McAlester News-Capital, McAlester, OK

Local News

July 26, 2008

Congressional changes could have a big impact on McAAP, Jordan tells Rotarians

By Fred Turner

By FRED TURNER

Special to the News-Capital

After the November elections, an Oklahoma Democrat in the House and an Oklahoma Republican in the Senate will move up the seniority ladder to give Oklahoma the most political power in the Department of Defense “since Carl Albert walked the halls of Congress as the Speaker of the House,” Mark Jordan told members of the McAlester Rotary Club July 10.

The McAlester Defense Support Association held its first organizational meeting to offer civilian backing to the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant and the Defense Ammunition Center on July 15.

An official attending called it “a good start.”

Jordan told Rotary Club members that this area “desperately needs to organize and get prepared … to benefit from our political advantage.” Jordan gave a Rotary program on what the organization “could and should be,” at a July 10 meeting.

After the November elections, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, either will be president or will retire, Jordan speculated. And Sen. John Warner, R-Va., has said he will retire.

That will mean that Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., will move up in seniority and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., could, if the GOP takes back control of the senate, be chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., could move up in seniority. Boren and Cole both are already members of the powerful House Armed Services Committee.

Jordan said that the ammo plant was built during World War II by the Navy. There are 45,000 acres in the plant, which was built as a combination storage depot and ammo loading plant. It has been “the single largest contributor to the economy of McAlester,” during the 65 years from 1943 to 2008 Jordan said.

The economic impact in Fiscal Year 2008 is more than $150 million, and over the past eight years, totals some $1.5 billion.

The payroll for Fiscal Year 2008 was expected to be $114.325 million compared with $90.547 million last fiscal year. State and local contracts went from $4.16 million to $6.93 million in the last two fiscal years. The DAC went from $19.8 million to $24.1 million in economic impact.

However, security’s impact dropped from $5 million to $3.55 million.

U.S. Missile Industry contracts have jumped from $4.2 billion in 2002 to $9.9 billion in 2005.

The McAlester plant is the nation’s largest capacity explosive storage depot and has a proven work force. However, the “manufacturing world is moving to China” and Mexico, Jordan said.

The facility here has a relationship with the top defense contractors and overwhelming political advantage.

The top 10 Missile Defense Contractors from 2001 to 2004 were Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Computer Sciences Corp., BAE Systems, Sparta, L-3, Teledyne and SAIC.

However, it is not true in today’s economy, Jordan said, that “if you do things the way you have always done them, you will get what you have always got.”

Some defense work includes “long term legacy contracts” and some includes multi-year awards, which prevents them from being year-to-year contracts. Yet they are high paying jobs, often with outstanding benefits.

In addition, defense work is not subject to being shipped out of the U.S., Jordan noted. However, these rules could be changed, if we do not ask that they remain the same.

That is why we need to organize, and “hire some help” if needed to use our political advantage to keep our jobs at home, Jordan said.

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