One of the members of Congress who is most outspoken against earmarking and discretionary spending finds something in her own state that falls into those categories—an airplane the military says it does not need.
Senator McCaskill says some of her focus now is controlling spending..”The only place that we can work on being fiscally responsible is, in fact, discretionary spending,” she says. She’s part of a group discouraging earmarking, a favorite target of hers that she calls “the best example of spending gone awry in Washington.”
McCaskill is disappointed Congress has refused to set up a special commission to enforce fiscal discipline. “That’s how we got into this mess, saying ‘yes’ to everybody and refusing to say ‘no.'” But what she will say “no” to is the Pentagon’s plan to stop buying C-17 cargo planes. Parts for them are made by about 900 Boeing workers in St. Louis. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the military already has too many of them. But McCaskill says it needs more. “I just can’t be part of that massive a job lost in this economy in my State,” she says.
MckCaskill says it’s more economical to build new C-17s than it is to update the older,less flexible C-5s.
She and Senator Bond have promised to fight for more government spending on a plane the Pentagon doesn’t want.
Listen to part of McCaskill’s conference call 8:18 mp3
