JSF Alternate Engine, Killed, Is Alive Again In House

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense has officially canceled a contract for a General Electric-developed F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Both the House and the Senate have blocked funding for it, arguing that one engine for one plane is enough.

Connecticut-based Pratt & Whitney won the original contract for one engine, while a GE-Rolls Royce alliance has been developing a second engine. The latter has become a symbol of government waste, and the White House has promised to veto any bill that funded the alternate program.

Yet the engine simply won’t die.

The House Armed Services Committee released its spending outlines for the coming fiscal year Tuesday, and the second engine is right back in.

The budget for the Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), includes language that bars funding for engine unless “two options for such propulsion system are obligated or expended.”

“The fat lady hasn’t sung yet,” Lisa Wright, a spokeswoman for Bartlett, told HuffPost.

The lobbying battle over the alternate engine puts extremely well-funded corporate interests on opposing sides -- a match-up thatCongress spends a disproportionate amount of its time refereeing.

The alternate engine will also appear in HASC Chairman Buck McKeon’s (R-Calif.) official budget, Wright said. “Certainly Congressman Bartlett and Congressman McKeon believe very strongly that the record of the program and other programs provides very, very strong support that a second engine -- which was part of the original plan and not an afterthought -- was correct and a second engine will lead to higher quality, safer aircraft and lower overall costs,” she said.

The budget proposes $7.7 billion for 32 aircraft for fiscal year 2012.

A McKeon aide suggested that many members on HASC still believe that competition between two engines will reduce costs -- an assertion opponents say is not borne out by the history of the program.

CORRECTION: This story initially misidentified Buck McKeon as Bud McKeon.

Comments

[itolduso]

02:03 PM on 05/04/2011

let's put military contractors on performance based pay....if it's good enough for teachers.....

[Michael Iverson]

01:31 PM on 05/04/2011

Let us just cancel the entire program. I see this plane as next V-22 Osprey: does not work as advertised, expensive and a danger to the pilots that flies them.

[jbeeaz]

01:25 PM on 05/04/2011

just sayin - GOP legislators - thy name is hypocrite. One hand taking away social support services and civil liberties away from the majority of American while shrieking about deficits, debt and over-reach of governments and attempting to privatize almost everything while pandering to the Corporate oligarchy and attempting public funding of every possible tax break.
Their slogan - The Party of Family Values MUST really mean the Corporate Family with interlocking directorships, non-stockholders need not apply.
2020 slogan - Jobs, jobs , jobs. Yep! they are sure doing a job on us.

[Ricardo01]

12:15 PM on 05/04/2011

Insist it be built by only union workers. That will kill it for the Republicans.

[durtbagg]

12:05 PM on 05/04/2011

The HYPOCRITICAL GOP gave the Pentagon $6 billion MORE in the budget than the Pentagon asked for... W.T.T.T.F... pardon my stuttering.

[halfpricefaustian]

11:47 AM on 05/04/2011

Nice to see you guys so committed to cutting government waste. Sigh.

[Estreet1964]

11:28 AM on 05/04/2011

If we as a nation put all the money we spend on war profiteering contractors and weapons we don't need into a crash program to develop clean energy technology and infrastructure we could slash our consumption of oil in half in a decade's time.

Unfortunately our politics is skewed toward feeding the beast of defense contractors and the energy companies. That's where the deficit comes from. We are on an unsustainable path because too many well connected politicians and businessmen stand to make too much profit feeding at the government trough.

These are the REAL welfare queens. We'll never see them though because they're too good at getting the electorate worked up about blacks, immigrants, terrorists, and gays.

[AbeMartin]

10:59 AM on 05/04/2011

According to the Representatives and Senators from the states where Boeing, Pratt-Whitney, and the other arms and weapons systems industries exist, there is no such thing as a redundant system.  Why have a single jet that can be used by the Army, Air Force and Navy, when six different versions can be funded by "We the Chumps?"  Let's bring back the B-36.  There must be a use for the largest piston-driven mass produced military plane ever made.

[dax49]

10:22 AM on 05/04/2011

LOBBYISTS STRIKE AGAIN!!

[Chucktheman]

10:04 AM on 05/04/2011

These are the same people who call GM, Obama Motors. GE doesn't need another hand out from the tax payer. We already have the winner of the competition for the engine. This isn't special ed, where everyone gets a prize.

[Chucktheman]

09:58 AM on 05/04/2011

The House just does not get it. They will in coming elections. I suspect checks will be distributed on the floor again before that happens.

[acmeaviator]

09:51 AM on 05/04/2011

America - once we churned out the world's best fighter aircraft by the thousands, now we waste billions just trying to decide on which engine to put in one. Meanwhile we are completely surprised by the sudden appearance of the Chinese J-20 and India decides to place the largest modern order for new jets with the European manufacturers. With these kinds of problems I can't say I blame them.

[jeanrenoir]

09:50 AM on 05/04/2011

Too bad this is way too complicated for most American voters to grasp. So they'll just take Fox and Rush's word for it on this, as on all other matters.

[JtownesquireAgain]

09:48 AM on 05/04/2011

There was a line in a movie...Contact, with Jodi Foster I believe....where one of the characters...the rich eccentric old guy....says "Why build 1 when you can build 2 at twice teh cost". That's Government for you. Gotta keep those corporate donations coming in...so who cares if you spend a ton of money that isn't necessary. Not like it affects Congress....just the rest of us who have to pick up the tab for an engine that will never ever be used in any aircraft...ever. Of course, the company can then modify it and sell it commercially and make a fortune from it...and we get the satisfaction fo knowing that we funded their private profit. Corporate Welfare is all it is. Time to load up the guns and take back our country from these out of touch, overly paid, corporate puppets.

[XtfrM2]

09:37 AM on 05/04/2011

Yet further evidence, as if any more were needed, that the Republicans are not serious about the deficit. We need to dismantle Medicare and SS in order to pay for these sorts of boondoggles.

[jeanrenoir]

09:51 AM on 05/04/2011

Let's hope the American mob finally wakes up about all this. THAT is our problem: our stupid voters. If we had voters as intelligent as the workers of Germany are, our economy and our society would be prospering as well as Germany is. That'll be the day.