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Live by the Fedpork, Die by the Fedpork April 9, 2009 Is there anything more tiresome than watching politicians tut-tut when another Connecticut-based corporation loses a federal subsidy? The latest orgy of indignation is being staged in response to the decision by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to halt production of the F-22, a Cold War-era aircraft. Pratt & Whitney and Hamilton Sundstrand, divisions of United Technologies Corporation, build engines and control systems for the fighter. The possibility of losing thousands of unionized jobs has enraged the state’s legislative careerists. “The drastic cutback of the F-22 program would mean serious economic consequences and negatively impact national security,” said U.S. Rep. John Larson. (Apparently, if Connecticut workers aren’t permitted to build a fighter designed to challenge the long-defunct Soviet Union, the terrorists win.) On April 7, Larson, along with the other six members of the congressional delegation, sent a letter of “strong disagreement” to Gates. The missive was stuffed with the talking points F-22 fans employ to defend the plane they say is “unmatched by any adversary in the sky.” Less biased sources don’t accept the F-22’s spin. As defense analysts Winslow T. Wheeler and Pierre M. Sprey explained a recent tissue of The American Conservative: “The huge weight, drag, and complexity burden of [the fighter’s] stealth-compromised skin, big-ticket radar, and belly-fattening radar missile load have swollen it to bomber size, wrecked its maneuvering performance, and run its cost through the roof.” Originally budgeted at $69 million per plane, the price tag is now $355 million apiece -- an inflation-adjusted overrun of 285 percent. Ballooning costs prompted the Pentagon to repeatedly cut its original order of 750 planes. Gates wants production stopped at 187. The expense is inexcusable, but equally disturbing are doubts about the fighter’s performance. “The F-22’s vaunted effectiveness is based only on peacetime exercises using rigged ground rules and missile lethality numbers unrelated to actual combat results or real enemy countermeasures,” report Wheeler and Sprey. “Even more telling is the number of combat sorties the F-22 has flown to help the fights in Iraq or Afghanistan since going operational in 2006: zero.” These concerns don’t mean much to Connecticut’s elected-for-life pols, who always put their selfish desire to stay in office above the need for sound management of the public purse. Another example of Connecticut’s fedpork fetish arrived last June, when Hamilton Sundstrand lost a $745 million contract to build next-generation spacesuits for “Constellation,” George W. Bush’s “Vision for Space Exploration.” (Another name for the project: Moondoggle, Part Deux.) NASA picked Texas-based Oceaneering International, Inc. instead, prompting an immediate hissy fit by Connecticut politicians. U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd walked point this time. He demanded a do-over, claiming that rebidding the contract would ensure a Hamilton win. Connecticut’s porksters prevailed -- in part. In August, NASA agreed to a rebid. Four months later, Hamilton, along with its partner ILC Dover, joined with Oceaneering to share work on the contract. Connecticut’s divine right to make government spacesuits was preserved. Hooray! In states where entrepreneurship, working, saving, and investing are valued by politicians, the loss of a federal contract every so often is rarely a worry. Fewer fedbucks are never welcome, but plenty of jobs are being produced by firms that lack billion-dollar deals with Washington. Low taxes, non-frivolous government spending, and reasonable regulations keep companies large and small from leaving states such as Texas, South Dakota, and Nevada. Pro-market policies also attract enterprises fleeing states where public employees and Nanny Staters wage a neverending war on economic and personal freedoms. We know where Connecticut stands in that competition. And while knowledge of local and state pols’ efforts to weaken Connecticut’s standard of living is commonplace, it’s important to remember the contributions of the six men and one woman The Land of Steady Habits sends to Washington. According to the Tax Foundation, the state already gets a mere 69¢ on the dollar back from the revenue it ships to D.C. As the state’s population stagnates -- and perhaps shrinks -- Connecticut’s congressional delegation will continue to lose members, and wield less power to protect existing and secure new federal contracts. Yet even if the delegation were growing, grabbing government booty makes for poor economic development. Bureaucrats’ consistently incompetent management of procurement and politicians’ childish score-settling make the funding of most federal programs highly unreliable. That’s why it is more important than ever for Nutmeggers to elect representatives who value tax relief, spending cuts, and deregulation more than pork projects that leave Connecticut workers at the mercy of Washington’s ineptitude and pettiness. D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and lecturer. His website is www.dowdmuska.com. # # # # #
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