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- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
- Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!ukma!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!rich
- From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
- Subject: SMOKE & MIRRORS ON THE POTOMAC?
- Message-ID: <1992Aug28.082316.18933@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
- Followup-To: alt.activism.d
- Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
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- Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 08:23:16 GMT
- Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Lines: 108
-
- POSITIVE ALTERNATIVES
- A Publication of the CENTER FOR ECONOMIC CONVERSION
-
- Published quarterly. Materials in POSITIVE ALTERNATIVES may be
- reprinted if this publication and the CENTER for ECONOMIC CONVERSION are
- credited and a copy is sent to CEC.
-
- ** Written 4:46 pm Aug 10, 1992 by dwalt in cdp:econconversion **
- SMOKE & MIRRORS ON THE POTOMAC?
-
- This spring has seen a sudden blossoming of new legislative proposals for
- conversion adjustment assistance in Washington. While policymakers'
- recent enthusiasm for dealing with the problems already created by
- defense cuts is very welcome, the current proposals raise many questions.
-
- Right now, Congress and the Administration are anxious to look good on
- the issue. To date, every version on the table uses the figure of a total
- appropriation of $ 1 billion for conversion, though both the House bill and
- a recent Senate task force proposal call for $ 1 billion over one fiscal
- year, while President Bush has suggested $1 billion over four years.
-
- In June, the House passed a conversion amendment to the Defense
- Authorization bill which allocated $180 million to fund jobs in math and
- science education for laid off personnel, $200 million for job training, and
- $100 million for state and local planning grants. $150 million was
- allocated for dual use technology development, on the stated grounds that
- this year such monies still have to be defined as defense spending in order
- to pass.
-
- In this House version, funds would be administered through the DoD via a
- new department created for the purpose. The bill was not released to the
- public before the House vote; even legislators did not get much of an
- advance look at it. By late July, the Senate may consider its own
- amendment to the Defense Authorization bill. Although it is still unclear
- what relationship the actual amendment will bear to the well researched
- proposal of the Senate Democratic Defense Transition Task Force, it is
- now clear that any Senate measure passed this year will be affected by
- continuing Budget Enforcement Act restrictions still in force until 1993.
-
- However, according to James Raffel, Research Analyst at the Washington
- based National Commission on Economic Conversion and Disarmament,
- Senator Mitchell and ten other senators have already put together a multi
- year proposal which they hope to put forward in 1993. It is expected that
- this proposal will include much that was in the Senate Task Force
- document, which calls for monies to be transferred to other federal
- agencies, such as Commerce and Labor, to fund worker retraining or small
- business and community transition. It also puts more emphasis on
- fostering civilian technology than does the recent House version.
-
- Congressional friends of conversion hope that the final House-Senate
- conference committee result will be a bill that embodies as much as
- possible of the task force proposal. However, that version is just a scant
- beginning of the kind of proactive planning and resource allocation needed
- to transform our economy's defense dependency into a vigorous civilian
- peace economy, as the authors of it acknowledge.
-
- Outside the conference committee, however, lies yet another obstacle. In a
- speech delivered in June to a Phoenix, Arizona veteran's group, President
- Bush laid out the outlines of his own conversion proposal. While he took
- the welcome position that the process of converting excess U.S. military
- capability to civilian uses "must be managed in a rational manner," his
- proposals were limited and poorly funded, by comparison with either
- current Congressional version.
-
- But should any conversion adjustment assistance law emerge intact from
- the obstacle course sketched here, further pitfalls lie ahead. If public
- concern for conversion adjustment gets blunted by the appearance of a
- quick and well-funded fix, the situation may frustrate our hopes of
- planning an environmentally sustainable peace economy for the T90s.
-
- In this time of fiscal crisis, $l billion for one year of aid may seem like a
- lot to a distracted public. The public may also not notice that the
- Administration has already successfully blocked or drastically delayed
- the implementation of the last piece of conversion adjustment legislation
- passed in 1990, when the price tag was a meager $200,000 million.
-
- Worst of all, the appearance of having dealt with the conversion problem
- could sap public energy needed for pressure to plan an accelerating series
- of interlocked defense cuts and conversion measures in the years ahead.
-
- The passage of the recent House conversion amendment occurred with
- little fanfare. At this writing, it remains to be seen what kind of public
- debate will be created by Senate or Presidential action. But whatever
- Congress and the President do this year, the process of matching further
- defense cuts with effective conversion law must work in tandem
- throughout the early T90s, or else it will all be smoke and mirrors.
- -- Susan C. Strong
-
- ** End of text from cdp:econconversion **
-
- ******************************************************************
- THE CENTER FOR ECONOMIC CONVERSION
- 222 View St., Suite C, Mountain View CA 94041
- Tel: (415) 968-8798 FAX: (415) 968-1126
- Email: bdelson@igc.org
- The CENTER for ECONOMIC CONVERSION is a non-profit public benefit
- corporation dedicated to building a sustainable peace-oriented economy.
- Founded in 1975, the organization serves as a national resource center and
- a catalyst for conversion planning. CEC provides educational materials;
- speakers; organizing assistance to conversion activists; technical
- assistance to workers, managers and public officials confronting military
- cutbacks; and research on conversion issues.
-
- Beth Delson, Editor; Michael Closson, Executive Director; Joan Holtzman,
- Development Coordinator; Marie Jones, Conversion Planner; Susan Strong,
- Senior Research Associate; Rosemary Wick, Office Manager.
- ******************************************************************
-
-