The White House budget office has asked the Pentagon to consider delaying the purchase of aerial refueling tankers by five years, a move that reflects the constraints of drawing up a budget in the midst of a recession, according to two sources familiar with the administration's discussions.| Of course he is. $800 billion for 'stimulus' and another $410 billion for pork, but nothing for the Air Force. Anyone out there surprised? |
Delaying the purchase of the tankers, which would replace a fleet that dates to the Eisenhower administration, will draw fierce opposition from the defense industry and many members of Congress, whose districts have tens of thousands of jobs related to the program.
It comes as the administration is considering which programs to include in its 2010 defense spending request to Congress next month, and as it grapples with a broken Pentagon procurement system that has led to about $300 billion in cost overruns on 95 major weapons systems compared with initial estimates. President Obama last month unveiled a general budget calling for $534 billion in defense spending, $50 billion less than what the Joint Chiefs of Staff had argued was needed. The Pentagon and the White House's Office of Management and Budget now are figuring out which programs will survive.
"This is a zero sum game," said Lawrence J. Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, who advised the Obama campaign on defense issues, describing the process of determining winners and losers.
| The rest of the article has the usual liberal zingers about making the 'hard choices' that the Bush administration 'didn't make'. Funny how neither Bambi nor the Democratic-controlled Congress could make any hard choices about the stimulus and pork packages. |