Senate Votes Down Funds for F-22 Jets

The Washington Post
By R. Jeffrey Smith: July 21, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/21/AR200907...

The Senate voted Tuesday to kill the nation's premier fighter jet program, embracing by a 58-40 vote margin the argument of President Obama and his top military advisers that the F22 is no longer needed for the nation's defense and a costly drag on the Pentagon's budget in an era of small wars and growing counter-insurgency efforts.

The decision was a key policy victory for Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who has been campaigning against the plane since April as a centerpiece of his effort to "fundamentally reshape the priorities of America's defense establishment and reform the way the Pentagon does business -- in particular, the weapons we buy, and how we buy them," as he put it in a Chicago speech last Thursday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/21/AR200907...