Tom Harkin: “That is if we lease them rather than buying. So we are compounding it, adding insult to injury. The taxpayers are…”

“That is if we lease them rather than buying. So we are compounding it, adding insult to injury. The taxpayers are getting socked for airplanes the military doesn't really need, and then they are leasing them, which means we are paying even more money for airplanes we do not even need. Again, you would think with this GAO study we would say: Wait, we don't need these nine. Let's wait until we see what the requirements really are. The requirements are always couched in terms of wartime necessity. We are not at war. It doesn't look as if there is anything bubbling up on the horizon that is going to be a major war for the United States in the next couple of years. So we have time to do an assessment to find out what our requirements really are. Does Admiral or General so-and-so really need a Gulfstream V? We don't know that. Maybe they could get by with a C-21. I want to be perfectly honest. I have used these aircraft. As Senators, sometimes we travel to remote areas of the world. Because of time requirements and when we have to go, we have to utilize these aircraft. Last year, Senator Reid and I utilized a C-21. We flew commercially to Jakarta, Indonesia, and then we flew a C-21 from Jakarta to East Timor. There were no commercial flights we could take over there at that time. Then we had to fly back. Then I went in that up to Okinawa, Okinawa to Shanghai, and over to Japan, all on routes that would have been very difficult commercially to do. This is a C-21. You are cramped.…”