House Orders Up Three Elite Jets
August 5, 2009
By Paul Singer
Roll Call Staff
Last year, lawmakers excoriated the CEOs of the Big Three automakers for traveling to Washington, D.C., by private jet to attend a hearing about a possible bailout of their companies.
But apparently Congress is not philosophically averse to private air travel: At the end of July, the House approved nearly $200 million for the Air Force to buy three elite Gulfstream jets for ferrying top government officials and Members of Congress.
The Air Force had asked for one Gulfstream 550 jet (price tag: about $65 million) as part of an ongoing upgrade of its passenger air service.
But the House Appropriations Committee, at its own initiative, added to the 2010 Defense appropriations bill another $132 million for two more airplanes and specified that they be assigned to the D.C.-area units that carry Members of Congress, military brass and top government officials.
Unbelieveable. Sorry, but members of Congress do you not need private luxury aircraft and least of all for short-notice travel. They can fly commercial. They ain't and don't need to be flying into hotspots. But, but even if they do, the military should be flying them anyway.
$60 million for a single aircraft to be modestly appointed for the government relative to the luxury outfitted private aircraft?? Bullshit.
I guess refurbishing GM & Chrysler's Gulfstreams and using them would have been out of the question
can't have Princess Pelosi jetting around in a used airplane, can we?
WacoFan wrote:Flying any airplane that you can hear the radio over the roaring radial engine is just ghey anyway.... Of course, Cirri are the Miata of airplanes..
Martyred wrote:Your politicians should be flown around in Ospreys.
ALL politicians should be flown around in those shit boxes
WacoFan wrote:Flying any airplane that you can hear the radio over the roaring radial engine is just ghey anyway.... Of course, Cirri are the Miata of airplanes..
