The new Pentagon budget passed through Congress like a greased pig, with bipartisan support (National View: “ Disappointments abound in 2022 Pentagon budget, ” Dec. 25).
Its $768 billion in spending includes $25 billion worth of ships and planes which were not asked for. Five F-15EX jets are reportedly part of this. But isn’t that the plane plagued with huge cost overruns — and the Air Force said it didn’t need?
Are we preparing to start another war somewhere? Are we going to transform another government into a replica of American “democracy?”
You may be assured that your representatives in Congress, both GOP and Democrats, voted for this bill. Why? Well, first, not all of the money goes to the Pentagon. Vast amounts go to our ubiquitous defense contractors. Do the names Honeywell and 3M ring a bell?
Why couldn’t some of these contractors retool to build spacecraft for NASA instead of ships or planes that we don’t need? We get a lot more out of space exploration than we got out of our “glorious “ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would hope people would write their congressional representatives to encourage this.
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Kenneth Johnson
Cloquet
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