Dancing on the grave of the F-22

DIA celebrates:

WE QUICKLY noted the defeat of funding for construction of new F-22 stealth fighter planes yesterday, but Fred Kaplan argues that the 58-40 vote was the start of a "new phase in defense politics". For decades, contractors had kept up funding for such boondoggles by making it politically impossible to kill them. "The Air Force shrewdly spread the plane's contracts to firms in 46 states," Mr Kaplan explains, "thus giving a solid majority of senators—and a lot of House members, too—a financial (and, therefore, electoral) stake in the program's survival." Hence we created the phrase "non-defence discretionary spending", in order to separate the cuttable parts of the budget from that most sacrosanct form of spending.

But with contractors seemingly giving up the fight on the F-22, senators have done the politically impossible and killed a wasteful defence programme. They have overcome the contracting schemes and accepted the inevitable political heat (cue Zell Miller). Perhaps only a Republican defence secretary and a Democratic Congress could've made it happen. Perhaps Robert Gates, respected by Democrats and Republicans alike, was the key factor. In other words, perhaps this feat will not be repeated by future congresses. But let's be optimistic. If this is a new era for defence spending, it's a new era for government spending, period.