The Arrogance of Earmarks: Pentagon Halts Pork Spending [Share and Share Alike]

Today, the Pentagon issued a stop-work order to General Electric (GE), requiring the company to halt production of its F-35 alternate engine program. The program, unwanted by the Pentagon and the White House and not funded in any appropriations bill that has passed either chamber of Congress this year, has already cost taxpayers billions and run over its deadlines and cost projections. That the alternate engine earmark has still received funding despite these objections illustrates all that is wrong in the Washington spending circus.

While the Obama Administration issued guidance on the appropriations process that should have prevented the alternate engine program from receiving funding last year, the petty politics of pork have since allowed the program to continue to receive funding in FY 2011. The Pentagon stood strong with taxpayers today by putting its foot down once and for all and issuing a stop-work order...

Read more: http://www.atr.org/arrogance-earmarks-pentagon-halts-pork-spending-a5976#ixzz1Hci08XBt

I'm pretty sure that Boehner's district has a GE facility that was on the receiving end of this specific program.

Actually the GE Engine Plant is in Chabot's district (OH-1), but it is very close to Schmidt's (OH-2) and Boehner's (OH-8).

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=OH

Find where 1,2 and 8 come together and then travel south on I-75 about three miles.

Now to add to some humor. I was using Google Maps to find the exact location of the engine plant, and one of Google's ads was for the F-135 Pratt & Whitney engine. The link tells people to contact their Congressmen and ask for the F-136 alternate engine program to be canceled.

I am not so sure that this is cause to cheer, or at least not to cheer too much.

Contrary to what most fiscal hawks reflexively assume, there is — or was — a case to be made for the development of two engine models for the F-35 from different suppliers. Without the competitive threat of an alternative engine capable of going into production, logic and experience with the F-14 engine and other equipment demonstrate that, over time, sole source suppliers tend to charge more and deliver lesser quality.

As military reformer Edward Luttwak noted years ago, much of what is reflexively condemned as "waste, fraud, and abuse" is inevitable and necessary on the leading edge of technology. After all, the Pentagon can rarely buy new and world best weapons and equipment off the shelf but first has to develop them.

In the private tech sector, a lot of capital is consumed by bad ideas that simply do not work out, prove second best, or are soon made obsolete by competition. Similarly, to model private sector practices, the best business strategy for the Pentagon is often to develop different weapons and equipment choices and then pick the best for production -- or even to pick more than one to keep rapacious military contractors in line through competition. And sometimes, that approach may mean developing two jet engines so as to have two competing suppliers.

As for the F-35 engine, GE has announced that they have enough confidence in the virtues of their model to continue working on it for now with company funds. Even if Congress approves killing off the GE engine, it may yet help to keep P&W on their toes and force them to deliver better price and value for their sole source engine.

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