SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES
McGovern, Senator George
Swords into Plowshares by SENATOR GEORGE McGOVERN Secretary of Defense Robert S. Mc-Namara announced November 19 that ninety-five obsolete military installations, at home and abroad, would be...
...The Great Society will require both large-scale investment and intelligent effort...
...We should applaud, too, the efforts of President Johnson to direct excess military expenditures into the war on poverty...
...Countless communities have come to lean on the payroll of a shipyard, or an airbase, or a defense contractor...
...It is totally unjustified, and I shall challenge this decision vigorously," said longtime Georgia Senator Richard B. Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, when told that Hunter Air Force Base at Savannah would be closed...
...But we have given only a passing glance at the complicated matter of easing the transition from obsolete defense outlays to useful investments elsewhere in our society...
...Indeed, the recently-resigned Deputy Director of Defense, Roswell Gilpatric, has estimated that the defense budget may gradually decline so it will be as much as twenty-five per cent lower by 1970 than it is today...
...It is also a fact that the military art has become so complex that most members of Congress concede the Defense Department the benefit of any doubts concerning the efficacy or cost of its programs...
...After painstaking discussion and intensive debate, the proposal was reduced by twenty million dollars and sent to the House where it was bottled up in the Rules Committee for a year...
...We will need better job training and retraining opportunities...
...For these efforts he deserves strong public support...
...Many have been continued beyond the time when earlier studies indicated little real need for their operations...
...A year ago the President announced a cutback- of twenty-five per cent in the production of nuclear materials...
...To eliminate existing blight in the cities, another $100 to $125 billion would be required...
...The Secretary pointed out that not only will taxpayers save nearly half a billion dollars a year as a result of the closings announced in November but that the nation will actually have a stronger, more efficient defense force...
...Our annual fifty-billion dollar arms budget is the equivalent of the combined cost of all the Federal budgets of the New Deal from 1933 to 1940...
...Without doubt the finest Secretary of-Defense ever to hold that post, McNamara has worked tirelessly to effect needed economy measures in the armed services...
...Governor William Scranton protested that the closing of the Olmsted Air Force Base at Middleton was "absolutely devastating to the economy of central Pennsylvania...
...His military budget for the current fiscal year is a billion dollars below the previous budget—the first reduction in fifteen years...
...This installation will be closed in two years...
...The Defense Department has cooperated by permitting members of Congress to announce defense contracts or installations awarded to their districts...
...The 1,100 skilled Navy employes were hired by the company and sixty per cent more put to work...
...The former missile base now houses wood, paper, and shoe plants, fifteen smaller enterprises, and a municipal airport...
...A quick glance at the division of the budget pie demonstrates that what is chiefly responsible for the growth of big government and big budgets in Washington is not welfare but warfare...
...It would also recommend government monetary, credit, and other types of public policy related to the problems of transition...
...A defense installation involves far more than a direct source of jobs...
...Tax funds invested in a bomb stored in the defense stockpile make no further contribution to the economy...
...Swords into Plowshares by SENATOR GEORGE McGOVERN Secretary of Defense Robert S. Mc-Namara announced November 19 that ninety-five obsolete military installations, at home and abroad, would be closed, some quickly and others gradually over a period of years...
...the entertainment establishments, and the whole range of activities of the local community...
...The wise diversion of a modest portion of this talent into modern mass transit, water desalinization, air and water pollution abatement, and the updating of our educational and health institutions will enrich both our economy and our individual lives...
...We have devoted the best research and planning brains in the nation to building up our enormous defense system...
...The plant went on the tax rolls, providing still more benefit to the community...
...These in turn can lead to political pressures that could prevent the implementation of needed changes in our defense system...
...It faces me, as a Senator who represents the workers of the Black Hills Ordnance Depot and the merchants of Edgemont, South Dakota, who depend upon these workers as customers...
...We all want to make certain that the nation is strong enough to deter any conceivable aggressor...
...Thirty years ago we were allocating a third of the Federal budget for welfare purposes...
...But this is only part of the explanation for the eagerness of Congress to endorse military spending and to resist any proposals for cutbacks in defense outlays...
...We begin by applauding the steps that have been taken under the direction of Secretary McNamara to apply sound business management to the sprawling defense establishment...
