John Danforth: “Well, today at our hearing, we had as a witness, a vice president from Boeing. And because this statement has been made…”

“Well, today at our hearing, we had as a witness, a vice president from Boeing. And because this statement has been made so frequently about how the aerospace industry has been subsidized, I put the question to the vice president from Boeing: Is it correct; is the defense budget, in effect, a subsidy for the commercial aerospace industry? Is NASA a subsidy? And the witness said flatly that the answer to that was no. He was pressed on that answer, and he said that he could not think of any use that the defense spending or NASA has given to the commercial aerospace industry. The argument that the aerospace industry has been a beneficiary of the largess of the Federal Government is the argument that has been made by the Europeans in defense of Airbus, and it is a bum rap. It is simply not the case. Our aerospace industry is not, in fact, on the same footing as Airbus is with the Europeans. The Europeans have conducted an aggressive policy of subsidizing research, development, and production of aerospace.”