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House Armed Services leader tours WPAFB

Leader pays visit amid possible defense cuts.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, left and Congressman Mike Turner talk to the media Saturday Dec. 3 at his Dayton headquarters about the effects of the super committees failure and how it will affect WSAFB.

Jim Noelker House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, left and Congressman Mike Turner talk to the media Saturday Dec. 3 at his Dayton headquarters about the effects of the super committees failure and how it will affect WSAFB.

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By Ben Sutherly, Staff Writer 1:06 AM Sunday, December 4, 2011

DAYTON — With Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Ohio’s other military installations at risk of losing 7,000 jobs due to federal cost cutting, U.S. Rep. Mike Turner said Saturday the defense industry has already borne a disproportionate share of federal spending cuts.

Turner said he invited U.S. Rep. Buck McKeon, R-California, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, to tour the base with him Saturday to familiarize him with some of the latest work going on at the base, including the capabilities of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center; the Air Force Research Laboratory; and the Air Force Materiel Command headquarters. It was McKeon’s second trip to the base.

The $500 billion in cuts are triggered by the failure of a bipartisan congressional committee to agree on how to cut spending by $1.2 trillion during 10 years. The defense cuts, which could start affecting wide swaths of the base’s work force in the latter half of 2012, are in addition to $450 billion in military spending cuts that President Obama has already directed.

Turner and McKeon noted that while defense accounts for 20 percent of the federal government’s overall budget, that sector of federal spending was targeted for 50 percent of the budget cuts in the first round of cost-cutting this year.

With the nation borrowing about 40 cents of every dollar it spends, McKeon said voters have made clear to elected officials that the federal government must get its “financial house in order.”

But the cuts in defense spending would be unprecedented, and the first time such cuts have been planned while the nation is at war, he added.

“This is not the time to be cutting national defense,” Turner said.

When asked for specific alternatives to more cuts in defense spending, Turner offered none.

McKeon said the country is on track to cut 200,000 military personnel, and up to 300,000 civilian jobs. The reductions in defense spending also would ripple to contractors, resulting in the loss of another 1 million or so jobs. McKeon said that the national unemployment rate could climb from 8.6 percent to more than 10 percent.

The cuts “would have major, major impact on our economy, aside from the fact that it would weaken significantly our ability to carry out all the missions that the military carries out,” McKeon said.

Turner, R-Centerville, and U.S. Rep. Steve Austria, R-Beavercreek, are gearing up for a primary battle in the race for a newly drawn congressional district that includes part of Montgomery and Fairfield counties, and all of Greene, Fayette and Pickaway counties.

Turner voted against a bill that linked raising the government’s debt ceiling with reducing the deficit by $2.3 trillion during the next 10 years. Austria voted for it.

Austria on Oct. 28 hosted U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, at the base. Culberson is the chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs.

Austria noted he is the only MILCON subcommittee member from Ohio, and will have a seat at the table in deciding which military construction projects should be funded and which should be delayed or eliminated with current federal budget constraints.

Turner is chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces.

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