Dette forteller det meste om den "demokratiske prosess"
i den amerikanske kongressen.
Trond Andresen
PS: "Boondoggle" = meningsløs sysselsetting, dvs. å bruke
penger på aktivitet som ikke trengs
******************************
From: Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>
The Boeing Boondoggle
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Even old Washington hands sometimes find themselves with their mouths
agape at the brazenness of the latest corporate innovation in ripping
off the public.
Such a jaw-dropping moment occurred in December, as Boeing-friendly
members of Congress inserted a provision in the Defense Appropriations
bill requiring the Air Force to lease Boeing 767s. Under the Boeing
lease provision, the Air Force will lease 100 Boeing 767s for use as
tankers, over a 10-year period.
Follow the bouncing ball to see exactly how outrageous this deal is.
First off, these are planes even the Air Force doesn't want, or least
not enough to include in a list of its top 60 priorities. The request
for the planes did not appear in the president's budget, or in the bill
considered by the relevant Congressional appropriations subcommittees.
As the full Senate appropriations committee was considering the Defense
appropriations bill, the lease provision was inserted at the last minute
at the behest of Senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, the ranking member of
the Senate appropriations committee, and Patty Murray, D-Washington.
(Murray apparently retains her loyalty to Boeing, even though the
company has moved its headquarters out of Seattle.)
Second, the lease arrangement will be far more expensive than an
outright purchase would be. The Air Force will lease the planes at a
pricetag of $20 million per plane per year, for a $20 billion
expenditure (100 planes, 10 years). There are laws prohibiting lease
arrangements that are more expensive than direct purchases, but Congress
waived those rules in appropriating the money for the Boeing 767s.
Third, the government will accrue extra expenses to convert the
commercial aircraft to military configurations. The cost will be about
$30 million a plane (total cost: $3 billion). There's more: Because the
planes are to be acquired through lease, rather than sale, the
government has to return the planes to Boeing -- in the condition in
which they were purchased. When the 10-year lease is over, it will cost
the government another $30 million a plane to reconfigure the planes
back to commercial format. That's a total of another $3 billion.
To his credit, Senator John McCain, R-Arizona, tried valiantly to block
the deal, but with no success. The Boeing giveaway, he said, "I'm sure
is the envy of corporate lobbyists from one end of K Street to the
other." McCain estimated the cost of lease deal was, in total, more than
five times the cost of outright purchase.
A coalition of individuals and citizen groups from across the political
spectrum joined McCain in denouncing the "gross exhibition of corporate
welfare."
In a joint letter, Ralph Nader, Public Citizen, the Project on
Government Oversight, the Congressional Accountability Project,
Taxpayers for Common Sense, Ronnie Dugger of the Alliance for Democracy,
Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, Citizens Against Government
Waste and the National Taxpayers Union argued that, "If some in Congress
believe Boeing needs to be subsidized, then they should propose direct
subsidies to the company, and let Congress fully debate and vote on the
issue before the American people, following comprehensive public
hearings on the proposal."
But even as McCain and the citizen groups sounded the alarm, not only
did the appropriations bill speed through Congress, it actually got
worse. In conference committee, where different versions of bills passed
by the House of Representatives and Senate are reconciled, negotiators
added a provision for the 10-year lease of four Boeing 737s. These were
designated for executive travel, but will likely be used primarily for
Members of Congress. The whole package has now been enacted into law.
Why did Congress agree to this plunder of public resources? Key
committee members -- Stevens, Murray, plus Representative Norm Dicks,
D-Washington, in the House of Representatives -- pushed hard for the
lease arrangement. They proceeded with stealth, moving when their few
opponents would have virtually no opportunity to block the deal. In the
wartime hysteria, money is flowing freely to the Pentagon -- apparently
even for items the Defense Department doesn't particularly want. There
also seemed to be a sense that the lease giveaway was a consolation
prize for Boeing, which recently lost out to Lockheed in the bidding to
be primary contractor on the new Joint Strike Fighter -- a project worth
a tidy $200 billion.
It's hard to find words to describe the obscenity of the Boeing
boondoggle. Consider this: While the U.S. government will be spending
more than $25 billion on planes even the Air Force does not want, it is
refusing to spend more than a couple hundred million dollars a year on
the Global Fund for AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The money wasted on
those planes could literally save millions of lives.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The
Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common
Courage Press, 1999; http://www.corporatepredators.org)
(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
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