Here endeth, let us hope, the tale of the alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a military accessory even the Pentagon doesn’t want. Even George Bush didn’t want it, and neither does Obama. A vote to kill the engine would cut $450 million from next year’s federal budget and save an estimated $3 billion in the longer term.
The House has voted to can the engine, with 47 of its 87 new Republicans joining in that vote as part of a drive to cut $16 billion from the defense budget in the spending bill for the upcoming year.
Aside from the fact that any unnecessary defense spending is best eliminated, especially with the wolf howling at the fiscal door, there’s a particular reason why it’s nice to say goodbye to this engine. It’s been the center of a controversy that opens a window on the character of the current Congressional leadership, or at least of House Speaker John Boehner.
Boehner is the one who poses as the defender of the nation against deficits. After proposing cuts that might eliminate 700,000 federal jobs—a million jobs in all if you count other jobs that support those jobs—and being asked about the loss of those jobs when unemployment is a raging problem, Boehner’s response was, “So be it.”
But that wasn’t his response to the prospect of the loss of hundreds of jobs in his state, Ohio, caused by the demise of the ill-starred second engine for the F-35. Cut social programs, cut government services, cut everything—except what’s good for Boehner. This is the man who threatened to shut down the government if Democrats would not agree “to cut spending and to follow the will of the American people.”
This is what we’re calling leadership these days. This is the same Boehner who honchoed so many concessions for banks in the student loan business through the years—removing protections for borrowers and fattening lenders’ profits—that the nation now has a crisis of student loan debt almost equal to the foreclosure crisis. While he was at it, he got his daughter a job with a collection company that was later acquired by the biggest and most notorious predatory student lender of all, Sallie Mae.
In terms of the individuals they put into Congress, last fall’s elections had mixed results, but a distinctly dismaying result was that the math of adding more Republicans elevated one of the most polished opportunists and doubletalk artists on Capitol Hill to the speakership of the House.
