(Washington, D.C.) – On Thursday, July 16, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) will launch a multimedia ad campaign to educate taxpayers about the $7.2 billion in wasteful spending on an alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).  The campaign will include print ads in major newspapers in the nation’s capital; billboards in major cities around the country, including San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Chicago; and a HillTube video.  CAGW has been vigorously opposing the program since it first appeared as an earmark in the 2004 Congressional Pig Book.  The organization will also launch a new www.cagw.org/engine page on its website which features the ads, reports on the alternate engine, congressional testimony, and other resources.

“Even though the alternate engine has been opposed by Presidents Bush and Obama and the Pentagon, members of Congress have kept it alive with earmarks.  President Obama called for its termination during his May 6 press conference in which he promised to cut $17 billion in wasteful government spending, and threatened to veto defense spending bills that include funding for the engine,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “CAGW’s multimedia campaign will help make the American people aware that the engine is not only one of the biggest earmarks in the defense budget, it is also unnecessary and unaffordable.”

In the fiscal year 2009 Defense Appropriations Act, the alternate engine program received three earmarks for a total of $465 million.  They were among the 142 anonymous earmarks worth $6.4 billion slipped into the legislation.  This year, Congress has once again ignored the evidence, as well as a threatened veto, by adding $603 million for the program in the House version of the fiscal year 2010 Defense Authorization Act, and $439 million in the Senate version of that bill.

The alternate engine program has been the subject of several comprehensive reports that indicate that it is duplicative and unnecessary.  In 2007, according to CBS News, the U.S. Air Force and two independent panels concluded that the second engine is “not necessary and not affordable” and that the alleged savings from creating a mock competition “will never be achieved.”

The first print ads will run tomorrow in Politico and The Washington Post, and continue next week in CQ Daily, The Hill, and Roll Call.  Billboards or equivalent signage will follow next week, and will be up for a period of three months.

“The alternate engine not only qualifies as procedural pork, it is also a waste of money on the merits.  Taxpayers deserve to know that there are better ways to spend scarce defense dollars as the federal deficit reaches a record $1.8 trillion in this fiscal year, and the national debt soars to more than $11.5 trillion,” Schatz concluded.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.