Thank you sir, may I have another F-22!

Dear Congressman,

I read last week that the Senate had voted to remove a $1.75 billion clause from the defense bill to strip funding for 7 additional F-22 advanced fighter planes. This was done in part due to the lobbying of the President and a threat to veto the entire defense bill if it was not done. The defense secretary, Robert Gates, and the Pentagon top brass had requested they be removed as they were superfluous to current military requirements.

But since this program supplies a boat load of jobs to a large group of states, and the defense lobbyists worked overtime on this, many Senators were pushing for it to stay in the bill.

My favorite would have to be Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia. To quote from his speech on the floor of the Senate in regards to the Department of Defense's request to have the order for the additional aircraft removed from the bill:

"So to come here and say that, well, DOD didn't request any F-22's and therefore we are to salute and go marching on is something we've never done, we did not do in this bill and we should not have done."

I'm having just a little trouble understanding what the honorable Senator from Georgia's point is. My first thought was that Sen. Chambliss is of the opinion that his capable staff is more in tune with the future needs and requirements of the United States military then the 23,000 people who work at the Pentagon. If so, that is one heck of a staff that Senator Chambliss has put together and should be recruited to consult on other urgent matters, like fixing my 401(k) or cleaning up public restrooms in all gas stations on freeway offramps....

Another school of thought is that Sen. Chambliss is simply stating that as a US Senator he is not subject to the wishes of any other department and they are not entitled to tell him how and why to spend the US taxpayers money. Think of it like this: you walk into the ice cream store, ask for a scoop of chocolate, and then are told by the manager of the store that he decides who gets what, and instead gives you a cone of butternut. A sort of Seinfeld "Soup Nazi" of politics.....


Or the final theory, maybe there is a more local motive for Sen. Chambliss to defend these unwanted aircraft. When I perused the web pages of Lockheed Martin, the builder of the F-22, I found the following information.

Marietta, Georgia
The company’s site in Marietta, Ga., is home to the C-130J Super Hercules transport and the F-22 Raptor air dominance fighter.

So with that knowledge, I think Sen. Chambliss really meant to say the following:

"So to come here and say that, well, DOD didn't request any F-22's that are built in my state by voting taxpayers is something I've never done, I did not do in this bill and unless I want to get voted out of office, will never do..."