Lawmakers bolster Boeing tanker deal

WASHINGTON – In what critics called a symbolic vote, the House on Thursday approved an amendment to boost a sagging Air Force plan to acquire 100 refueling tankers from the Boeing Co.

By voice vote, lawmakers amended a defense spending bill to require the Air Force to complete by next March 1 negotiations to purchase 80 Boeing 767 planes for use as refueling tankers. The Air Force plans to lease another 20 planes from Boeing in the $23.5 billion deal, which is stalled amid congressional criticism and a series of Pentagon reviews.

Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., sponsored the amendment, which represented a rare bit of good news for the beleaguered deal, which has been sharply criticized by members of Congress and independent reviews authorized by the Pentagon.

Dicks, a senior member of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, said that the House amendment “breathes new life into the effort” to acquire the tankers.

“The language in this bill actually requires – rather than simply allows – the Air Force to negotiate and sign a new deal for 767 tankers,” Dicks said. The vote marked the first time that either chamber of Congress had acted so positively in favor of the tankers, Dicks said.

But a spokesman for a watchdog group that has criticized the tanker deal said the House action would accomplish little. The amendment is almost certain to be defeated in the Senate, where leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee have vowed vigorous oversight, said Keith Ashdown, vice president of Taxpayers for Commons Sense.

“The House has become Boeing’s own version of the Alamo – it’s the last line of defense to a tanker contract that is overpriced and out of gas,” Ashdown said.

Dicks, who has pushed for the tanker deal for nearly three years, said the March 1, 2005, deadline would allow sufficient time for the Air Force to finish the negotiations and conduct a separate “analysis of alternatives,” as well an independent review being done by an outside panel.

“The need to begin replacing these 43-year old tankers remains as critical as ever” he said.”