Yesterday's announcement by House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Jack Murtha (D-PA) that, in light of the Senate's vote against it, he was not going to include funds for the F-22 in the fiscal 2010 DOD appropriation, may have been the final blow for the plane and a huge budget-related win for the White House.
We'll see. Murtha is obviously extremely important, but there are still a number of ways that funds for additional buys for the fighter could be added at other points in the process. Note that Murtha didn't say he now opposes the F-22, only that he wouldn't add funds to buy any more in his bill. But if someone offered an amendment on the House floor to restore funding, or the Senate approprations committee included funds it its version of the 2010 DOD appropriation, or if the funds magically appeared at the last minute in the conference report on the spending bill...
The F-22 may have been sacrificed so that other programs the administration requested be cut or eliminated could be saved. Funds for the VH-71 presidential helicopter, the C-17 cargo jet, and an alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter were all included in the bill.
Former OMB military spending chief Gordon Adams has a good take on why the F-22 is having more problems this year than it has had in the past.
'huge budget-related win'
It's only $ 1.75 billion. Which will be spent on something else anyway. This is nothing other than one lobby outmaneuvering another.
Since when isn't cutting
Since when isn't cutting $1.75 billion to pay for something else worth doing? Would you have preferred that the $1.75 billion earmark for a plane the Pentagon said it didn't want or need be kept in the budget?
How Big?
As McCloskey is fond of asking.
The deficit for this year alone is going to come in over 1,000 times what was going to be spent on the F-22. Which, since it will be spent on something else for the Pentagon, won't have any impact at all on that deficit.
How does that get to be, 'a huge budget-related win'?
Perspective
All things are relative.
It shows what passes for a huge budget-related win in our poltical system, which has produced $64 trillion in explicit and implicit liabilities as of the end of 2008 -- including a $3 trillion deficit for 2008 alone counting off-budget accrued liabilities.
1.75 / 3,000 = ... 0.00058
The thing is, it is a huge budget-related win by the standards of our budget politics.
So you're both right.