Cheney Proposals a Blow to Ft. Worth Contractors : Defense Cuts Hit Wright’s District Hard

While the effects of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney’s scaled-down defense budget would be felt by defense contractors nationwide, some of the hardest hits would fall on the district of embattled House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.), long the most powerful proponent of that region’s defense businesses.

On Tuesday, Cheney confirmed the worst fears of workers for some of the Dallas-Ft. Worth area’s major defense contractors, announcing that he has proposed canceling a futuristic Marine Corps aircraft called the V-22, discontinuing an Army helicopter program named AHIP and delayed production of the Air Force’s stealth bomber.

The proposed reductions would help Congress and the Administration close the federal budget deficit. But the cutbacks also could mean the loss of as many as 10,000 jobs at Ft. Worth’s Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. and at LTV Aerospace & Defense Co. in Grand Prairie, just outside Wright’s district.

Lobbying Effort

In past years, such recommendations would bring appeals from the district and the prospect of a lobbying effort by Wright and other influential Texas delegation members to get the funding restored.

But this year, as Wright battles to retain his speakership in the face of ethics charges, industry and congressional sources say that he may not be able to mount a strong campaign.

“He may not have time now (to fight to overturn the decisions), because he’s trying to save his own bacon,” said Bennie Walters, a representative of the Ft. Worth chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Look to Others

Walters, whose union represents some of the production workers affected by the cutbacks, said that union workers probably will pin their hopes on other Texas Democratic lawmakers such as Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and Reps. Marvin Leath and Charles Wilson, the latter two members of the House Armed Services Committee.

Added one Democratic congressional aide: “Sure, there are a lot of jobs in his district (to worry about), but there’s only one job that really matters to Wright this year.”

Wright could not be reached for comment.

In anticipation of Cheney’s proposed defense cuts, lawmakers who represent hard-hit Long Island, N.Y., already had directed their attention by Tuesday to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) in an effort to overturn Cheney’s decisions.

Washington-based defense budget analyst Gordon Adams, noting that terminations of the V-22 and AHIP programs pose “a double-barreled problem for Wright and the Texas delegation,” predicted that Cheney’s V-22 proposal would touch off “the second battle of the Alamo.”

While the Speaker regularly has sent Aspin his own list of home-district priorities, he has maintained an unusual silence about the matter in the week since the cuts were first rumored.

Wright has had clashes with Cheney in the past. Cheney previously served as the House Republican whip, and after one bitter partisan budget battle in October, 1987, the mild-mannered Wyoming lawmaker angrily referred to Wright as “a heavy-handed s.o.b.”

Cheney, however, insisted that considerations of military need and cost reduction guided his cuts. The termination of the V-22 and the AHIP alone is projected to save taxpayers more than $10 billion over the next five years.

“I don’t know how we shoehorn it in,” said Cheney, who added that older helicopters could do the job almost as well.

At the same time, Cheney left Wright one potential opening.

“If I had money to put back into the budget--if somebody came along and said, ‘Here’s $2 billion a year . . . how do you want to spend it?’ the V-22 would be right at the top of the list of priorities,” Cheney said.