Andrew Zajac
A watchdog group frequently critical of Bush-era GOP policies offered a stout defense of Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain for his opposition to a deal to that would have given a multi-billion dollar contract for Air Force re-fueling tankers to Boeing Corp.
McCain set the stage for last week’s uproar over the award of a huge tanker contract to a consortium that includes France-based Airbus by helping kill an earlier deal that would have handed the work to Boeing. The Air Force re-bid the contract and, in a major surprise, picked the consortium headed by Northrop Grumman and Airbus SAS subsidiary EADS.
A group of Democrats led by Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. John Murtha ripped McCain for blocking the initial award to Boeing in an article in today’s New York Times.
Murtha, Illinois Democratic Rep. Rahm Emmanuel and others said McCain was allowing jobs on a U.S. military project to go to Europe.
But Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) stuck up for McCain:
“By attacking Senator McCain, who happens to be the Republican presidential nominee, congressional Democrats are playing politics with billions of taxpayer dollars,” CREW executive director Melanie Sloan said in a statement. “Senator McCain was one of the few people to take on the original Boeing tanker deal and Representative Murtha and his colleagues should have been supporting McCain’s investigation at the time. Those who criticize Senator McCain over this are rewriting history.”