Haley Stevens: “the Senator from Texas started his comments about this subject with the phrase ``if'' we need these planes. That is the…”

“the Senator from Texas started his comments about this subject with the phrase ``if'' we need these planes. That is the point of departure, as far as I am concerned, from those who oppose what we have done to start leasing planes. The tankers that we are replacing in the lease program, the 767s, have reached over 42 years of age. Senator Inouye and I have talked to pilots throughout the world who are flying our planes, and we found that, to a great extent, these planes are spending more time in the depot for maintenance than they are spending flying. The cost of maintaining a plane that old is irrelevant to the subject of what we are spending on these new planes. That doesn't figure in on the CBO. If you save money from maintaining a 42-year-old airplane, that doesn't count toward what it costs you to lease a plane to take its place. Now, we have an unquestioned need for these planes. As I said last night, I cannot imagine that, in the time when I was an Army and Air Corps pilot, anyone would have dared offer me a 1902 plane to fly in World War II. But that is equal to what we are doing now. We are not only offering it, we are forcing our people to fly planes that are, for the most part, older than the pilots who are flying them. It is costing us more to maintain them than the planes are worth. It is because of the failure of the Congress to face up to the problems of replacing our aging systems that we face this tremendous bow-wave of costs in front of us.”