Note: Is Pork More Popular Than the President? The Case of the F-22

ABC’s Z. Byron Wolf reports: What do President Obama, John McCain, former President Bush and the Pentagon all agree on?The F-22. It’s your money. A ton of it. The government has spent more than $65 billion over all on the F-22.And even though no one directly involved with national security seems to want to spend any more on the plane, Congress is on its way to allocating another $1.75 billion in order to keep the jobs of people who build it.How’s that for a bailout?The government has built 187 F-22s at a cost of $65 billion, even though the plane is not used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he doesn’t want any more of the planes. But that didn’t stop members of the Armed Services Committee, many of whom have F-22-reliant jobs in their states, from voting 13-11 to inserting some more funding in the defense policy bill.Leading that charge has been Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-GA, who says the F-22 does in fact meet a real national security requirement, it’s just that the Pentagon is trying to trim its budget. “It is regrettable that the administration needs to issue a veto threat for funding intended to meet a real national security requirement that has been consistently confirmed by our uniformed military leaders,” said Chambliss in a statement last month when he successfully inserted the funding into the bill.President Obama said he’ll veto the bill if it includes money to build more of the planes. Both the Chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, and the ranking Republican, Sen. John McCain, on that committee agree. McCain has offered an amendment to strip the $1.75 billion that was added to the bill by other Senators.But it is not at all clear that they have the votes to strip the funding.Senators spent two days on the Senate floor considering the amendment before it was withdrawn by Majority Leader Harry Reid Wednesday morning.Levin pledged to bring the amendment back after Senators vote on another contentious issue – enacting federal penalties for hate crimes against members of the LGBT community.The F-22 vote was delayed because not all Senators would agree to vote on it. Instead, it seems likely that it will face a procedural cloture vote in the future.In the mean time, Levin and McCain will look for more votes to strip the funding.