Congress’ jet-buying plan astonishing]

How can members of the House of Representatives be so tone deaf and oblivious to irony?

The House had planned to spend $550 million to buy eight jets to enhance the fleet used by federal officials — not infrequently members of Congress — to travel the globe. The spending spree was to occur at a time when travel by House members is increasing rapidly. According to The Wall Street Journal, members spent 3,000 days overseas at taxpayer expense in 2008, up from 550 in 1995.

The Pentagon had requested funds to buy four jets — two new ones to replace two aging planes, as well two already in the fleet on a leased basis.

But members of the House Appropriations Committee decided that while they were at it, they might as well tack on two extra Gulfstream Vs — at a cost of $66 million a copy — and a couple additional business-class Boeing 737s, which go for about $70 mil each. The Defense Department not only didn’t ask for the planes, it really didn’t want them. In fact, a spokesman said the purchase would “take money from things we do need to fund and redirect it for things we don’t need. And, in a time of war, we just can’t afford that.”

After the plan was exposed by the Journal and others, the House quickly backed away.

But we remain dismayed, first, that lawmakers were willing to engage in such wasteful spending and, second, could be so oblivious to how it would play.

After all, some of those same members of Congress ridiculed auto executives for flying private jets to Washington to request federal bailout money late last year.

One New York congressman called it “a delicious irony.”

Irony, yes. But we don’t find anything delicious in travel-hungry lawmakers’ spendthrift ways.