Rep. Floyd Spence; Backer of Pentagon

U.S. Rep. Floyd Spence, a Republican congressman from South Carolina who was a determined advocate for the Pentagon’s funding requests, died Thursday at a hospital in Jackson, Miss. He was 73.

Spence, who had represented a district with strong military connections since 1971, had undergone surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain about a week ago.

He had been hospitalized since late July for treatment of Bell’s palsy, a facial nerve disorder. In 1988, Spence underwent a double lung transplant--he was one of the longest-surviving recipients of the procedure--and he had a kidney transplant last year.

Spence was chairman of the House Armed Services Committee from 1995 until January, and at his death was chairman of its military procurement subcommittee. He was a senior member of the Committee on Veterans Affairs.

In the post-Cold War 1990s, he grew more determined to defend the military establishment and oversaw influential reports that depicted a lack of military preparedness.

He added a provision to the 1996 defense authorization bill for a commission to explore the threat of a missile attack on the United States. The commission, eventually chaired by current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, found that nations such as North Korea would pose a threat to the United States within five years. Its findings are considered crucial to the debate about scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Spence often spoke out for increases in military funding and against base closings.

“Either we accept our role as the sole global superpower and . . . provide our military with the associated necessary resources, or we decline this difficult responsibility,” he said last year. “Continuing to attempt to fulfill our superpower responsibilities on the cheap is simply no longer an option.”

Floyd Davidson Spence, a Columbia, S.C., native, was a 1952 graduate of the University of South Carolina and a 1956 graduate of its law school. He was a champion athlete in high school and college, and edited the South Carolina Law Quarterly while in law school.

He was a Korean War veteran and served in the Navy reserve from 1947 to 1988, when he retired at the rank of captain.

He practiced law in West Columbia, S.C., from 1956 to 1970, most of the time serving in state politics. In 1956, he was elected as a Democrat to the state House of Representatives. He served until 1963, losing his seat in 1962 after switching party affiliation--two years ahead of U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond. He was a Republican in the state Senate from 1967 to 1971, rising to minority leader.

Survivors include his second wife, Deborah Ellen Williams Spence; four sons from his first marriage, David, Zack, Benjamin and Caldwell; a brother; a sister; two half brothers; a half sister; and nine grandchildren.