Hatch: Cutting F-22 was ‘feeble’ move

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) ripped the Obama administration and its Senate allies for passing an amendment to the defense authorization bill that stripped funding for the F-22 fighter jet.

Rhetoric regarding the F-22 ran high on Twitter leading up to the vote. On Tuesday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) dubbed the project a part of the “Military Industrial Congressional Complex.”

Hatch tweeted on Wednesday afternoon:

Yesterday’s vote on the F-22 was a feeble attempt to wrong mindedly cut our military spending and weaken our nation’s air dominance.

It will prove to be a mistake.

How could the President spend us blind for 6 straight months and then try and make up for it by cutting necessary defense spending?

Read my F-22 statement here: http://is.gd/1HVLB

Hatch linked his floor speech opposing the amendment in which he compared cutting the F-22 to U.S. mistakes after the Vietnam War:

…just as our nation unwisely disregarded the hard-learned lessons of how to fight counterinsurgency operations after Vietnam, the Defense Department seems poised to make similar errors by limiting our capability to defeat the air threat of today and tomorrow: the integrated air defense system.

The Senate approved the controversial amendment 58-40 on Tuesday.