...Senator from South Dakota, was formerly a professor of history and government...
...With even a modest degree of public and private planning, buttressed by government credit and assistance, the reduction of defense outlays can be a boon rather than a bane to the economy...
...Through local leadership and modest government assistance, Presque Isle has created 2,000 new jobs in private industry...
...Perhaps this situation is understandable, given our longtime preoccupation with the cold war...
...Reductions in defense outlays, even of modest proportions, as well as anticipated shifts in defense production, underscore the fact that conversion planning should now be going forward under a high priority schedule...
...These and other examples of close cooperation on the part of the local community, private industry, and the Federal government help point the way to sound public policy in the years of transition ahead...
...There are many inviting opportunities in which we can profitably invest resources freed by changing defense requirements, and, hopefully, by future disarmament agreements...
...Early in 1963, I watched the Senate deliberate for many hours on the Administration's proposed $120 million youth conservation program...
...we want it to function as a gigantic WPA responding to local and Congressional pressures all across the land...
...It has been predicted that the arms budget for the coming fiscal year, 1966, may carry another modest reduction, or at least no increase...
...Furthermore, the heavy concentration of research, scientific, and technical talent in defense has drained off skills and brainpower urgently needed in the civilian sector of society...
...It is no easy chore to take on the powerful "military-industrial complex...
...Place the label "defense" on a project and it will zip through the Congress with little or no floor debate...
...It may be a comparatively simple task to beat a sword into a plowshare, but it is not so easy for the skilled Brooklyn shipyard technician with twenty years on that job to become a water desalinization engineer in California or a computer operator in Philadelphia...
...Experience in some communities demonstrates that the closing of a military installation can be an opportunity rather than a catastrophe...
...More than two-thirds of the nation's research, scientific, and engineering talent is concentrated in the defense sector...
...We will need well-planned, government-assisted pilot projects by private industry to develop the most desirable plans for new schools, health centers, new traffic control systems, and even new cities and rural areas...
...Bases marked for phase-out have been carefully evaluated by qualified defense experts...
...They may require "mustering out pay," training, and other assistance designed to ease their transition...
...For years Congressmen have been running for office on the stated or implied claim that they could land defense contracts or military installations for their home districts and states...
...A pair of chicken feet was hung to another nearby sign reading: "This is all that the New York Naval Shipyard will be able to afford for Thanks (?) giving...
...This is a hopeful step, but a most inadequate one...
...It provides lucrative contracts, payrolls, jobs, and purchases in communities across the land...
...In addition to establishing modern accounting and cost-analysis procedures, he has closed or scheduled the closing of 669 unnecessary or obsolete military installations...
...Senator Jacob Javits called the closings "a disaster for the economy of New York," and Governor Nelson Rockefeller predicted "unemployment, suffering, and hardship for thousands...
...Moving in this direction, we will come to see that the elimination of excess arms spending does not mean "a day of infamy" but the dawn of a brighter, more hopeful day...
...In the Congress, many of the most vocal "economizers" are the biggest "spenders" when it comes to armaments...
...The next day, when the list of bases to be closed was revealed, a cry of anguish went up from coast to coast...
...The Day of Infamy, November 19, 1964" read one placard raised by angry workers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard...
...One readily sympathizes with the men and their families who lose their jobs as a result of defense shifts or cutbacks...
...This is not a future problem...
...Before he had even listed the installations, the Secretary received 169 telephone calls from alarmed Congressmen...
...Partly as a result of the interest aroused by this proposed legislation, the Administration has activated an inter-agency committee, chaired by Gardner Ackley of the Council of Economic Advisers, to undertake studies of the economic impact of defense reductions...
...Bill of Rights, with its invaluable college benefits for World War II veterans, can ease the shock of defense shifts and cutbacks...
...Under the leadership of Senator Joseph Clark, Pennsylvania Democrat, the Senate Subcommittee on Employment and Manpower held hearings last year and estimated the cost of meeting the country's urban and rural needs...
...These conversion problems are not only on top of us, but they are difficult to solve...
...Today, welfare's share has declined to seven per cent...
...For fifteen years the American people have devoted more than half of their Federal budget to military spending...
...The shutdown of a Snark missile base in Presque Isle, Maine, displaced 275 civilian employes in a small community...
