!
