Let's Cut Some Spending: $1.7 trillion on F-35 project no one wants

Public Domain/U.S. Navy

In our Let's Cut Some Spending series, ForAmerica chronicles the many ways Washington wastes YOUR tax dollars - and as you’ll see, the list is endless.

Today’s offering: $1.7 trillion on F-35 project no one wants!

Citizens Against Government Waste’s Sean Kennedy writes:

Bad policy ideas have a way of returning from the dead in the nation’s capital.

In 2011, following years of opposition from multiple presidential administrations and the Department of Defense (DOD), along with a coalition of taxpayer organizations, the alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) was finally killed off. Before it was supposed to be buried forever, members of Congress had added 13 earmarks costing $1.5 billion.

But the alternate engine was only mostly dead, and as the attempt to resurrect the program continues, many of the same arguments against it still apply. Like the first version, it is once again opposed by the DOD, the White House, and taxpayer groups, and only supported by a handful of legislators motivated by parochial concerns…

Moreover, funding an unnecessary second engine would contribute to the high costs and delays that have become the hallmark of the JSF program. With projected lifetime operations and maintenance costs of $1.727 trillion, trimming costs in the most expensive weapons system in history are vital.

It took several years to kill the first version of the alternate engine. Congress should get rid of it for good in a few months this time.

If America is broke (and we are)...

And the Department of Defense, the White House, taxpayer groups and others don't want this...

Why are we even still talking about it?