[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 55 (Wednesday, March 29, 2017)]
[House]
[Page H2523]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            THE POLITICAL CLASS AND THE REST OF THE COUNTRY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Budd) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BUDD. Mr. Speaker, you can divide this country into two classes 
of people, not Republican and Democrat but the political class and the 
rest of the country. The political class is doing better than ever.
  Eleven out of 20 of the richest counties in America are in the D.C. 
metro area. For every dollar the average family in D.C. earns, the 
average family in Davie County, where I live, earns 55 cents.
  The political class is alive and doing well for themselves. On the 
other hand, those who are not oriented to government--doctors, auto 
mechanics, waitresses, bartenders, factory workers--are still earning 
exactly what they did 10 years ago. I am not the first person to point 
this out, but I want to speak about a textbook example of how this 
dynamic plays out in reality.
  I am referring to a recently announced $418 million arms deal between 
the U.S. and Kenya. It is for 12 airplanes that are essentially armed 
crop dusters. There is only one slight problem with the deal, the 
defense contractor that was chosen to fulfill the sale doesn't even 
make these type of airplanes. They have never done it before. In fact, 
there is an extra $130 million built into this deal to design a whole 
new airplane.
  IOMAX USA, a service-disabled, veteran-owned small business in my 
district, makes these airplanes. They have been doing it for 7 years. 
They have got 50 of these airplanes in the Middle East. These planes 
have dropped more than 4,000 bombs on ISIS. They are the only U.S. 
manufacturer of this type of aircraft.
  They were not even considered for the deal, which was awarded without 
competition. Nobody got a chance to bid. Nobody knew about it, except 
for the company that got it and the bureaucrats who were involved.
  That is how the D.C. area got so wealthy. If you know the right 
people and you have the right lobbyists, you get awards like this from 
the Federal Government without competition. It doesn't matter if you 
don't even make the product, they will give you some extra money to 
design it from scratch if you know the right people.
  IOMAX, a small business just like the millions of others in our 
country, doesn't have those connections. The giant defense contractor 
involved in this deal does, and so they get the money. Something is 
wrong with that picture.

  The problem lies with a secretive acquisition unit within the Air 
Force called Big Safari. Now, I don't say ``secretive'' lightly.
  At one point in 2013, Big Safari's commanding officer told a 
reporter: Don't be angry or upset when your Freedom of Information Act 
gets turned down; that is just they way we do business here at Big 
Safari. And the commander's words were true.
  I asked for information on this, and they turned me down saying that 
the information was sensitive, but unclassified, and for official use 
only. I asked them 19 questions, and they answered only four of them 
having to do with the very basic elements for the deal that were 
already public.
  Under that secrecy, Big Safari doles out billions in government 
contracts. I imagine it makes things convenient for when Big Safari 
employees go to work for the same companies to which they direct these 
large defense contracts, which we have found that they do with some 
regularity. You don't even have to go to a different building, in some 
instances. We have got a confirmed case of a Big Safari employee 
awarding a contract, quitting, and then going to work on the same 
program with the same company he has just given the contract to.
  The forgotten men in this equation are the employees of IOMAX, mostly 
veterans, mostly blue collar, who have to compete against a $13 billion 
defense contractor and a $4 trillion Federal Government that appears to 
have forgotten impartiality.
  We need to shine the light on this deal with congressional oversight, 
and we need to ask ourselves who exactly the Federal Government is 
supposed to be working for, the country or for the political class.
  Mr. Speaker, we need to fix this. It is a symptom of a very serious 
disease that our democracy cannot long survive.

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