Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act of 2007

Floor Speech

PUBLIC SAFETY EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE COOPERATION ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - May 14, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

REFUELING TANKERS

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, when our constituents make decisions about big purchases such as buying a house or buying a car, the first thing they do is consider how much money they have to spend, and then they shop for the best quality they can get for the most reasonable price for the item that best meets their needs. When the Government makes a purchase, they expect it to follow that same sort of analysis, whether it is buying a pencil or jet engines. But that is not what our military did when it made its decision to buy the next generation of refueling tankers from Airbus instead of from Boeing.

Compared to Boeing's 767, Airbus's A330 is massive. The simple truth is that a bigger plane is going to be more expensive. The bigger plane the Air Force wants to buy is going to burn more fuel, it is going to take up more space, and it is going to require more people to maintain it. But our hangars, our runways, and our ramps today are all designed for a much smaller tanker.

I also have serious concerns and questions about how much Airbus's tanker is going to cost in fuel and personnel and maintenance. In the months that have passed now since the military announced it had selected Airbus for this massive contract, I have repeatedly asked the Pentagon whether it considered how it will pay for the extra costs of a much bigger plane. I have been astounded that no one has been able to answer my questions. In other words, the military said it wants to spend more than $100 billion to buy bigger planes, but it has no idea where it is going to put them, it does not know who is going to maintain them, and it does not know how we are going to pay to operate them. That makes no sense to me. I am very concerned about how much this decision is going to cost us, and that is why I have come to the floor this afternoon. Let me explain why I am troubled about this decision.

First of all, we do not know what the possible military construction costs might be for this purchase. It is estimated that these planes are too big for many of our hangars and that they are too heavy for many of our runways and our ramps. These tankers I am talking about are the backbone of our military. These refueling tankers make our global Air Force possible. Today, they are stationed around the world. So we are not only buying airplanes we can keep anywhere, the tanker has to be able to take off and land from almost anywhere in the world.

The new tankers are supposed to be a replacement for our current fleet of medium-sized Boeing KC-135s. But compared to our current tankers and compared to the 767, the Airbus plane the Air Force has decided to purchase is massive. Airbus's A330 is 32 feet longer than Boeing's 767. The Airbus A330's wingspan is 41 feet wider. The A330 weighs about 20 percent more than the Boeing plane. Our military experts have said they think the A330 will be able to operate on only about half of the airfields the Boeing 767 can use--about half of our airfields. That means some of our infrastructure in this country and across this globe is going to be torn down and refitted to accommodate these new planes they have decided to buy.

Secondly, oil and gas prices are a major factor of the cost of operating a refueling tanker. I am very concerned because a larger plane is obviously going to burn more fuel and cost dramatically more over the lifetime of these planes. In fact, because the Airbus A330 is larger and heavier than the Boeing 767, it is going to burn 24 percent more fuel. That means that fueling planes the size of the A330 will cost $30 billion more over the lifetime of this plane. That is astonishing when you think that the initial cost for this contract is $35 billion. Fuel alone is going to double the cost of these planes. Americans are up in arms today about the cost of gas for their own cars. How do you think they are going to react if our Air Force chooses to use their tax dollars, American tax dollars, to fuel massive airplanes when there is a cheaper option available?

Third, the larger A330 is going to require bigger refueling and ground crews. Because buying a larger plane means it will not be able to use standard-size military pallets, the military, in making this purchase, is now going to need more personnel and airmen to load and unload every A330 tanker.

Finally, these larger planes are going to cost the military more to maintain. Not only will the A330 simply need more maintenance over its lifetime, larger crews are going to be needed to work on them. Because the planes are bigger, they are going to have to be packed in closer at our bases, and packing them in closer is going to make maintaining and getting them off the ground more dangerous for our airmen and airwomen.

Now, I have been asking some pretty tough questions about how we got to this point, how the Air Force chose the Airbus plane over the Boeing plane, because it does not make sense to me that we would send this contract overseas when we have the capability and the right plane right here at home.

I have specifically asked about the military's construction costs. At four hearings now, four hearings in the last 3 months, I have asked our military officials whether they can tell me if they did an analysis of the potential construction costs of buying these larger planes before they reached their decision. Do you know what. I was shocked by their answer. It was: No. No. No. They did not do an analysis of how much it would cost for these larger planes. That means the Pentagon launched a major contract to replace a plane that we will have for decades that is going to cost us billions of dollars, but apparently it never did a complete, independent analysis of the potential military construction costs of buying that much larger plane.

I am concerned that even though I have asked for an estimate of these costs and even though several of my colleagues here in the Senate and the House have asked for the same information, we do not have an answer.

I first asked Air Force Secretary Wynne about these costs on March 12. I asked him: What will be the associated costs for our military construction budget, and can these Airbus planes fit in the hangars we have today? That is what I asked. At the time, Secretary Wynne could not answer me. He only said to me that the RFP did not indicate any size. So I asked again on April 24, this time with two Pentagon officials, Comptroller Tina Jonas and Under Secretary of Defense Wayne Arny, and they said they were not part of any decisionmaking process and could not comment. So on May 8 and then again today, I asked what the cost of this larger tanker would be for the National Guard and Reserve. Today, the Guard promised to get back to me with an answer. Well, I hope they do.

I am extremely frustrated that we cannot get this information. We are talking about spending billions and billions of taxpayer dollars, and we are talking about a decision that affects our global military power. I am baffled as to why the Pentagon did not do a top-to-bottom analysis of every aspect of this very expensive decision. ``I don't know'' is not an acceptable answer when we are asking American taxpayers to foot the bill for purchasing these planes.

Now, this process has been flawed from the start. As a result, it is now being appealed to the GAO. But regardless of the GAO's findings, I think we, as Members of Congress, as representatives of the American people, should be very concerned about the way the military reached this decision. No family would buy an 18-wheeler if all they needed was a station wagon. And the military should not be buying a jumbo jet that is extremely expensive when what it really needs and what it has told us it needs is an agile refueling tanker. It is common sense.

I think we need some real answers about why the Pentagon believes this decision is worth the taxpayers' money. I hope our colleagues will join with me in demanding that we get that information before we make a mistake that will cost us billions of dollars that we cannot afford to waste.

I yield the floor.

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