By Emelie Rutherford
Leading defense appropriator Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) said Monday he will support removing funding for passenger jets not sought by the Pentagon from the fiscal year 2010 defense appropriations bill.
The $330 million–for two more Gulfstream C-37 and Boeing [BA] C-40 jets the Pentagon did not request–is included in the appropriations legislation Murtha’s House Appropriations Defense subcommittee (HAC-D) crafted before the full House passed it July 30. Gulfstream Aerospace is a unit of General Dynamics [GD].
Yet after the four added aircraft spurred negative news coverage and pushback from the Pentagon as well as some senators, Murtha said in a statement issued Monday night he is backing down.
“If the Department of Defense does not want these (four added) aircraft, they will be eliminated from the bill,” the HAC-D chairman said.
That funding change would likely be done during a future House-Senate conference committee negotiations on the defense appropriations legislation. That group will convene after the Senate passes its version of the spending bill for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. The $330 million for the quartet of jets, if removed, would be shifted to other Pentagon spending.
The defense appropriations process has not yet started in the Senate. Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee (SAC-D) Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) did not publicly expressed a view on the added C-37s and C-40s before the Senate recessed last week for a four-week break. The SAC-D is expected to mark up its version of the bill after lawmakers return to Washington the second week of September.
The four hot-button airplanes are military versions of popular aircraft–the C-37 is like the Gulfstream V executive jet and the C-40 is similar to Boeing’s 737 jet airliner. The military aircraft are used to transport administration officials and members of Congress.
Murtha defended the addition of the four C-37 and C-40s, which came on top of smaller numbers of each aircraft sought by the Pentagon.
“These (four additional) aircraft will not increase the overall passenger aircraft fleet, but instead will replace older aircraft that have both safety and maintenance issues,” he said. “In addition, these newer model aircraft cost significantly less to operate than the current aircraft.”
The pair of extra C-37s would replace a C-20 and a C-38 aircraft, and the two additional C-40s would take the place of two grounded C-9s, he said.
Murtha noted that the executive branch, not Congress, used such aircraft 85 percent of the time over the past five years.