Boeing's C-17 Globemaster

Via ProPublica, Ben Elgin and Keith Epstein have a really terrific piece in Business Week about the struggle to rid the defense spending bill of expensive, largely unnecessary Cold War-weapons projects. A few things caught my eye here, first a breakdown of how spending on weapons changed from the last Geroge W. Bush administration Pentagon bill to the first Barack Obama administration miltary budget (which the president signed Wednesday):

The Administration has pared billions from the budget for the Lockheed Martin F-22 fighter, a super-sophisticated plane conceived in the 1980s for dogfights against Moscow’s best. The Pentagon has also reined in a sprawling high-tech infantry project called Future Combat Systems that Boeing oversees. All told, a half-dozen major weapons systems have been eliminated for an estimated savings of more than $100 billion over coming decades.

But it’s not like military spending is actually going down. At a projected $107 billion for 2010 alone—a 5% rise over this year—the Pentagon’s base budget for planes, ships, missiles, and guns has grown more than 50% since 2000.

The rest of the article focuses specifically on the C-17 cargo aircraft, manufactured by Boeing. It’s not doves but Defense Sec. Robert Gates as well as military leaders who instructed Congress that the Pentagon has enough C-17s and there is no reason lawmakers need to appropriate more money for the planes. But contained in the new military spending bill is $2.5 billion for 10 more such planes.

More C-17s  is due in part to the 30,000 manufacturing jobs created by building these planes. But 30,000 jobs aren’t that many — what Boeing has strategically done here is spread those jobs across 43 states! That means dozens of lawmakers have constituents with jobs making a C-17.

But where Boeing’s political shrewdness is really reflected is that they got to Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. McCaskill is the no. 1 voice in Congress against wasteful government contracting: she holds almost weekly hearings on government procurement and, with Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb, created the wartime contracting commission. Yet Boeing persuaded McCaskill that a halt to production of the C-17 would be a crushing blow to organized labor in Missouri. Business Week reports that since meeting with a Boeing govt. relations officials McCaskill has  “showed has showed up at machinist rallies, met Boeing officials, and spoken out forcefully on the plane’s behalf.”

The gradual de-funding of the F-22 was viewed this summer as a sign that Washington is serious about ending runaway defense spending. However, Boeing’s influence on McCaskill, shows just how far lawmakers are away from seriously considering national, not provincial, priorities when writing the defense budget.

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