House panel seeks to reauthorize Defense Production Act
A House Financial Services subcommittee on Wednesday was expected to approve a bill to reauthorize the 53-year-old Defense Production Act, which has helped the Pentagon and many other federal agencies ensure the availability of electronics components and other industrial resources that are crucial to emergency preparedness and response.
"Although enacted in 1950, the act provides statutory authorities still relevant for the national defense in the 21st century," Ronald Sega, the Pentagon's director of defense research and engineering, told members of the Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade and Technology Subcommittee during a hearing before the scheduled vote on the measure.
The act allows the president to take certain steps to quickly deliver needed products and services to the armed services. The law also authorizes the use of financial incentives, such as loan guarantees, to encourage private companies to produce sufficient numbers of needed items. During the Persian Gulf war in 1991, the law helped ensure war-fighters' access to computer equipment and other supplies, according to the subcommittee.
Sega said a key component of the law is Title III, which provides the president with "unique authorities" that are used to establish and maintain domestic industrial capacities that are needed to deliver advanced systems to war-fighters.
Sega said Title III also is used to transition emerging technologies to war-fighters. He noted that in fiscal 2002, for example, the program helped to ensure the availability of critical radiation-hardened microelectronics components for the military's strategic missile and space systems. "Without Title III, it is likely we would have lost this critical production capability," Sega said.
The law also enabled the Transportation Security Administration to expedite the production of explosive-detection technologies and communications systems for more than 400 commercial airports last year, according to David Paulison, director of the preparedness division at the Homeland Security Department's Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate.
"Since [Sept. 11, 2001], we have seen the effectiveness of the Defense Production Act in reducing the nation's vulnerability to terrorism," he said.
The Bush administration has requested a five-year extension of the statute, which is set to expire Oct. 1. But congressional Democrats favor a three-year extension, in part because lawmakers have yet to measure the impact of the new Homeland Security Department, said Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, the panel's ranking Democrat.
Maloney added that a five-year extension would put the law's next expiration "in the middle of the highly charged political climate of late 2008."
The subcommittee adopted compromise language to reauthorize the program for four years. "I think this is an appropriate period for reauthorization, both to ensure that it will not expire when it is most needed ... and also so that Congress can study the need for modernization of the act outside the reauthorization framework," said subcommittee Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y.