Change you can believe in: F-22 Funding Defeated

[scheming daemons]

Another promise kept.

Thank you Senate, and thank you Mr. President and Secretary Gates:

The Senate voted Tuesday to cut off production funding for the F-22 fighter, a come-from-behind win for Defense Secretary Robert Gates who has targeted the costly program as part of his effort to restructure the Pentagon budget.


The 58-40 roll call was more decisive than many had predicted and represented a dramatic shift from only last week when conventional wisdom held that $1.75 billion authorization would easily survive a challenge on the floor. The win gives new life to Gates’s budget initiatives and is a much needed boost for President Barack Obama at a time when public polls show declining support for his larger change agenda, including healthcare reform.


Mindful of the stakes, the administration mounted a late-breaking lobbying campaign to avert what would have been an embarrassing loss for the White House.


Gates himself was the most public point man for the administration, making calls to senators and delivering a toughly worded speech last week in Chicago. But behind the scenes, Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel also jumped in on the phones, and Vice President Joe Biden called senators last week — including his old friend, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), an ardent F-22 backer.
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25210.html

[Mass]

1. Excellent news.\nt

[dysfunctional press]

2. seeing as we supposedly 'won' the cold war awhile back....

it's ABOUT TIME that we stop paying to fight it.

[shadowknows69]

3. Very good news. I just wish we hadn't bought the first 187 either

Maybe 50-100, but for the most part None of our potential enemies can even match the near ancient F-15. Refit, don't rebuild. Why fuck with success?

[havocmom]

4. Big step in the right direction,

or left direction, depending on how you define directions ;)

[HopeHoops]

5. Don't pop the cork yet...

The House bill still has the funding in it. It is open until resolved in committee.

[Greyhound]

6. Excellent! One down, about 1,000 more boondoggles to go. n/t

:kick: & R

[TexasObserver]

7. Recommend

[SpartanDem]

8. Here's how they voted

YEAs ---58
Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennet (D-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Brown (D-OH)
Burris (D-IL)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corker (R-TN)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Franken (D-MN)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagan (D-NC)
Harkin (D-IA)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kaufman (D-DE)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCain (R-AZ)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Merkley (D-OR)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Shelby (R-AL)
Specter (D-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Udall (D-CO)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (D-VA)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---40
Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Begich (D-AK)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
Dodd (D-CT)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Inouye (D-HI)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Martinez (R-FL)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Snowe (R-ME)
Tester (D-MT)
Thune (R-SD)
Udall (D-NM)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

Not Voting - 2
Kennedy (D-MA)
Mikulski (D-MD)

[Bankhead_ATL]

11. Shelby (R-AL) voted Yea??????

eeek

[billyoc]

9. Fools! I have them now.

[sfwriter]

10. From Wikipedia:

While attempting its first overseas deployment to the Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, on 11 February 2007, a group of six Raptors flying from Hickam AFB, Hawaii experienced multiple computer crashes coincident with their crossing of the 180th meridian of longitude (the International Date Line). The computer failures included at least navigation (completely lost) and communication. The fighters were able to return to Hawaii by following their tankers in good weather. The error was fixed within 48 hours and the F-22s continued their journey to Kadena.<100>

[sinkingfeeling]

12. I'm glad to hear that.

[liberalmike27]

13. Yea

It seems like a chink in the DOD/Pentagon budget's armor.

Sad, isn't it? Almost everyone that mattered, that was in the know, didn't want them. Yet, we had trouble removing them from the budget. Doesn't that just point to the problem with the whole monsterous MIC, and how it eats our health care, how it consumes our education, how it explodes our chances of repairing our roads, brudges, infrastructure, and future green power grid.

It is an all-consuming beast. It consumes not just things here at home we need, but so many lives all over the world. It consumes our media. It consumes our attention. The damage is horrible.

[timeforpeace]

14. WTF? From other thread: "The Senate's vote does not necessarily kill the program"

See babylonsister's thread, quote is in body of report

[redqueen]

16. The House gets to vote on it too.

If the two versions are different, they go into reconciliation.

[timeforpeace]

19. Then the celebrations seem premature. Let's not take our eyes off the House ball folks.

[inna]

15. "declining support for his larger change agenda, including healthcare reform"

huh?

:wtf:

[redqueen]

17. Everything in the media should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

With outlets like Politico, two huge grains.

[fujiyama]

18. I was surprised about the mix of senators

This really looks fairly bipartisan.

Keeping Gates was a really smart move. It looks like Obama chose someone he could really work with. Gates has not struck me as particularly ideological and seems to dislike all the waste that takes place in these Pentagon contracts. And it looks like him and Obama want to really focus on a military that is ready for the threats and conflicts we really face (and those aren't aerial dogfights). I think some of the conservative repukes that wouldn't have trusted a Dem president might at least be listening to a Bush holdover.

The F-22 is a "cool" piece of hardware as far as technology goes but 187 should be more than enough. I'm glad they scrapped it before it got even more out of hand.