All good points, and all should be considered when looking at programs to be cut. This is something I went on about a while ago: we have these programs for good reasons. No Senator or Congressman says, "You know what? We've got too much money, and I think we should just go out and burn a pile of it."PalmerWMD wrote:Sorry yet an additonal posts from reading others:
Since we cut the F22 at only 187 we need the F35 to have a modern plane .
We already cut the rates for F18, F16 and even ended F15 produton in expectation that the F35 will come.
The cost for F35 is in line with what such modern sytems cost and is actually less per unit than say the Eurofighter which is vbeing afforded by countreis with smaller budgets thna us.
Also the F35 is a multinationla collbarative efforts and other goverments have spent money and committed resources based on our contractual obligations ot go through with this modernization.
Cutting the F35 would mean :
alienating allies and getting them to buy thier stuff from France of Russia.
Losing trust by our partners
incurring contractual penalties
and relgating ourslevs to second power status becuase thats what you call a country that does not have its own fighter production line which is exactly where we will be in a few years if we dont get the F35.
Which is why we need to pay for them. If the cost is too high, then we should cut them, but if it's worth the cost, then we need to start sacrificing a bit to actually see that they're paid for. The problem isn't that we have too much spending (though there are most likely things that aren't worth their costs), it's that our spending outpaces our earnings. We have a budget imbalance, and the only reason to call it a "spending imbalance" is to score political points and to distract from actually fixing the real problem.
I hear Canada and France are full of them... then again, there's probably some liars interspersed here and there as well.
