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Those of you hungering for “bipartisanship” can rest easily. There’s one area of the national legislature in which folks regularly “reach across the aisle” to fashion cooperation and compromise: the feast of fat things that is the defense budget. For example, the determination to toss more money down into the money pit that is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, aka The Flying Swiss Army Knife, is as purely bipartisan as it is purely mercenary, as the
The Joint Strike Fighter Caucus is composed of 27 representatives—seven Democrats and 20 Republicans—who led a similar letter last year calling for continued spending on the F-35 program. The caucus was founded in 2011 to prevent F-35 budget cuts by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.), who was the House’s top recipient of cash from Lockheed Martin’s PAC and employees last cycle at nearly $198,000, and then-Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), whose top career contributors were mostly military contractors, including Lockheed Martin.