By Emelie Rutherford
The House voted to kill funding for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s alternate engine yesterday as a congressional panel questioned if the Pentagon illegally lobbied lawmakers to end the program it does not want.
House members, via a 233-198 vote, approved an amendment striking $450 million for the F136 General Electric [GE]-Rolls-Royce engine from the FY ’11 defense appropriations bill yesterday, when they debated amendments to a continuing resolution (CR) funding the federal government in FY ’11 that contains the Pentagon legislation. President Barack Obama has threatened to veto that CR and Senate leaders have rebuked it, rendering the fate of the alternate engine in question.
FY ’11 began last Oct. 1, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates has agreed to fund the engine on a monthly basis while the government is running under a temporary CR keeping all funding at FY ’10 levels until March 4.
Officials on each side of the debate over continuing to develop the second engine, an alternate to the main F135 engine built by Pratt & Whitney [UTX], gave different takes on yesterday’s vote.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Gates “is gratified that the full House has recognized the merits of the (Defense) Department’s position in opposing the (Joint Strike Fighter) JSF extra engine” and views the vote as a step “on the path to ensuring that we stop spending limited dollars on unwanted and unneeded defense programs.”
Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), a HASC member who authored the successful amendment to strike the F136 funding from the CR, slammed the engine yesterday as a “luxury” unaffordable to taxpayers during these tough economic times and unwanted by the Pentagon.
General Electric spokesman Rick Kennedy argued having competing engines saves money and noted support for the F136 by members of the House Armed Services Committee (HAC), House Appropriations Committees, and Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee.
Congress has consistently funded the alternate engine in recent years despite Pentagon and White House opposition to continuing the program.
Away from the high-profile House floor vote yesterday, HASC members and staffers questioned if the Pentagon violated a prohibition against lobbying members in favor of weapon systems.
HASC Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee Chairman Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) asked Gates at a Pentagon budget hearing yesterday about two anti-F136 information papers created by the Pentagon and circulated on Capitol Hill earlier this week.
Bartlett, who like many HASC members supports the alternate engine, asked Gates if he is “comfortable…that this does not violate the statute that says the Pentagon cannot lobby Congress.”
Gates said he would have to look at the papers, which his staff was given during the hearing, before answering the question.
Morrell, after the hearing, said in a statement the Pentagon’s office of legislative affairs “routinely provides information papers to members of Congress and their staffs, to inform them of the department’s position on important issues.” He said such fact sheets and information papers are not normally signed or dated. Morrell said the “routine communications” represent Gates’ positions, and added that the ones in question state the defense secretary’s well-known opposition to the second engine.
Some HASC aides said they are concerned that the Pentagon information papers were sent to individual newly-elected House members and not the HASC, even after the committee requested the documents from the Pentagon. Some observers, though, said the Pentagon documents could be defined as simple and permissible fact sheets.
Aides pointed to language in the FY ’10 defense appropriations bill stating: “None of the funds made available by this act shall be used in any way, directly or indirectly, to influence congressional action on any legislation or appropriation matters pending before the Congress.”
HASC Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) “believes Rep. Bartlett raised some valid concerns at the hearing this morning,” committee spokesman Josh Holly said in a statement.
“The Department of Defense is viewed on the Hill as a neutral authority; and pushing questionable information to specific members without providing the committee of jurisdiction the courtesy of a heads-up is questionable and might cause some to doubt the Pentagon’s motives on other programs as well,” Holly said.
Bartlett and aides alleged that the unsigned and undated F136 documents, which both say “Prepared by the Defense Department,” contain factually incorrect information. For example, the documents state the F136 is behind the F135, but Bartlett argued if the two engine efforts started at the same time the F136 would be further along than the other one.
Both documents state: “DoD is firm in our view that the interests of taxpayers, our military, our partner nations, and the integrity of the JSF program are best served by not pursuing a second engine.”
Congressional supporters of the alternate engine argue having two competing engines will keep costs down and point to a Pentagon analysis that found the cost of developing both or just one F-35 engine would be roughly the same.
On the House floor, lawmakers continued to debate yesterday hundreds of amendments filed on the FY ’11 CR, which has the FY ’11 defense appropriations bill attached to it.
The House rejected multiple defense-related amendments to the CR over the past two days. Those include proposals to cut the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and the Iraq Security Forces Fund and to reduce funding for Pentagon operations and maintenance, research and development, innovation grants, and alternative-fuel research.
As of press time last night the chamber had not voted on an amendment, from HASC Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee Chairman Todd Akin (R-Mo.), banning the spending of $145 million in termination liability fees on Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, which the Pentagon wants to cancel.
House members submitted 583 amendments on a wide variety of topics to the CR.