When defense hawk Norm Dicks says he has “no faith today in the U.S. Air Force,” you begin to understand just how entrenched the fight over Boeing’s lost tanker bid is becoming.

The Sixth District’s Democratic congressman is not the only member of the Washington delegation decrying the Air Force’s decision to award a $35 billion contract for the next generation of aerial refueling tankers to an Airbus consortium.

Sticking up for the home team is, after all, practically a job requirement for politicians. Washington’s U.S. Sen. Patty Murray in particular went on a tear soon after the announcement last month, raking the Air Force for its decision and denouncing the award to a team of Airbus builder European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., and Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman as a threat to national security.

But in recent days the baton seems to have passed to Dicks, who is doing his best to keep Airbus and the Air Force on the defensive. Like Murray, he contends the Air Force manipulated the procurement process and that the Airbus consortium won’t be able to deliver.

Dicks vows to “fight this thing every step of the way,” and he means every step. At a recent pro-Boeing rally in Washington, D.C., Dicks said he would use his position as vice chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee to try to eliminate funding for the tankers.

The veteran defense appropriator is venturing into a political minefield. As Dicks knows, Congress has never used the power of the purse to override such a major procurement decision.

John Young, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official, has warned that such a move could set a bad precedent. “It is going to be dangerous to set aside valid source selections on a political basis,” he said. “Do we have the California delegation kill a program because the Georgia delegation won? I don’t know where this stops.”

The Pentagon, of course, wants to get on with building the badly needed refueling tankers. But Young’s concern is valid. Boeing and other federal contractors in Washington could be vulnerable if Congress begins making a practice of blocking lucrative federal contracts by way of the budget process.

Congress does have an appropriate oversight role in this case, as Dicks contends. Members of the Washington delegation have raised policy and military questions beyond the scope of the review being conducted by the Government Accountability Office. The GAO report, due in June, will assess only the fairness and legality of the bidding contest.

Dicks and company will have to make a compelling case that the Air Force was disingenuous in its dealings with the tanker bidders – and that it has ordered up a plane that is so inferior that it risks crew safety, operational ability and national security.

It’s difficult to believe that the Air Force blew it that badly, knowing full well that awarding such a massive deal to an Airbus team would be controversial. The standard of proof has to be set very high if Congress is going to go where no Congress has gone before.