Posted by Tina
"Flying Miss Nancy" Investors Business Daily
Washington: The Democrat-controlled House wants to buy nearly $200 million worth of private jets so lawmakers and a few high-level bureaucrats can travel in style. We truly have an imperial Congress. ** Just last week Washington announced it would cut $100 million from the federal administrative budgets and acted like that was some big achievement. Now this week we learn that about the same time those cuts were made public, the House OK'd the purchase of the private jets. ** The taxpayer money the House plans to spend is to be used to buy three Gulfstream G550s at roughly $65 million each. These are long-range business jets with large, palatial interiors and three temperature zones. Company literature says the "impeccably equipped cabin" of a G550 offers "best-in-class comforts" and can be configured "with up to four living areas."
BANG...ZOOOOOOM....!!!
HT: Jackie Gleason
Ah, count on the IBD to run an opinion piece that mischaracterizes the situation, ever so slightly.
First, the allocation for the planes was squirreled away in the Pentagon budget who mostly uses the planes ... it's a wonder anyone turned it up ....
From an AP report in the LA Times:
"Among the members of Congress who fly on the planes is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who generally flies Pentagon aircraft between Washington and her home in San Francisco. The Pentagon began supplying the planes to her predecessor as Speaker, Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., as part of beefed-up post-Sept. 11, 2001 security steps.
But Pelosi generally flies commercial on political and personal travel such as a trip Thursday between San Francisco and Denver in which she flew first class, accompanied by a security agent."
We can't have the woman getting mugged, now can we?
Oh why not Libby? It might just insert a little reality into the speakers pampered highfalutin' life.
IBD is right on the mark. Later in the piece: "Congress isn't short of hypocrisy. Most of the Democrats and their environmentalist allies are reflexively opposed to private jet travel because of its excessive carbon footprint. Or, at least, they are opposed to private jet travel for others. ** Neither does it recognize irony. CEOs of the Big Three automakers were excoriated for traveling in their private jets last year to testify in Washington."
Also, the LA paper perhaps missed this part of the story as reported by NewsMax:
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/house_buys_jets/2009/08/05/244219.html
“The House has approved nearly $200 million for the Air Force to buy three elite jets for transporting members of Congress and other top government officials. ** The Air Force had requested one Gulfstream 550 jet, which cost about $65 million. But the House Appropriations Committee added another $132 million to the 2010 Defense appropriations bill for two more jets, and "specified that they be assigned to the D.C.-area units that carry Members of Congress, military brass and top government officials," Roll Call reported.”
This weekend Speaker Pelosi will enjoy dinner and cocktails with the big donors of her party at her fashionable San Francisco home followed by a fun filled junket the following day to the wine country. Many of the people she serves and many that voted for her are out of work and/or out of a home. Does she not notice…or is she just that cold and insensitive?
And what about you Libby...no suggestions that she get herself a bike and make do with less? Or is it really just OK with you that "some pigs are more equal than others?"