Veterans, voters criticize Congressman C.W. Bill Young for swapping weapons contracts for campaign cash

Listen to the ad by clicking play arrow below:

Beginning Wednesday, a radio ad will air in the St. Petersburg, Florida district of a member of Congress who took more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from defense contractors and repeatedly did their bidding in a House defense subcommittee and on the House floor.

The ad features Mike Burns – a former US Air Force pilot and POW who spent years in the same ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison camp as Senator McCain – who calls on Congressman C.W. Bill Young to reject his campaign contributors and vote to end the F-22 Raptor fighter.

“This is one of the most worthless and unnecessary programs and we’ve spent 30 years dumping money into it,” Burns says in the ad, “I’m asking Congressman Young to vote against [the F-22]. Be a lion, not a gopher for Lockheed Martin.”

Congressman Young is one of a handful of Representatives who write the FY10 Defense Appropriations bill, which includes the F-22. He is also one of those appropriators that is the focus of a new report by USAction/TrueMajority that profiles the web of connections between powerful weapons manufacturers and House appropriators. The report, Putting the Pork out to Pasture, can be viewed at http://truesecurity.usaction.org/node/2