Aspin Demands Painful Pentagon Swap : Defense: The House Armed Services Committee chairman wants to shut down the B-2 and other systems as the price for avoiding personnel cuts.

A key congressman Monday demanded the virtual cessation of production of the B-2 Stealth bomber and three other of the Pentagon’s prized weapons systems as the price for his approval of a budget adjustment requested by the Pentagon.

The Pentagon has asked for congressional permission to shuffle funds among various budget accounts, saying adjustments must be made in order to avoid massive layoffs of U.S. servicemen and women.

But on Monday, Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said that if the Pentagon wants to readjust funds so that the personnel budget is protected from across-the-board cuts, it must “clearly establish . . . that military people are a higher priority than hardware.”

In a letter to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, Aspin said he would approve the budget adjustments only if the roughly $920 million needed to avoid layoffs was taken from accounts set aside for the B-2 bomber, the “Star Wars” missile defense program, the Navy’s Seawolf attack submarine and the Army’s experimental light helicopter program.

“Taking money out of these programs will hurt, but that was the point” of the across-the-board cuts ordered earlier this year under the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit-reduction law, Aspin wrote.

Aspin’s proposal is certain to escalate the tension between the Pentagon and Congress over how quickly the ranks of the armed forces can be reduced. It also will confront Cheney with a difficult choice between saving cherished weapons and protecting the jobs of soldiers, sailors and airmen.

Cheney is to meet today with Aspin and other House and Senate leaders whose approval is key to the Pentagon’s plans. He declined through his spokesman to comment on Aspin’s proposal.

“We want the reprogramming, and we’re willing to talk,” said Defense Department spokesman Pete Williams.

Cheney, seeking to avoid cuts of as many as 70,000 personnel, has aggressively lobbied for permission to take funds out of other budget accounts to use for personnel spending. While he has not identified which budgets he would prefer dipping into, he has consistently and forcefully defended the weapons now targeted by Aspin.

The military services have said that if they do not have Congress’s approval for the proposed budget maneuver by May 1, they must begin laying off military personnel, delaying promotions, reducing enlistments and blocking transfers.

Aspin had previously threatened not to bring the measure before his House committee. That refusal amounted to a veto, because House and Senate rules require that to shuffle funds from one account to another, the Pentagon must get the approval of the defense appropriations subcommittees and the Armed Services Committees of each chamber.

Aspin opposed the action on grounds that the Pentagon was “using servicemen and women as pawns in a game to protect favored weapons.”

If Cheney accepts Aspin’s conditions and takes all of the savings from the funding that remains for the four weapon programs, defense and congressional sources said that they could be reduced to sustenance funding for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

Of the $2.2 billion the Pentagon has left in its coffers for the four weapons programs, about $2 billion has been earmarked for “Star Wars” and the B-2.

For the “Star Wars” program, the cuts could mean cancellation of planned research into technologies designed to intercept ballistic missiles and their warheads in space. That would almost certainly delay the Defense Department’s plan to present President Bush with options for the deployment of limited missile defenses in space by late 1993.

The Northrop Corp. was slated to build two B-2 bombers and spare parts in 1990, and to conduct crucial tests of the plane’s ability to elude enemy air defenses.

If Cheney taps the B-2 account for the needed personnel funds, Northrop may have to discontinue production of the second plane and delay further testing. Either move could further weaken congressional support for future B-2 spending at a time when the $75-billion program is under intense scrutiny.