Scott Fitzgerald: “I understand that preliminary estimates suggest that buying no more than 80 tankers in a way that avoids lease-specific…”

“I understand that preliminary estimates suggest that buying no more than 80 tankers in a way that avoids lease-specific costs could save taxpayers as much as $5.3 billion over the Air Force's original proposal to lease 100 tankers. The anticipated savings under the compromise as described in Section 135 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 are very significant. The original proposal to lease 100 tankers was extraordinarily costly, and the compromise allows us to avoid those costs. For example, the original proposal would have had us pay $7.4 million per plane in private construction financing costs. The compromise provides for the Air Force to make progress payments to build the planes, and in so doing, to avoid this significant and unnecessary cost. One of the reasons that the compromise authorizes the Air Force Secretary to use incremental funding to buy no more than 80 tankers is to allow the Air Force to get the tankers it needs in a manageable way that protects taxpayers.”