The House voted Wednesday to cut off funding for a proposed alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that the Defense Department refused.

Rep. Tom Rooney for Florida introduced an amendment to eliminate funding for the F-35 engines, and the measure passed by 233-198, the Pentagon and the Washington Post, said.

"After years of throwing good money after bad to fund the extra engine waste, the House finally voted to end this unnecessary program," said Rooney, according to Bloomberg News. "Today's vote sends a message to the American people heard his call for Congress to eliminate wasteful spending."

Although the House of Representatives, John Boehner, supported the effort, the amendment had bipartisan approval: 123 Democrats and 110 Republicans voted in favor.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, welcomed the decision as a victory "on the way to ensure that limited dollars to stop spending on defense programs unnecessary and unwanted."

Former President George W. Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he would oppose funding for the engine built jointly by Rolls Royce and General Electric. President Barack Obama in May, sai he will veto any bill that would provide money to build it.

The vote to kill the engine means that an additional $ 450 million would be saved, according to the Washington Post. The F-35 engine program supports about 1,000 jobs at a General Electric plant in Ohio, near the district of Boehner.