Friday, March 7, 2008

Boeing and taxpayers need explanation of tanker deal


The Pentagon's procurement program has always been a source of congressional and public aggravation. A few billion dollars on cost overruns here and there and weapons systems that don't work and no-bid contracts for the Iraq war are all just in a day's business.

Now a furor has erupted over the Pentagon's $40 billion deal for new aerial refueling tankers largely built by an overseas aerospace company even as the U.S. economy sinks into a recession, and while the economy is the dominant political issue for presidential candidates.

Just this week, the Joint Economic Committee of Congress was told that the ultimate costs of the Iraq war would be at least $2 trillion, perhaps $3 trillion. The staggering number of disability-qualified veterans of the 1990-1991 Gulf War and Iraq and Afghanistan also will require lifetime financial and health-care benefits.

So, when the Defense Department awarded the French-based European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) the contract for new tankers, visions of more U.S. dollars and jobs going overseas ignited the predictable storm of protests. Ultimately, new orders could make the contract worth $100 billion.

Though the technical winner of the contract was EADS' partner, Northrop Grumman, of Los Angeles, the European-built tanker will be a military version of a large Airbus 330 airliner, manufactured in France but assembled in Alabama and Mississippi.

The big loser, Boeing, the sole supplier of tankers to the Air Force for more than 50 years, had planned to manufacture new tankers in Washington state, then assemble them in Wichita, Kansas.

If the Pentagon awarded the contract based on the best plane for the dollar, then Boeing may have pitifully little argument and taxpayers can't complain that their money is being wasted.

A Defense official said the Northrup-Airbus tanker provides more—"more passengers, more cargo, more fuel to offload, more (battle casualties) it can carry, more availability, more flexibility and more dependability."

This is where Congress failed. Knowing the growing public storm about outsourcing U.S. jobs overseas, Congress could've specified that the Pentagon "buy American." And the Pentagon could've spelled out in its procurement specifications what Airbus ultimately used but Boeing could have equaled or surpassed.

In a time of domestic economic and job distress, the ground rules for government procurement should be altered to maximize the use of U.S. workers and retention of dollars at home without giving up high standards for quality.

The tanker program could've been handled that way had Congress and the Pentagon not been out of touch.




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