Poor McCain, can’t seem to evade all the lobbyist landmines that keep cropping up in his path.
Democrats are taking fresh aim at Sen. John McCain’s role in the Air Force’s $40 billion tanker contract, saying he jeopardized thousands of U.S. jobs by helping steer the huge award to a European-designed competitor to Boeing Co.
[snip]
Now Democrats are armed with a surprising development: a government audit released Wednesday that has thrown another wrench into the already long-running saga of replacing the Air Force’s aging fleet of aerial refueling tankers. The report by the Government Accountability Office found that the Air Force’s process in granting the contract to a partnership between Northrop Grumman Corp. and its European supplier, European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., was riddled with errors.
The GAO didn’t mention politics, but the sweeping problems identified by the oversight group are sure to make the report a touchstone for Sen. McCain’s critics. The Democrats contend Sen. McCain pressured the Air Force to favor Northrop and EADS.
“Senator McCain helped steer a tanker contract to a European company for which seven of his campaign advisors and fundraisers then lobbied — a bidding process the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, is now saying was full of errors,” the Democratic National Committee said Thursday.
McCain’s alleged quest for accountability in government contracts is really about who pays John McCain most (or pays his friends and cronies most). In this instance, it seems as if Northrop Grumman paid more than Boeing did, or at least sooner.
More recently, he worked behind the scenes to press the Air Force to keep the bidding for the tanker fleet open to Boeing’s European rival. That’s given the issue bumper-sticker clarity for the Democrats: Sen. McCain tried to sell out an iconic American company, handing thousands jobs to France just as the U.S. economy was entering a tailspin.
The battle between the powerful senator and the world’s largest aircraft maker also shows why Sen. McCain is looked upon with suspicion by big business. The war with Boeing has raged since 2002, when executives first circulated a confidential congressional battle plan, calling in an email for “counter-battery fire, every time Sen. McCain attacks.”
Outside groups and Democratic-leaning unions have gotten into the act as well. An online ad made by an independent Democratic group, the Campaign for America’s Future, opens with a banner on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, hailing “John McCain, hero of France.” In French, with English subtitles, it thanks him “for helping the U.S. military choose a French company, Airbus. Tens of thousands of jobs for the French and thousands fewer for Americans.”
The real truth is there is a problem with government/military contracting procedures, and there is a ton of corruption, and a crap-load of no-bid contracts. However, McCain and his phony anti-corruption stance is laughable.
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