THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 7, 1995 TAG: 9506070453
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
Newport News Shipbuilding's effort to get at least a share of the Navy's future submarine business probably will get a boost in the House of Representatives next week, but congressional and Pentagon sources said Tuesday that the battle is far from over.
As the deadline passed for lawmakers to propose amendments to a defense bill slated for debate in the House next week, it appeared there will not be a fight over the National Security Committee's plan to open sub contracts to competition after 1998.
Instead, the sources suggested, the Navy and Electric Boat of Groton, Conn., will concentrate on the Senate in their effort to have Groton designated the Navy's sole sub builder until at least sometime early in the next decade.
Rep. Herbert H. Bateman, a Republican from Newport News, and a group of New Englanders led by Connecticut Democrat Sam Gejdenson, filed competing amendments on the sub program Tuesday. But aides described the proposals as contingency plans, filed to preserve their right to fight on the House floor rather than in expectation that either actually will see a vote.
The House Rules Committee is to review the amendments today and set limits for the floor debate.
Bateman's amendment would let Newport News compete on all future sub work; Gejdenson's would permit competition only when the Navy needed to buy more than two subs per year. Even New Englanders acknowledge privately that in the GOP-controlled House, Bateman probably would win a showdown vote.
At stake are the jobs of thousands of Virginia and New England shipbuilders. Newport News, a Tenneco Inc. subsidiary that is Virginia's largest private business, employs about 19,000 people. Electric Boat, with major facilities in both Groton and nearby Quonset Point, R.I., employs some 15,000 New Englanders. The Navy says it wants to preserve both shipyards, the only two that can build nuclear-powered ships.
Electric Boat, which builds only subs, says that with the Navy now buying just one boat every two years, it must get all the work to survive. Newport News says it also needs some new sub work or it will be forced out of the sub business.
Electric Boat also is fighting for a Navy plan to build three Seawolf-class subs. The National Security Committee proposed ending the Seawolf program after two subs, both of which are now under construction in Groton.
The committee said that the second of those ships, the Connecticut, should be enlarged and that a congressionally imposed spending cap of $4.76 billion for the pair should be lifted. But Rep. John Edward Porter, R-Ill., has filed an amendment to preserve the cap. by CNB