Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, it is likely that neither the House nor Senate version of the fiscal year 2011 continuing resolution will pass this body.

I would like to highlight one feature of both of the bills we are considering that I believe is truly misguided. Neither bill provides funding to continue the alternate engine program for the F-35 airplane.

In the past, Congress has supported this engine in a bipartisan, bicameral way as a lower cost, higher performance alternate that will save billions in tax dollars and give the F35 engine program competition it badly needs.

There has been significant misinformation circulated about the alternate engine program, which, based on previous experience with engine competition programs, should actually reduce the Federal deficit by more than $20 billion.

During the 1980s, the Air Force and Navy jointly qualified second sources for the Sidewinder, Sparrow, Amraam, Maverick, Standard, Tomahawk, and Ham missile programs. In every case, buying from both sources brought costs down dramatically. That same strategy brought costs down and under budget for the FFG-7 frigates, DDG-51 destroyers, Aegis Cruisers, and attack submarines.

Absent the F35 alternative engine program, a company that is currently $3.5 billion over budget will be the monopoly provider of the engine for the F35 airplane. This is not the way taxpayers want Washington to do business.

The alternate engine program supports 2,500 jobs in the United States, 800 of those in Ohio. My State's unemployment rates is already 9.3 percent, and it would be a tragedy if we eliminate jobs that are actually serving to reduce federal spending and protect against faulty or delayed access to engines needed by our military.

I am disappointed no funds are contained in either bill. I don't believe you walk quietly away from a $100 billion program that has billions of tax dollars invested in it without a vigorous debate. In deleting the alternate engine, both bills eliminated a line item today at the expense of significant savings downstream.

We are not going to end the budget deficit by haphazardly taking dollars out of investments justified not only by their public policy purpose--in this case, equipping our military in the most responsible, efficient means possible--but by their potential to produce major downstream savings.

It is unclear how the negotiations on getting a budget deal will proceed and it is equally clear that they will be hard. But the future of this engine must be on the agenda.

Our safety and security as a nation and the seriousness of the budget choices that face us are simply too important to let expediency get the better of common sense. Exploring what is best for our military and our budget goals must be part of the continuing resolution negotiations.

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