Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011
Floor Speech
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Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from California is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I stand in opposition to this amendment for a few reasons, not any as eloquent as the ones that have already been stated but for some fairly simple reasons, I think.
Number one, what if one of us here, one of us Members, a Congressman, earmarked a $100 billion project today? If it were one of us who did this, who said that we're going to give this one job worth $100 billion to one company, I think there would be an outcry from all over. We don't do that anymore, and there's a reason we don't do it anymore: Because it leads to corruption, and it leads to people doing things that they should not be doing. We shouldn't give the DOD the same--let's call it--temptations to have to give a $100 billion contract to one company.
Number two, competition. It's interesting now to see how things have switched where you have folks that have been talking about competition when it comes to health care, competition when it comes to business now saying that competition's going to bring quality down and bring costs up. That's not what competition does, Mr. Chairman. What competition does is bring quality up and bring costs down. I think there is definitely bipartisan agreement on that.
And number three, I served in Afghanistan on my third tour and, when I was over there about midway through in 2007, an F-18 went down. It went down here stateside, and the reason it went down is it had a cracked wing, and what we didn't know at that time is if that was an inherent flaw in the F-18 structure. So what we did in Afghanistan is we shut down all F-18 flights. In fact, the world over, F-18 flights were shut down until we could figure out if this problem was inherent in all F-18s or if it was just one problem for that one particular F-18.
If this happens with the F-35, with just one engine, we're going to ground the free world's new jet. That's what will be grounded, because the F-35 is being sold to other countries. It's being used by all of our services except for the Army, and if it goes down and we have to stop flight for it, it could put people in harm's way. That's why this is, frankly, not a money issue or a jobs issue. This is an issue of operational risk. You should have a backup engine for the main engine for the main fighter for this Nation and other nations going forward.
So with that, Mr. Chairman, I oppose this amendment.
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