Aug. 12 Daily News editorial

Members of Congress were at it again last week, trying to give the Pentagon what it neither needs nor wants. House Democrats slipped an additional $330 million into the defense budget for the purchase of four new Air Force passenger jets to help high-ranking government officials, including lawmakers, get around in style.

On Monday, after an outraged public had made a connection between this proposed purchase and the corporate jets that auto industry executives had been instructed to ground, House leaders began to run for cover. If the Pentagon doesn’t want the new passenger jets, announced Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, the House won’t force the issue.

Embarrassment played a role in this hasty retreat, no doubt. Having recently scolded auto industry CEOs for flying to Capitol Hill on corporate jets to appeal for a federal bailout, House leaders were reluctant to make a case for their own luxury jets. Eliminating an earlier unwanted purchase of additional F-22 jet fighters wasn’t nearly so easy. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had to go to the mat in convincing the Senate to reject a House appropriation of $1.8 billion for the purchase.

Far more constituents’ jobs were on the line with the F-22 appropriation than with the proposed purchase of these four passenger jets. And the jobs were located in more congressional districts. Most of the F-22 jobs are in Georgia, where Lockheed Martin Corporation’s main manufacturing plant is located. But important parts of the aircraft are manufactured in Texas, California and many other states.

Spreading the work around the country is common among military contractors. It can help immensely, when a lucrative contract is threatened by someone at the Pentagon with a different idea about national defense needs. It helped keep the Senate vote on the F-22 appropriation relatively close. Forty senators voted to defy the Pentagon and mandate the purchase of the extra fighters. The location of jobs, rather than ideology or party affiliation, seemed to determine how individual senators voted. Those with F-22 jobs in their states tended to support the appropriation.

Inflating defense budgets to put constituents to work or keep them working isn’t a new political phenomenon. Former President Eisenhower gave the confluence of interests that drive the practice a name in his farewell address, when he warned of the complications inherent in the “military industrial complex.” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., added “congressional” to that mix during the debate over the F-22 appropriation. McCain declared that the vote on that appropriation would signal whether “we could prevail over the Military Industrial Congressional Complex or not,” according to the Washington, D.C.-based Stripes Central blog.

The public interest in a lean-and-mean national defense budget did prevail in that June Senate vote. It now seems the public interest also will prevail with regard to those unwanted, unneeded Air Force passenger jets. Secretary Gates is proving himself to be a formidable budget hawk, at least for now.