A rare picture of the F-35 in flight
Of all the proposals that Obama unveiled in last week’s State of the Union, the one that immediately caught my attention was his proposal to make the first two years of community college free for everyone. That struck me as smart thinking and cost-effective policy — experience has proved that investing in education always pays off in greater economic growth, boosting national competitiveness, higher wages, etc. And the president’s proposal could be achieved for only $60 billion over a decade, peanuts by Washington standards. (For you former English majors out there, that’s $6B a year.)
Of course, Republicans rejected Obama’s proposals out of hand, writing them off as more examples of his runaway tax-and-spend liberalism, even as they called out Obama for ignoring education. Sen. Lamar Alexander seemed to be particularly mired in the GOP reality-denial field and reflexive Obama bashing: “I would think the president in his last two years would actually want to accomplish something. And if he focused on trade and education; cybersecurity; fixing ‘No Child Left Behind,” and making it easier to go to college [emphasis added], all those are areas where we can get some agreement,” he told the Times. Huh? Perhaps the distinguished gentleman from Tennessee was listening to a different speech than the rest of us
To put that $6 billion annually for community college in perspective, the U.S. currently spends about $23 billion a year on various agricultural subsidies, the vast majority of which ends up supporting large industrial farms and agribusiness.
And that projected $60 billion outlay over a decade is milk money compared to the $400 billion the Pentagon will spend in coming years to acquire 2,400 copies of the F-35 Lighting II (A.K.A. “Fighting Turkey”) stealth jet-fighter, which a Rand Study concluded “can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run” and has been grounded no less than 13 times since 2007 because of persistent engine problems. The trouble-plagued F-35 is widely referred to as the most expensive single weapons program in history. Depending upon the service variant, the price of the F-35 ranges from $150 million to more than $225 million per plane; that is merely the production cost, furthermore, and does not include the money spent on research and development and testing, or the cost of actually operating, maintaining and upgrading the aircraft once it enters service, which is projected to be $1.5 trillion during the F-35’s lifetime.
In the long-run, which program do you think will ensure America’s future security and prosperity: Putting more people in college classrooms, or acquiring a fleet of hyper-expensive “hanger-queens?” The answer to me is clear.
Brave New Whirl 