Stealth Caucus: Saving Jobs or Boondoggle?

On the morning of a crucial House vote, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Coronado) left his office with a scowl on his face, the likes of which his staff couldn’t remember seeing before. Inside his breast pocket was a list of Republican colleagues whose arms would need some old-fashioned twisting in the few hours remaining.

Later, on a bus returning to the Capitol from a memorial service for former Defense Secretary Les Aspin, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Rolling Hills) cornered a fellow California Democrat and got his vote.

The “Stealth Caucus” was at work--up to the last minute. For months, this bipartisan group of lawmakers had secretly plotted in the office of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands). Its mission: to keep alive government funding for the B-2 Stealth bomber.

Like the bat-winged fighter plane they sought to save from virtual extinction, the lawmakers stealthily glided their pet project to the House floor in mid-June without detection on the political radar screen, and delivered enough votes to keep the B-2 production lines open another two years.

The effort highlights the tricky nature of coalition building at a time of budget cutbacks, and shows how a vote affecting California can get some liberal Democrats to support more defense spending and split the usually united budget-cutting Republicans.

Under the B-2 plan approved by the House, $553 million is set aside to buy components for more B-2s until Congress decides once and for all whether to add 20 jets to the fleet at a cost of $30 billion. The 1992 Congress had voted to limit production to 20 planes.

*

“POOOORK!!!” opponents of the B-2 cried so loudly that they almost triggered a trichinosis epidemic alert.

This boondoggle of a bomber, they argued, is so expensive that not even the Pentagon wants it.

But one man’s pork is another man’s bread on the table. And with California getting another sharp kick in the belly from the latest round of base closings, the vote this month for the B-2 bomber and all of its millions of parts manufactured by 30,000 California workers was welcomed by B-2 supporters.

“It is absolutely way beyond pork,” said Lewis. “It’s an important asset that’s irreplaceable.”

The effort began months before. Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) had escorted a congressional delegation on a tour of Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, where the plane is built.

An out-of-state leader of the Stealth Caucus, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), whose district also produces parts for the B-2, lobbied for votes by arguing that America’s hero, Capt. Scott O’Grady, would not have been shot down over Bosnia if he had been flying--you guessed it--the B-2.

Even Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) changed his nickname from “B-1 Bob” to “B-2 Spirit Bob” and asserted that one Stealth bomber could have done the mission of a whole squadron used in a 1981 Israeli raid on an Iraqi nuclear reactor.

*

Oh, the ironies. Here is a Republican-controlled, budget-slashing Congress, cutting everything from education to welfare. Yet it overlooked the price tag on this one, noted Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich (R-Ohio).

Proponents argue the plane’s military value--it can jam enemy radar, carry bigger loads and fly longer than conventional aircraft without refueling. While they contend that no defense project is worth funding simply because it provides jobs, one cannot ignore the fact that since 1987, $3.2 billion in B-2 contracts has been doled out to Northrop-Grumman Corp. and 4,821 subcontractors in the state.

And then there are some Democrats, such as Los Angeles Rep. Maxine Waters, who frankly admits never having seen a B-2 she liked but who decided to vote with the Republicans and help bring home the bacon.

“The Republicans have been dismantling jobs and social programs and opportunities. The people in my district, particularly in Hawthorne, Gardena and Inglewood, are scared to death about the possibility of losing those jobs,” Waters said. “This is strictly a vote for jobs for somebody. . . . There’s no sense in me making everybody miserable.”

Oakland’s Rep. Ron Dellums, the ranking Democrat on the National Security Committee, was described by a staffer as “stunned” by the vote, particularly because Black Caucus members ignored his argument that the money could instead be spent on domestic programs.

Not so, said Waters and Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles), a longtime supporter of the B-2. Had the vote failed, they said, the deficit hawks would have swooped down and grabbed the money to balance the budget.

“Am I for doing another 20 [planes]? I don’t think so,” Dixon said. “But am I for keeping open the [production] capacity to build? I am.”

San Diego Rep. Brian Bilbray was well aware of the B-2-related jobs in his district and was pressured by Hunter to vote yes. Instead, the Republican stuck with his fellow freshmen who decided that a balanced budget was a higher priority.

“If we don’t do something about the budget right now,” he said, “we may not have the money to do the B-2 to completion.”