Over the past decade, Congress has paid GE to build a fighter plane engine prototype that no one is ever going to use. The cost to taxpayers? Over two billion dollars!
How did it happen? It’s a story worth reading.
In the mid-1990s, the Pentagon decided to develop a new lightweight attack aircraft. Initially, many aeronautics heavyweights – including Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, and McDonnell Douglas – bid to build the plane, called the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Most teams centered their design around a jet engine designed and built by Connecticut based Pratt & Whitney. One team decided to try and use a jet engine by GE.
Lockheed-Martin used jet engines designed by Pratt & Whitney. The McDonnell-Douglas prototype used the engine designed by GE.
McDonnell-Douglas (which was later merged into Boeing) was eliminated from contention, effectively killing the chance that the final JSF would use a GE engine. Indeed, Lockheed-Martin ultimately won the multi-billion dollar contract because their design worked—including vertical take-off and landing.
Simply put, the Lockheed-Martin and Pratt & Whitney design won fair and square.
That should have ended the matter. But then the politicians took over.
Congress proceeded to create and fund a two-track process to develop the JSF’s engines. In one corner was the Pratt & Whitney jet engine that already effectively won the competition. In the other corner was the GE jet engine that already lost. The competition kept going and going and going.
According to the Congressional Research Service, GE and their suppliers have already received more than $2 billion to develop their second engine, an engine nobody is ever going to use. To make matters worse, the Government Accountability Office predicts that the decision to continue a second engine program could delay completion of the JSF and funnel billions more of your tax dollars to GE and their suppliers.
And the spending never stops.
This year, despite a bipartisan push in both the Congress and the White House to kill the engine nobody is ever going to use, a new $400 million appropriation for the program found its way into the 2010 Department of Defense appropriations bill.
It’s time to stop this kind of corporate welfare. Now.
If Washington politicians want to hand out billions of dollars in consolation prizes to big corporations who lose in a bidding process, they shouldn't use taxpayer money to do it.
There must be winners and losers in our free-market—seems that should apply to these big corporations also. Unfortunately, it looks like the special interests are the winners and we’re the losers.
Submit your ideas to: chad@chadmcgowan.com
How did it happen? It’s a story worth reading.
In the mid-1990s, the Pentagon decided to develop a new lightweight attack aircraft. Initially, many aeronautics heavyweights – including Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, and McDonnell Douglas – bid to build the plane, called the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Most teams centered their design around a jet engine designed and built by Connecticut based Pratt & Whitney. One team decided to try and use a jet engine by GE.
Lockheed-Martin used jet engines designed by Pratt & Whitney. The McDonnell-Douglas prototype used the engine designed by GE.
McDonnell-Douglas (which was later merged into Boeing) was eliminated from contention, effectively killing the chance that the final JSF would use a GE engine. Indeed, Lockheed-Martin ultimately won the multi-billion dollar contract because their design worked—including vertical take-off and landing.
Simply put, the Lockheed-Martin and Pratt & Whitney design won fair and square.
That should have ended the matter. But then the politicians took over.
Congress proceeded to create and fund a two-track process to develop the JSF’s engines. In one corner was the Pratt & Whitney jet engine that already effectively won the competition. In the other corner was the GE jet engine that already lost. The competition kept going and going and going.
According to the Congressional Research Service, GE and their suppliers have already received more than $2 billion to develop their second engine, an engine nobody is ever going to use. To make matters worse, the Government Accountability Office predicts that the decision to continue a second engine program could delay completion of the JSF and funnel billions more of your tax dollars to GE and their suppliers.
And the spending never stops.
This year, despite a bipartisan push in both the Congress and the White House to kill the engine nobody is ever going to use, a new $400 million appropriation for the program found its way into the 2010 Department of Defense appropriations bill.
It’s time to stop this kind of corporate welfare. Now.
If Washington politicians want to hand out billions of dollars in consolation prizes to big corporations who lose in a bidding process, they shouldn't use taxpayer money to do it.
There must be winners and losers in our free-market—seems that should apply to these big corporations also. Unfortunately, it looks like the special interests are the winners and we’re the losers.
Submit your ideas to: chad@chadmcgowan.com
