Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., charged Thursday the Senate is responding to the nation's defense needs by funding billions of dollars of unnecessary projects, including some in the homes of his GOP colleagues, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.
"My views on parochially oriented spending remain very much in the minority," McCain said in a statement on the Senate floor.
At the top of McCain's hit list was $465 million for the purchase of C-130J airlifters built in Marietta, Ga., in Gingrich's district. "The Air Force has far more C-130s than it needs," said McCain, a onetime Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict. "So our response is to spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year to purchase more."
McCain also trained his sights on the $450 million authorization for a $1.5 billion LHD-8 amphibious assault ship built in Lott's hometown of Pascagoula, Miss., and $3 million for research on a stainless steel double hull, also in Mississippi.
In all, McCain objected to $4.5 billion earmarked in the Senate-approved Defense authorization and appropriations bills. McCain also objected to $1.6 billion "shamelessly" earmarked in the Energy and Water Appropriations bill.
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