When it comes to frivolous and wasteful spending, Congress just can’t get enough. Even a development program for missiles that no one wants with massive cost overruns can’t be cut off. Every time it’s de-funded, as it was by last year’s NDAA, the special interests fight to get the money put back in. As I wrote last year about the program:
Imagine you’re a legislator in a country with a bloated budget of almost $4 trillion and a record level of spending that requires massive deficits and could mean job-killing tax increases. Now imagine you’ve got a weapons program that is billions over budget, a decade behind schedule and unwanted even by those for whom it is intended. What would you do? If you said, “Earmark the program another $380 million,” you’re apparently qualified to serve on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee.
The weapons program is the Medium Extended Air Defense System, a joint venture with Germany and Italy that was zeroed out by three of four relevant congressional funding authorities. But the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense decided the program was worth a $380 million earmark, and the full committee passed the final bill along with a unanimous vote.
MEADS was intended to replace the Patriot missile, but has never lived up to its billing. Originally scheduled for deployment in 2008, MEADS is now projected to be ready no earlier than 2018. The program has already overrun costs by $2 billion, and there’s no reason to believe that pattern won’t continue. More importantly, there are serious questions regarding the program’s efficacy, which is why the Army itself has called for it to be shelved.
This time, when House and Senate appropriators put new funding for the program into the Continuing Resolution, an amendment was offered by Sen. Ayotte to strip the funds. But it was undemocratically blocked from coming up for a vote, the victim of a backroom deal – yet another in a long line of conspiracies against the taxpaying public.
To add insult to injury, Sen. Schumer did a victory lap celebrating his work on behalf of special interests:
“Ayotte kept trying to get her amendment on the floor, but we blocked it each time,” Schumer said in an interview today. The amendment never made it to a floor vote.
Schumer said he made sure that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Appropriations Chair Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., knew about the importance of MEADS to New York.
…Rep. Dan Maffei, D-DeWitt, was among 115 Democrats who joined the majority of Republicans today to pass the legislation that funds the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year.
“Today we saved hundreds of jobs in Central New York,” Maffei said in a statement after the vote.
Of course, MEADS and other defense programs don’t exist to benefit New York or any other state, nor to serve as a jobs program. They exist, or should exist, solely to enhance the military and defensive capabilities of the United States.
Former Pentagon Director for Technology Assessment Ed Timberlake summed up the situation when he said that “What we’re hearing about MEADS right now is the death rattle of a program that should have died long ago but has been kept on life support thanks to congressional patrons and the earmarks they can deliver.” Spending another $380 million dollars on this pointless boondoggle, or “missile to nowhere,” is a disgrace. The American people demand better – and deserve it – from their legislators.
