If McCain is Maverick, does that make Obama Ice Man?

I would not presume to judge the relative merits of the actual military need for 60 more F-22 fighter jets, as the Air Force has requested. (NY Times story here.) However, if, as I have read, that one of the reasons for granting this request is the desire to avoid the layoffs that would result from discontinuing this program, I do not consider this an adequate reason, and particularly in light of the downsizing we are rightly requiring from the Detroit car manufacturers, would be especially hypocritical. We are requiring GM to be honest about its plans for the future and to eliminate unneeded, bloated product lines, possibly including Pontiac, Hummer, and Saab. This is just good business and will help them move forward, but we should be just as responsible running our own government.

We have opted to have defense contractors which are independent from the government and are required to bid on projects -- as we should -- but a necessary consequence of this is that a contractor will have to downsize when scarce resources are shifted from one project to another. If we wanted to conserve jobs, we could just have one supplier, who then we would place orders with, and then the workers would just be shifted from one project to another. We have decided against this approach -- again, rightly -- but there are consequences. Otherwise, we find ourselves with an ever-expanding list of government defense contracts, unable to cancel any of them, outliving their usefulness like so many congressional subcommittees.