(Washington, D.C.) – In the wake of a news report by The Hill’s Roxana Tiron indicating that conferees for the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2010 intend to thwart the will of the Senate, President Obama, and a phalanx of Pentagon officials by adding a $560 million earmark to fund the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) alternate engine, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) called upon the President to prepare to veto any bill that contains the funding.

“What taxpayers are witnessing here is the triumph of mindless, self-interested pork-barrel spending over fiscal sanity,” said CCAGW President Tom Schatz.  “At every level, the JSF alternate engine has been deemed to be unnecessary and wasteful, yet members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees are bulldozing President Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and anyone else who stands in their way.  The conferees added insult to injury by refusing to reduce spending elsewhere in the bill to pay for the alternate engine.  This is another example of an increasingly imperial Congress, whose power overwhelms every other consideration, including national security and the needs of our war fighters.  Now would be a good time for the President to step up and guarantee a veto of this wasteful project.  It would send a clear message that business as usual at the Pentagon is coming to an end.”

President Obama has threatened to veto any defense bill that includes money for the alternate engine.  Defense Secretary Gates opposes the alternate engine, as do other top Pentagon officials.  In an October 5, 2009 Bloomberg News story by reporters Gopal Ratnam and Tony Capaccio, Ashton Carter, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, was quoted as saying that the Pentagon had “looked at and analyzed the potential benefits of a second engine of the Joint Strike Fighter for years…[T]he crux of the analysis is that the additional upfront costs of a second engine are very clear and very real and the possible savings associated with a hypothesized competition in the future are much harder to estimate.”

An amendment opposed by CCAGW to continue funding an alternate engine in the Defense authorization bill was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 59-38.  However, the House included $560 million in earmarked funds for the alternate engine in its version of the defense authorization bill, and $603 million in earmarked funds for the program in its version of the defense appropriations bill.  Rather than split the difference with the House, or cut funding entirely, the conferees deliberately disregarded the bipartisan vote in the Senate by accepting the House figure.  CCAGW will be urging conferees on the defense appropriations bill to disregard the decision on the authorization bill and eliminate funds for the alternate engine.  On September 29, 2009 Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) released an Issue Brief addressing the funding for the JSF alternate engine.

CCAGW is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.