Boeing kills American jobs

Boeing finally won a ten-year battle to build tankers for the US Air Force after their competitor, Northrop Grumman, dropped out complaining that the selection process was unfair, and thus Northrop won’t be providing 48,000 American jobs.

Northrop Grumman won the deal in 2008, but Boeing protested to the Government Accountability Office that the military had unfairly changed the specifications to favor Northrop Grumman. Before the 2008 deal was made, then-Washington governor Chris Gregoire said that Congress should investigate if Boeing lost.

Gregoire said that her protests against Boeing losing weren’t about politics, but that she thought politicians should get involved if Boeing lost.

“I just think we win if it’s done absolutely without politics… …If we don’t win, then I think there’ll be a lot of questions… …how could they not have gotten this?”

Indeed, a number of Senators and representatives, including those from Washington State, but none who had experience as military buyers, did complain when the American company Northrop Grumman won. 39 representatives sent a letter to Obama last year supporting Boeing.

Apparently those Senators were angry about the 48,000 jobs that the contract would have created had it stood.

Boeing’s lobbying website says that we need to support Boeing, because it will create American jobs, even though their victory will kill 48,000 American jobs that would have been provided by the American company Northrop Grumman. I say “kill” just because Boeing is pushing a strange bit of moral self-righteousness by saying that they will create American jobs when in fact both companies will.

Not that American jobs are what’s important about a tanker, anyway. And speaking as an American, I’m kind of confused about how basing a contract solely on American jobs, not on quality or cost, will help the American taxpayer.

Boeing originally won the tanker contract way back in 2001, but their contract was later canceled after a collusion investigation that resulted in a former-Boeing executive being sentenced to jail.

The EU has complained about the bidding process.

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Posted by mhblatt on March 11, 2010 3:51 pm

» Filed Under Barack Obama, Congress, Democrats, DoD, Government corruption, Government malfeasance/misfeasance, House, National Security, News, Politics As Usual, Senate, lobbyists, military

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Comments

3 Responses to “Boeing kills American jobs”

Michael Gross on March 12th, 2010 1:39 am

Just an observation from someone who has been watching the “Tanker War” from the beginning…it is best for all if all the facts are known before comments are made. And as to Boeing winning costing American Jobs…A recent study shows that building the Next Gen tanker here will create 60,000 American Jobs, a net gain of 12,000 jobs over the Northrup Grumman/Airbus bid. And as to politics, they were a factor from the beginning, as Northrup Grumman threatened to pull out after the first RFP didn’t fit the plane that they wished to offer, a certain Senator pushed the Air Force to modify the RFP to make room for Airbus, which they did. The GAO, investigating Boeing’s protest, found that the revised RFP was not given to Boeing, and thus Airbus won.
JPE on March 12th, 2010 1:59 pm

obama, gates, hicks, murray, tihart, and the unions yet again thwart the free market. boeing owns politicians; they cannot stand on their work. this is what’s meant by ‘crony capitalism’.
redc1c4 on March 12th, 2010 9:58 pm

first off, this is a side effect of the race to consolidate in the industrial base, and the push a few years back to allow NATO members to build portions of contracts that would be adopted by one or more members, so that they wouldn’t be sending all their hard earned hard currency over to the US, which ignores the cost the US carried of being the major contributor of NATO.

for all the down sides of the Boeing win, at least the A/C will be built here, as opposed to being an Airbus product, which the Euroweenies could interfere with anytime they wanted to gum up production.