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Merci, John McCain, for Killing American Jobs
By Isaiah J. Poole
The Campaign for America's Future
Friday 21 March 2008
The Campaign for America's Future has released a 30-second video [1]
that mocks Sen. John McCain's involvement in an Air Force tanker contract
that, as a result of McCain's intervention, has gone to the European Aeronautic
Defense and Space Company (EADS), the parent
company of Airbus, instead of American-based competitor Boeing.
It coincides with a trip McCain is making to France today to meet with French
President Nicolas Sarkozy.
This issue, fundamentally, is not about taking sides between Airbus and Boeing.
It's about taking a side for the American worker, which McCain is doggedly
refusing to do.
It is one thing to police the notoriously corrupt and favor-ridden military
procurement system. It is another to intervene in ways that tilt the scales
away from using American taxpayer dollars to support American jobs and America's
defense manufacturing capacity. And McCain has a long history of doing just
that.
McCain has repeatedly voted against bills that encourage defense contracts
to be awarded to American companies. In 1996, McCain voted to table an amendment
that required defense contractors to indicate on contracts what percentage of
the contract would be manufactured in the United States. The amendment would
have also required the Department of Defense to treat this as an important factor
when awarding contracts.
Moreover, in 2004, McCain proposed and voted for an amendment to allow the
Defense Department to waive "Buy American" requirements, opening
defense contracts to firms in seven countries that have a "declaration
of principles" with the United States.
McCain has been wresting with the Air Force over the tanker deal since 2001,
when he spotted a $30 billion earmark for Boeing in a defense appropriations
bill and argued that the contract should have been competitively bid. In 2004,
McCain again helped scuttle a contract deal and exposed improper dealings between
a top Air Force official and Boeing.
But the relationships that McCain has developed with lobbyists for Airbus [2]
cast a dark shadow over his good government image. Despite McCain's claim that
he never weighed in for or against anybody that competed for the contract, McCain
has received over $14,000 from EADS employees [3] - more than any other
member of Congress. In addition, many of McCain's top advisers lobbied
for EADS to win the Air Force contract. Among them:
- McCain's campaign co-chairman, Thomas Loeffler, who runs the Loeffler
Group lobbying firm, earned $220,000 working for EADS in 2007. Loeffler was
the McCain campaign national finance chairman when his firm was hired to lobby
for EADS.
- Susan Nelson, McCain's finance director, and William L. Ball III, were
also Loeffler executives working for EADS.
- Wayne Berman, vice chairman of the McCain campaign, worked for EADS through
another lobbying firm, Ogilvy Government Relations, where he is a partner. Ogilvy
earned $240,000 from EADS in 2007.
- Kirk Blalock, a national chairman of Young Professionals for McCain, and his
lobbying firm, Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, earned $320,000 from EADS in
2007, according to disclosure forms required by Congress.
- A co-founder of Oglivy Government Relations, John Green, is now the McCain
campaign's government liaison.
From his promotion of an anti-American worker legislative agenda to his intimate
involvement with EADS, McCain played an integral role in the Air Force's
decision to choose EADS over Boeing. Awarding the contract to Boeing would have
supported at least 44,000 new and existing American jobs. At most, EADS will
support around 2,000 American jobs [4], according to one military analyst.
Even McCain's Republican backers were astonished as his support of EADS
over Boeing. As McCain supporter Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., stated [5], "If
John McCain believes that Airbus or EADS is the company for our Air Force tanker
program, he's flat-out wrong - and I'll tell him that to his face."
And so should every American worker who doesn't want our defense jobs
shipped overseas.
Links:
[1] http://www.ourfuture.org/merci-mccain
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/us/politics/12tanker.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=McCain+Advisers+Lobbied+&st=nyt&oref=slogin
[3] http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iiW1J4iWjV71TzWJ0uAmi9yL-N0AD8VB329G0
[4] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23467526/
[5] http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/5603827.html.
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Researcher Molly Swartz contributed to this post.
Campaign For America's Future.
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