...government real estate since 1940 has been in the military sector...
...Composed of top level representatives from appropriate government agencies, the commission would have responsibility for developing blueprints of public and private needs in which all resources, including manpower, no longer needed for defense could be invested...
...But resources will not be transferred to meet these opportunities unless government, on all levels, joins in a coordinated effort with private initiative...
...He served as director of the Food for Peace program in 1961-62...
...The issue is clear: Do we want the Defense Department to meet the military needs of the nation in a businesslike manner, or do...
...We will need to improve the quality of our educational and vocational efforts at every level...
...To these communities the thought of losing this economic stimulus is enough to send strong reverberations all the way from the local chamber of commerce to the nation's capital...
...Said New Hampshire's Governor John King of the decision to close Portsmouth Naval Shipyard: "I cannot bring myself to accept it as final...
...Yet, those who talk the loudest about the dangers of Federal spending and big government still have their guns trained on nearly every aspect of government except military expenditures...
...Rural programs of conservation, water development, and recreational development on public lands would require an additional twelve billion dollars a year for ten years...
...Ever since the 1950 outbreak of hostilities in Korea, we have allocated approximately ten per cent of the nation's gross national product to military purposes...
...Many of our scientists, engineers, and technicians who have been absorbed for years in arms production, are, in a sense, cold war veterans...
...It was an experience much the same as that of nearly a year ago when the Secretary announced the closing of a number of other military installations...
...At York, Pennsylvania, a machine company bought—for $9.6 million— an ordnance plant the Navy planned to close...
...Serious conversion planning could be the process by which defense cutbacks lead to unparalleled opportunity...
...Just to keep pace with population growth during the next twenty years, the Subcommittee found, public and private programs costing from f500 to $700 billion will be needed in urban areas...
...The kind of imaginative thinking which produced the G.I...
...There is an urgent need for a Congressional mandate in support of a serious, sustained effort by a fulltime staff devoted entirely to the problems and challenges of channeling excess defense resources into civilian needs...
...Everywhere, business, labor, civic and Congressional spokesmen joined in hastily assembled local action groups to protest the loss of installations...
...But how can any reasonable citizen or government official seriously argue that the Defense Department has an obligation to continue in perpetuity an expensive installation or contract that no longer contributes to the nation's defense needs...
...Defense workers and military personnel become good customers for the merchants, the realtors, the cafe operators, the barbers, GEORGE McGOVERN, U.S...
...The commission would work closely with state and local bodies and defense contractors to chart alternative jobs, products, and services needed by civilian society...
...In the absence of research, planning, and direction related to conversion, the results of declining defense outlays may be decreasing job opportunities, painful dislocations, wasted scientific and engineering talent, and economic hardship...
...A similar investment in the rehabilitation or education of a young citizen produces multiple dividends for society for years to come...
...Indeed, military expenditures are among the poorest of methods of strengthening the economy...
...It is also easy to appreciate the concern of the affected local business community...
...Any man not as tough and courageous as McNamara could not have withstood the barrage of protests, curses, and tears that greeted his announcement...
...The spectacular increase in Federal spending, employment, and U.S...
...That is why I have been urging for the past year and a half that the Congress establish, at the very highest level of government, an economic conversion commission to ease the path from arms cutbacks to constructive economic growth...
...On October 31, 1963, I introduced, with the co-sponsorship of several of my colleagues, a bill calling for the creation of such a commission...
...Assuming that the first alternative is the rational one for a great nation to follow, how do we insure its acceptance as a matter of effective public policy...
...it confronts us now in the anguished faces of Brooklyn shipyard workers, California aircraft engineers, and Boston defense technicians...
...But the fifty-billion dollar defense authorization whizzed through the Congress without a dissenting vote, after only a brief discussion on the Senate floor...
...Such an office should be functioning now...
...Defense is the nation's largest business...
...Funds would come from both public and private sources, and would finance such programs as housing, urban renewal, mass transit, highways, pollution control, hospitals, schools, other public facilities, and community planning...
...The backlog of urban and rural needs adds up to a staggering sum of forty-three to fifty-three billion dollars a year for ten years, then thirty-one to forty-one billion dollars a year for another decade...
Vol. 29 • January 1965 • No. 1
