Will Reason Prevail?: House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) is on board, if not leading, the bandwagon to look for cuts in the federal budget to pay for this year’s hurricane disaster relief, which, he says, “has dwarfed all previous national disaster assistance packages.” Speculation abounds around the beltway on which programs will get cut—and big-ticket defense programs like the F/A-22 Raptor are high on many lists. In a counterpoint to those who claim we must cut, cut, cut, Tom Nugent, writing for the National Review Online, says, “We’ve been here before, … [and] the concerns of the budget-deficit hawks didn’t pan out.” He does not believe the “Hooveresque prescription of spending cuts, postponed tax cuts, and higher taxes” proposed by budget conservatives is at all necessary to pay for Katrina.
Anduril and General Atomics will develop their Collaborative Combat Aircraft for the Air Force, beating out Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, the service announced on April 24. But any of the non-selected companies can compete to actually manufacture the eventual design, the Air Force said.