Who Resurrected the F-22?

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Last week the House Armed Services Committee approved, by a mere one-vote margin, more money for the F-22 fighter jet. (Too bad the plane’s not as invincible in the air as it is in Congress). This is one of the programs that the Obama administration most wants to cut, and so the vote was basically the committee’s way of collectively mooning Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his audacious suggestion that we should do something about the bloated defense budget.

Who are the lawmakers keeping the F-22 on life-support? All of the committee’s Republican members voted for extra funding for the planes, in addition to six Dems, all from states where some part of the F-22 is manufactured. Travis Sharp at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation has the full list here. And for more on how the Gates budget is faring on Capitol Hill, check out our special report on defense spending—first installment here.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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