(Washington, D.C.) – In response to today’s hearing on the Boeing tanker lease deal, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) President Thomas A. Schatz sent the following letter to members of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Projection Forces urging them to oppose the arrangement:

As the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Projection Forces prepares to hold a hearing on the recent Air Force contract agreement to give Boeing $21 billion to lease 100 767 re-fueling tankers, the one million members and supporters of Citizens Against Government Waste want you to be aware of our strong opposition to this enormous waste of taxpayer dollars.  We urge you to oppose this expensive and unnecessary arrangement.

Despite testimony from both the General Accounting Office (GAO) and the Congressional Budget Office stressing the additional cost of leasing as opposed to directly purchasing tanker aircrafts or upgrading the 127 existing KC-135E tankers, the Air Force and Boeing have moved forward and finalized this deal.  Congress must stop it.

In the Boeing tanker lease contract, taxpayers will pay $21 billion, or $16.8 billion more than the $3.2 billion it would cost to upgrade the KC-135E tankers.  After 10 years, the government will have absolutely nothing to show for this investment as the planes will be returned to Boeing, just like a leased piece of furniture.  However, lives don’t depend on tables and chairs—they do rely on aerial refueling. 

An additional insult to taxpayers is that lease deals do not “count” against the Pentagon’s annual procurement budget, but the spending is real.  These particular leases are an irresponsible approach to procurement.  However, Boeing likes this type of arrangement so much, the company has expressed interest in more leases.

It should be noted that Boeing is currently being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Air Force after it was discovered to have possessed a leading competitor’s documents relating to bids for a project involving building rockets to launch spy satellites.  This follows a January GAO report which concluded that Boeing also used a competitor’s proprietary documents when developing their design for a missile defense contract bid.  In a recent confessional advertisement in major newspapers, Boeing claimed it made a mistake but really was an ethical company.

With a $350 billion deficit, we simply cannot continue to provide such a company with so much corporate welfare.  Having essentially admitted to corporate espionage, Boeing should be denied any leases as well as be debarred from federal contracts for a reasonable period of time.  We urge you to oppose the tanker lease deal, and ensure that taxpayers do not have to suffer from any similar arrangements in the future.

Citizens Against Government Waste is the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.  For more information, please visit www.cagw.org.