WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday voted to stop spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an alternate engine for the military’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The main engine is partially built at a Pratt & Whitney plant in North Berwick.

Both of Maine’s House members, Democrats Chellie Pingree and Mike Michaud, voted in favor of axing the alternate engine, a move the lawmakers say ultimately would save $3 billion.

The amendment to strike this year’s $450 million allocation for the alternate engine passed by a bipartisan 233-198 vote Wednesday, over the objections of GOP House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, whose district is near a plant where work is carried out on the second engine.

“I’m glad that Democrats and Republicans got together to end funding for the second engine for the F-35; it was wasteful, unnecessary and practically no one in the military wanted it,” Pingree said. She called the vote “a victory for common sense.”

Michaud said the alternate engine was “an example of government spending that leaves most people scratching their head.”

House GOP leaders hope to pass the overall bill, which aims to cut more than $61 billion from federal spending through the end of the current fiscal year, later this week. But the Democratic-led Senate likely will make changes, and the alternate engine could yet retain its funding.

A Pratt & Whitney spokesman said about 100 of the roughly 1,300 workers at the North Berwick plant are currently assigned to the main engine program. That would ramp up to more than 500 manufacturing and engineering jobs when the engine is in full production.

If Congress protects the program to build a second engine at an equal production rate, some of those North Berwick jobs would be lost, according to Pratt & Whitney. The North Berwick plant manufactures a half-dozen main engine parts, including outer air seals and low-pressure turbine blades, according to Pratt & Whitney.

The alternate engine, which is being built by General Electric and Rolls Royce, has had powerful backers. Among them is Boehner, whose district is near a Cincinnati-area General Electric Aviation plant helping build the alternate engine.

Opponents note that the Pentagon itself says the second engine no longer is needed. 

Washington Bureau Chief Jonathan Riskind can be contacted at 791-6280 or at:
jriskind@mainetoday.com