Cheney Issues Warning on Defense Cuts : Pentagon: He tells senators that exceeding White House proposals could eliminate millions of jobs. Several lawmakers echo that concern.

The Bush Administration warned Friday that cutting defense spending by substantially more than the $50.4 billion proposed by the President could cost the economy millions of jobs and would seriously damage America’s defenses.

The Administration launched an offensive on several fronts. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney warned that rival proposals by some lawmakers to cut $50 billion to $150 billion more over the same five-year period proposed by the White House “are simply too steep and too dangerous” and would “end up destroying” the nation’s military forces.

“If we try to reduce the force too quickly, we can break it,” Cheney said. He also admonished lawmakers not to repeat mistakes the United States made after World War II and the Korean War, when the armed forces were slashed below the point of readiness.

“Today, we face again a fundamental choice,” Cheney said. “We can make the investments required to maintain the strategic depth that we have won . . . or we can fail to. . . .” If military threats arise again, he said, the nation will wish it had spent the money.

At a breakfast meeting with reporters, Vice President Dan Quayle predicted that lawmakers would back away from demands for larger cuts once they became aware of their impact on jobs. “When they start talking about cuts beyond what the President has proposed . . . you start getting into serious job loss,” he said.

Armed Services Committee members said they received packets from the Pentagon outlining how many jobs might be lost in each state or congressional district if Bush’s proposed cutbacks were exceeded.

The panel held its initial hearing on the President’s proposal Friday and generally did not take issue with it, suggesting that the committee is not likely to stray too far from the Bush plan when it votes on a defense bill later this spring.

Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) generally echoed Cheney’s views, complaining that some proponents of far deeper cuts seem to have based their proposals more on “the latest public opinion polls” than on how much actually can be cut without damaging U.S. defense efforts.

“None of these approaches, in my view, is a rational way,” he said. “While some of the traditional threats to our national security have lessened or gone away, this does not mean the world is no longer a dangerous place or an uncertain place.”

Nunn and several others on the panel also voiced concern that cutting the defense budget too deeply could cost as many as 2 million more jobs--both among military personnel and civilian defense workers--at a time when the economy is in a slump.

“I hope that those who are proposing we go much further will also understand what’s already coming down the pike,” Nunn said. “These are very sobering figures for all of us who are anxious to stimulate . . . economic growth.”

Proposals to cut more than Bush is requesting abound in Congress this year.

Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) has called for $100 billion in total defense spending cuts over the next five years while Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) has proposed $210 billion worth over seven years and Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.) has proposed $120 billion over four years.

Kennedy told the defense secretary Friday that “we need to go deeper” than the President’s reductions, “and we can afford to do so.”

“It is inconsistent for the President to claim we won the Cold War and then reduce defense spending only to normal Cold War levels when we face other urgent needs,” Kennedy said. “Either the Cold War is over, or it is not,” he said. Kennedy wants to spend at least part of the so-called “peace dividend” on domestic programs.

Nevertheless, some Armed Services Committee members, apparently worrying about the possible impact on employment, appeared receptive to Cheney’s arguments.

Two Republican members, Trent Lott of Mississippi and Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire, both expressed concern that Bush might be going “too low, too fast” in proposing even $50.4 billion worth of cuts over the next five years.

“I’m very concerned about what that’s going to do to the military force and the defense industry in terms of jobs,” Lott told Cheney. Referring to reports that even Bush’s proposed defense cuts would cost some jobs, Lott said: “That’s scary.”

Cheney argued that even though the Cold War has ended, instability in the former Soviet republics still poses enough of a threat that the United States must be prepared for virtually any eventuality.

“The possibility of an economic and sociopolitical train wreck that would yield a very ugly regime in Russia cannot be wished away,” he said. He warned that a collapse of the democratic experiment in the former Soviet republics could lead to remilitarization there.

Cheney also urged lawmakers to rescind some $7 billion in previously appropriated defense funds that he said were forced on the Administration for programs that it did not want, ranging from the V-22 Osprey aircraft to extra F-14 and F-16 jet fighters.

“Congress has directed me to spend money on all kinds of things not related to defense, but mostly related to electoral politics,” he said. “We shouldn’t waste the taxpayers’ money.” He called such expenditures “ridiculous.”

The Armed Services Committee hearing Friday was the first that any panel in Congress has held on the Administration’s fiscal 1993 defense budget. Cheney was accompanied by Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The defense secretary is scheduled to appear before the House Armed Services Committee next Thursday.

Times staff writer Douglas Jehl contributed to this story.