Sam Brownback: “The Air Force's decision to award a new tanker contract last week is a crowning achievement, not for the Air Force or…”

“The Air Force's decision to award a new tanker contract last week is a crowning achievement, not for the Air Force or the United States but for Airbus and the Europeans. We were saying in our office, I wonder if in the future our young men and women going into the Air Force to fly these planes or to work on these planes are going to have to pass a test in French--``Parlez-vous francais?''--to be able to determine whether we can work on these aircraft. And to be able to get maintenance, equipment, and training, well, we are going to have to go to Europe to be able to do that. I do not think that is right. I also would like to say to my colleagues, I have been around this fight between Airbus and Boeing for a long time, and Airbus has subsidized itself directly into the commercial aviation market. They had zero market share 30 years ago. They started a European consortium called Airbus and EADS to be able to get at Boeing and into the commercial aviation market. They completely subsidized their way into it. Now here we go again. We are just now on the defense side of it.”