Left hand, meet right hand

[unhappycamper]

Obama Loses House F136 Vote
May 28, 2010
Military.com|by Colin Clark

The White House and Defense Secretary Robert Gates suffered an important defeat in congress yesterday when House lawmakers rejected an amendment stripping funding for a second engine for the Joint Strike Fighter.

The amendment to eliminate $485 million in F136 funding from the fiscal 2011 budget had the support of the White House and Gates, who has said he will strongly recommend President Obama veto the defense budget if the funding is included in any final bill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose power in the House can be enormous, stood off and left the fight to leaders of committee, most of whom believe firmly in funding and building a second engine, DoDBuzz has been told. Several Hill sources said that lawmakers who rarely pay close attention to defense issues were clamoring for background information about the issue several days before the vote. For such lawmakers, the leadership of the House’s most experienced defense policy experts must have been both comforting and helpful.

Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the HASC, has been a staunch supporter of the second engine and marshaled his information, working closely with GOP lawmakers who share his view.

While a Senate floor vote would probably be very close, one source who keeps a close eye on F136 issues said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, will keep a similar amendment out of the SASC bill and take the House bill to the conference between Senate and House lawmakers. That would make it procedurally challenging for F135 supporters to stop the final defense policy from approving F136 funding.



CBO report examines possible JSF cuts
By Andrew Tilghman - Staff writer
Posted : Friday May 28, 2010 14:37:47 EDT

Should the Navy cut back its commitment to the F-35 Lightning II and spend its money on new F/A-18 Super Hornets? That’s a question addressed head on in a new report from the Congressional Budget Office.

Navy officials have been dodging that question for months, saying only they are “committed” to the Joint Strike Fighter program.

The proposal floated by the CBO Friday includes cutting the Navy and Marine Corps F-35 commitment from 680 planes to 587, or 93 planes. That money could be used to expand the Navy’s less-expensive Super Hornet program of record from today’s 515 to 641, the CBO suggested.

The CBO report laid out several options for closing the Navy’s “fighter gap,” a term for the projected shortfall in carrier-based jets between older Hornets and the JSFs’ arrival. The option of reducing the F-35 commitment was one of four in the report, which drew no firm conclusions about which one was best or most cost effective.

The CBO report is designed to inform lawmakers on Capitol Hill about the details and options for naval aviation. It is not a Navy policy document.



unhappycamper comment: It's pretty bad when the elected representatives of this country decide to represent the M-I-C, rather than those who elected them. $33 billion dollars for war? No problem. $24 billion dollars to extend unemployment benefits? Fuck you, starve.

Unacceptable.

The F-35 is a $243 million dollar (each) boondoggle that just won't die. As are our current adventures in the sandbox.

[Scuba]

1. No money for education, healthcare or other social services, but...

...plenty for the military. Our current military is larger than the next eleven combined, ten of which are allies. Do we really need this???????