National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

Floor Speech

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Madam Chair, in the current budget debate, I often hear from my Republican colleagues that everything should be on the table. By that they usually mean every domestic program that helps working families make ends meet should be on the table.

But if everything is really on the table, that has to include expensive weapons systems that have failed to contribute to our national security, like the V-22 Osprey aircraft. That's why I'm offering this amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which will eliminate funding for the V-22 Osprey aircraft.

The Osprey's mishaps have become practically the stuff of legend. It's a poster child for the excesses and inefficiencies of the military industrial complex.

Its safety record is abysmal. Thirty Americans have been killed during V-22 training exercises. Most recently, Madam Chair, during a public demonstration in New York last spring, its prop rotors knocked down tree limbs and injured 10 civilian bystanders.

The Marine Corps itself has even concluded that leaving the engine idling could generate such high temperatures that the entire flight deck could melt in 10 minutes. In 2009, a GAO report gave the Osprey mediocre marks and questioned its ability to perform all of the functions of the helicopter it's supposed to replace. From its ability to operate in high-threat environments to carrying troops and transporting cargo, the Osprey underperformed across the board. I'm still trying to figure out what good it is to have a combat plane that doesn't operate well in high-threat environments. That's like having a coat that doesn't do well in the cold. If you had one, you'd stop wearing it; and you wouldn't spend more and more each year on the same flawed coat.

The V-22 Osprey is a boondoggle. One aspect of its maintenance even includes a special lightweight paint that costs $75,000 per aircraft--and we thought $600 toilet seats at the Pentagon were a rip-off. At a time when Americans are being forced to tighten their belts, they don't want to pay $75,000 to paint a plane that has done little to keep the country safe.

It's the job of the Pentagon to protect the American people, not to make defense contractors rich by perpetuating systems and programs long beyond the point that they've failed. That's why the cochairs of the Fiscal Commission, Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson, recommended canceling the V-22. That's why the most hawkish of any U.S. Government official I can remember, a former Defense Secretary named Dick Cheney, wanted to terminate it at least 20 years ago.

The V-22 Osprey has been given more than enough time to prove its worth. It has been over a quarter of a century. It has cost taxpayers over $32 billion--money we could have been spending on programs the American people need. And for the sake of our national defense, and in the name of fiscal discipline, this V-22 must go. So I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment.

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