One small step for reform

Hooray !!!! There was a bitter fight in the Senate over F-22 fighter planes. The military and Secretary of Defense Gates and President Obama all say we have more than enough. But some senators with ties to the military-industrial complex insisted that we buy more, and they got it stuck into the military appropriations budget. Obama threatened to veto the whole bill if it had that in it.

So it was a showdown and a proxy vote on breaking the power of the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address.

Senators Carl Levin and John McCain sponsored an amendment to strip the F-22 funding, and it passed by 58-42.

It was an important win for Obama, who threw his whole weight into defeating it. Perhaps it will be the beginning of some sanity in the DoD budget. It's big enough without selfish senators sticking in their pet projects.

Now if he call only pull off a good health care reform bill the same way.

Ralph