The next time John Cornyn or Kay Bailey Hutchison sends you a mailer or runs a campaign ad decrying waste in government, remind yourself of the F-22. Neither Cornyn nor Hutchison could muster the courage to cut a measly $1.75 billion in Congressional spending for a bunch of planes Defense Secretary Robert Gates derided as unneccessary.
“Irrespective of whether the number of aircraft at issue is 12 planes or 200, if we cannot bring ourselves to make this tough decision, where do we draw the line?” Gates said. “If we can’t get this right, what on earth can we get right?”
Yes, the good senators were voting to keep jobs in Texas. But let’s look at it another way. They were voting to take money out of your pocket to put it in someone else’s pocket (the workers and executives of Lockheed Martin). For no good reason whatsoever. And Republicans call Barack Obama a socialist?
Here’s Fred Kaplan on the runaway defense budget and why the F-22 vote was important. To think, there used to be this thing called fiscal conservatism.
