Senator McCain, whose acted as a key administration ally in President Obama’s war against the F-22, doesn’t seem terribly confident that his amendment, introduced last week but pulled once already for a lack of support, will pass if it’s put to a vote today (though Politico reports that the tide may be turning in the White House’s favor). The amendment would strip from the Senate’s defense authorization bill any funding for continued F-22 production. McCain engaged in a twitter back and forth with Jake Tapper this morning (via the Hill‘s Twitter Room):
McCain proceeded to rail against the military-industrial complex — “It’s what Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell address to the nation.” Well, not quite. Eisenhower warned that “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” But the councils of government are arrayed almost entirely against the F-22. The plane is opposed by the White House, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of the Air Force, and Democratic leadership of the relevant committees — and John McCain. One suspects Eisenhower feared that centers of power such as these might be corrupted by the influence of the defense industry. And one can make a pretty strong case that they have been. All the government’s best efforts are devoted to killing the F-22, which just happens to be the last major threat to the F-35 — a military-industrial program that is genuinely too big to fail.
