With a vote set for high noon on Tuesday, the political tide in the Senate has shifted to now favor the White House and Pentagon in their pivotal fight to strike new procurement funds for the F-22 fighter.
Just last week, conventional wisdom held that the $1.75 billion authorization would easily survive a challenge on the floor. But fearful of embarrassing President Barack Obama, Democrats appear to be moving back toward the White House, which has mounted its own late-breaking campaign to win the last votes.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is the public point man for the administration, making calls to senators and delivering a toughly worded speech last week in Chicago. But as the political stakes have become more evident, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has also begun working the phones, and Vice President Joe Biden last week even called his old friend, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), an ardent F-22 backer.
It’s a fight some Democrats would argue that Obama was foolish to make, raising the stakes unnecessarily with early veto threats. But the F-22 termination is Gates’s signature issue in changing the Pentagon budget.
Other HUGE idea from Dallas on military spending
- If nations want us to be ‘world cop’, we should tax them.
- If oil companies want protection of oil fields in the middle east, then add the cost military presence to a barrel of oil. No more oil subsidies from taxpayers.
- Divert $100B of military spending to the health insurance companies to buy them off. It’s wasted money either way.
-
Stopping F-22 production is one of the worst military decisions that the government has ever made! They’re more expensive than the F-35 JSF that Barry and his cronies favor because the technology for the JSF was developed for the F-22 first! Not to mention that the F-35 is a piece of crap, and we’re exporting it to every country, corporation, and terrorist organization with a few counterfeit dollars. The F-22 beats the F-35 in every category, and it’s only expensive because we’re not buying enough. The generals who wanted it canceled are the seat-warming, bean-counting, desk weenies who have no clue what is really needed. The F-22, by Air Force estimate, beats every current or projected fighter aircraft for 50 years!!! Why are we canceling it?!?! Don’t forget the thousands of jobs that will be lost when the plant closes! If the president is hell-bent on spending trillions, we should spend it building up the military, especially on F-22′s, B-2′s, the new Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carriers, the army’s Future Combat System program, and on new precision guided munitions, so collateral damage in any future conflict is reduced even more than it has been, or even eliminated. Don’ believe what the media tells you, no matter what station, whether it be MSNBC, CNN, ABC, or FOX, they’re all slated politically, one way or another. Look at the facts.