Snap Fact #206 - President Obama Motivated the Senate’s Decision To Eliminate the F-22 Fighter Jet Program!

With the support of President Obama, the Senate voted to eliminate F-22 Raptor fighter jet program in November, 2009 in order to help balance the budget. Before the Senate came to this result, the President already had warned that he would veto the bill if Congress added the projected $1.75 billion to produce more F-22 Raptor aircraft. 

Although F-22 is one of the best jet fighters in the world, the Senate and President Obama believed that it would be unnecessary to waste this much money on national defense. "At a time when we're fighting two wars and facing a serious deficit, this would have been an inexcusable waste of money. Every dollar of waste in our defense budget is a dollar we can't spend to support our troops or prepare for future threats or protect the American people," he said.

The decision to abort F-22 production was not simply a financial based whim. The F-22 had been long in development and even though it looked like a good product on many levels, it had a history of unresolved defects and problems that made its performance questionable and put its brave pilots at risk. The plane had the highest accident rate of any jet in service and was undermining the health of the pilots.

In addition, the F-35, also produced by Lockheed Martin which was look at as the next generation plane has run into perhaps insurmountable problems as well The program has cost almost a trillion dollars thus far with no end in sight. No wonder the president is insisting on closer scrutiny and control on these runaway boondoggles that waste valuable time and taxpayer dollars and have produced unusable products.