Russ Feingold: “This amendment asks that the Defense Department, within 60 days, issues a report to tell us which of the three planned…”

“This amendment asks that the Defense Department, within 60 days, issues a report to tell us which of the three planned jet fighters should be terminated because of the obvious problem that we don't have enough money in the procurement budget to have all three of these--the F-22 of the Air Force, the F-18E/F of the Navy, or the joint strike fighter that is being planned as a commonality plane for three branches of our armed services. The GAO, CBO, many military experts, and others agree that it is not possible for us to afford all three of these, and it is also not an answer, as the QDR suggests, to simply reduce each of the three, because the problem is that the unit cost of each plane is so high that at the lower number of planes that are produced, you don't get the savings. This is what happened with the B-2 bomber. We are facing a train wreck with regard to this, and we need some guidance from the Defense Department about which of the three should go, if that is what we have to do in order to continue to balance the budget.”