Misplaced priorities

Once again Uncle Sam is up against his self-imposed credit card limit, as the economy continues to sputter under the weight of Statism.

So in this time of belt-tightening, naturally our ruling class thinks it's appropriate to give the gift of shiny new fighter jets to would-be dictators:

Instability in Egypt, where a newly-elected Islamic government teeters over an angry population, isn't enough to stop the U.S. from sending more than 20 F-16 fighter jets, as part of a $1 billion foreign aid package.

The U.S. government ordered and paid for the fighter jets for Egypt's military as part of foreign aid for Egypt back in 2010, when Hosni Mubarak ruled. The fighter jets were supposed to be delivered in 2013, and delivery will go ahead as scheduled even though Hosni Mubarak has been removed from power and replaced by Mohamed Morsi, who led the Muslim Brotherhood before becoming Egypt's president.

We've been paying Egypt and Israel not to kill each other since the Carter-era Camp David Accords.  Those two countries, combined, receive approximately 1/3 of all U.S. foreign aid!  Regardless what past installments of that might have bought us--and history indicates it wasn't much--the recent changes in Egypt were a lost opportunity to void the arrangement.

Given the change of leadership--not to mention rhetoric--in Cairo, there's no reason the U.S. can't put the brakes on this.  It's not like we're breaking a contract--we paid for the things.  In fact, here's a great idea: why not use these to replace a squadron or so of OUR OWN Air Force's jets?  That service keeps sounding the alarm over the average age of its aircraft fleet.  

So how about it, Congress?  How about spending money on America for a change??