(Washington, D.C.) - Citizens Against Government Waste today released its preliminary analysis of the Senate version of the fiscal year 2010 National Defense Authorization Act.  In this year’s version, there are 429 projects worth $8.6 billion.  Some of the biggest porkers in the bill were Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) with 48 projects worth $231,250,000 and Senate Armed Services Committee member Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) with 20 projects worth $136,090,000.

The following are some egregious examples of pork that members of the Senate added to the Defense bill:

• $1,814,000,000 by Senate Armed Services Committee members Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) for F-22 aircraft and program requirements.  As Winslow T. Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information in Washington and defense industry analyst Pierre Sprey explain, “Not a single F-22 has flown in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It would be foolish to deploy them since there is no enemy air force to fight against.  To send F-22s as a bomber – at three times the operating cost of F-16s that are already bombing over there – would be just another drag on the war effort.”
• $438,900,000 by Senate Armed Services Committee members Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for the F136 Development Alternate Engine Program directed to Rolls-Royce GE in Indianapolis and General Electric in Lynn, Massachusetts, Evendale, Ohio, and Madisonville, Kentucky.  Even though the White House has threatened to veto any defense bill with funding for the engine and the Pentagon has refused to request funding for it, the three senators still added the money.  According to the Government Accountability Office, funding the unwanted, unnecessary alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter would cost at least $7.2 billion.
• $9,300,000 by Senate Armed Services Committee members Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) for the DDG-51 hybrid propulsion system.  According to a July 2005 Congressional Budget Office study, the DDG-51 is more “expensive, in terms of cost per ton of light-load displacement” than the Navy’s current DDX destroyer program.
• $4,500,000 by Senate Armed Services Committee member Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) for Dengue fever research and malaria vaccine development. 

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