If anyone recalls there was major controversy and outrage over a huge $35 billion dollar contract going to Northrup Grumman instead of Boeing.

Now the contract is up for new bids with the political insider implications being for Boeing this time.

Frankly the entire thing is a joke. Yes Northrup Grumman is using Airbus and other European subsidized manufacturing, but Boeing also offshore outsources jobs, manufacturing.

The committee chairman, Rep. John P. Murtha, (D-Pa.), has threatened to withhold funding for the program.

“When I look at our banks being bailed out by foreign countries, when I see a rising trade deficit with China and the rest of the world and when my staff gives me a paper that shows our Treasury and other U.S. agencies owe China $922 billion in debt, I think it’s imperative that the Air Force explain to this committee its decision to award a major U.S. weapons system to a foreign company,” he said in a statement last week.

How about removing this facade of bids and simply award the contract to the company who will hire U.S. citizens, keep the manufacture in the United States to make the damn air tanker?

$35 billion dollars is a hell of a lot of Stimulus, especially to aircraft manufacturing. How about keep it just that simple.