| Good afternoon, Progressive Electorate readers. This is your afternoon open thread to discuss all things Hill-related. Use this thread to praise or bash Congresscritters, share a juicy tip, ask questions, offer critiques and suggestions, or post manifestos.
Some of the Hill news that's fit to blog is over the fold... |
| No, I did not put Casual Wednesday in a Ground Hog Hole. Tomorrow is Wednesday.
Armed Services in the Senate started its hearings today. You may have head about it. The talked about the upcoming budget. And other things.
The House is scheduled to have hearings Wednesday on the same topics.
Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha was back in the hospital Tuesday after undergoing gallbladder surgery last week.
The Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington said that the 77-year-old Democrat was a patient in its intensive care unit but referred all questions about his condition to his family .
Easy to mix up authorizing and appropriation committees. We all ran through the primer form yesterday. I'll say my prayers while I wait.
So a lot of congressional districts might have to decide which side to be on.
The budget will try to ease out spending for the C-17 and the JSF alternative engine. There's more bad news in the fine print about future programs including proposed termination of the Navy's EP-X electronic surveillance, communications intercept and network warfare aircraft - a replacement for the aged EP-3E, the Third Generation Infrared Surveillance system and the Net Enabled Command and Control program.
The alternative engine for the F-36, referred to as F136, and the C-17 are on the chopping block, again.
annual spending of $2.5 billion for C-17 transport planes built by Boeing Co (BA.N) that has been added to the federal budget by Congress in each of the past four years.
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Gates also said he would strongly recommend a veto of any moves by Congress to keep alive the C-17 program or a second engine for the F-35.
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The engine is being developed by General Electric Co (GE.N) and Britain's Rolls-Royce (RR.L) as an alternate to the main engine built by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp (UTX.N).
Obama and Gates tried to kill both programs last year, but lawmakers revived them during the budget process.
South Carolina
In Charleston, it could mean new business for Venture Aerobearings, a 1-year-old company that makes bearings for aerospace engines. Though it would not directly supply the military program, GE Aviation in Greenville would benefit from new commercial engine business that could otherwise be siphoned off by other GE plants, the company says. GE Aviation produces turbine blades for commercial aircraft engines.
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Eric Hinton, general manager of Venture Aerobearings, praised the U.S. House of Representatives' early October vote that re-established funding for the alternative engine program. An earlier Senate vote had axed the controversial program from the massive defense spending bill.
So the targets would be in the House. District by district.
New Hampshire
U.S. Sens. Judd Gregg and Jeanne Shaheen are being pressed to restore funding for a state-of-the-art fighter jet engine program being worked on at the GE Aviation plant in Hooksett.
Or maybe not if you are short on Congresscritters.
Nevada
The engine is being developed as an alternate for the Pratt & Whitney F-135 engine. Both would be used to power the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is expected to be the only new U.S. fighter jet for decades, with versions for the Air Force, Navy, Marines and eight allied nations.
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The debate trickles down to Verdi, a hamlet west of downtown Reno. Employees and machinists at Verdi's Firth Rixson Viking plant, which specializes in seamless rolled rings for jet engines, are watching the D.C. debate closely. If the alternate engine program is killed, about seven to 10 more employees will be laid off, General Manager Frank Irons said.
Nevada's Congressional delegation has a mixed record on this on the project.
Now on to the C-17.
California
The Boeing C-17 is assembled almost entirely here in Long Beach and provides about 5,000 jobs to the region.
California bipartisanship
Who's insisting that we buy more of the big planes at roughly $276 million a copy? A strange bipartisan coalition of almost every California incumbent on Capitol Hill -- from Sen. Barbara Boxer, an antiwar liberal, to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), a Reaganite conservative.
Here, There, Everywhere
The C-17 by most accounts has served the Pentagon reliably and well. The cavernous Globemaster is flying in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But the real reason Congress wants more of them has little to do with military need. Boeing has built the C-17's industrial base for political survivability.
The company has spread manufacturing across no fewer than 43 states. C-17 production lines employ more than 30,000 workers, many of them relatively well paid by factory-wage standards. Many of those jobs would be at risk if C-17 work ground to a halt.
We have the President we have and the SECDEF we have. This may be a boring invitation to committee watching. Where are these forty plus states and which congressional districts?
GE Aviation is happy to tell us what to think. We will have the same battle over and over.
Appropriate for Ground Hog Day. |
