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Northrop Grumman ups the ante Northrop Grumman on Tuesday boasted about how many U.S. jobs would be created by the multibillion-dollar Air Force contract it and Airbus’s parent company won to build refueling tankers.
Northrop Grumman beat out Boeing for the contract, prompting congressional outcries that the decision will cost the U.S. jobs.
Initially, Northrop Grumman said that the contract would support about 25,000 jobs across the United States. Now, the company says it would support 48,000 direct and indirect jobs, 4,000 more than Boeing claimed would be supported if it had won the contract.
Northrop Grumman’s new public relations effort coincided with Boeing filing an official protest regarding the contract with the Government Accountability Office. The GAO has 100 days to make a decision.
“In the early stages of the proposal process, we employed a conservative model developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce to estimate the number of jobs our offer would generate,” said Paul Meyer, Northrop Grumman vice president of Air Mobility Systems and KC-45A program manager. “Having won the program, we have received more detailed data from our U.S. supplier base.”
Northrop’s new total does not include additional jobs that would be created by the future production of the A330 commercial freighter in the U.S. The European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS), Airbus’s parent company, said that if it won the tanker contract, it would bring the production of the freighter to Mobile, Ala.
Northrop’s projections are unlikely to mollify Boeing supporters in Congress, who have charged the Air Force with outsourcing jobs to Europe.
Job creation claims by both contractors are hard to prove given the global nature of the aerospace industry. Parts for aircrafts produced by Boeing and Airbus are made all over the world.
Roxana Tiron Farm bill: down to the wire House and Senate negotiators are considering another short-term extension of the Farm Bill to give them more time to agree to an overhaul of the legislation.
House members could introduce a measure this week that would extend the current farm bill’s authority to mid-April, according to a House Agriculture Committee aide.
The current farm bill expires on March 15, and House and Senate members seem unlikely to agree to a new bill by that deadline.
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) will introduce a measure extending the current law to April 18, his spokeswoman Kate Cyrul said.
Last week, Harkin acknowledged an extension was a possibility before adding that tough deadlines were the only way to pressure lawmakers into a deal. “We may have to do that [an extension] in the end, but we would just be in the same position we are now. Unless we have a deadline, people don’t make decisions around here,” Harkin told reporters in a press call.
Harkin, ranking member Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and ranking member Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) met last Thursday to discuss the bill, and staff for both panels worked through the weekend.
Staff for the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee also have been working to find offsets for the roughly $10 billion in new spending that members want to include in the bill.
Kevin Bogardus Rally against earmarks Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and other House and Senate budget hawks rallied Tuesday for the Senate to adopt an earmark moratorium.
The lawmakers presented a petition with more than 100,000 signatures from Americans supporting a ban of the pet projects. Leaders of various taxpayer watchdog groups, such as Taxpayers for Common Sense and Citizens Against Government Waste , attended the rally along with earmark foes Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.).
Supporters hope an amendment establishing a moratorium will be added to a Senate budget resolution moving on the floor this week.
DeMint, the measure’s author, has found support for the proposal not only from presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), but also Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.). All three have joined several other senators in co-sponsoring the provision.
Kevin Bogardus Seniors need converters The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is pressing the Department of Commerce to make sure senior citizens take advantage of a program intended to ease the 2009 transition to digital television.
The NAB estimates that 20 percent of those age 65 and older receive television signals through antennas instead of through subscription services like cable and satellite television. Next year, analog broadcasting will end and consumers will not be able to receive over-the-air signals.
Congress has set up a coupon program administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) that gives consumers coupons toward the purchase of converter boxes that will enable analog receivers to receive and display digital broadcasts.
The problem, according to broadcasters, is that NTIA uses too narrow a definition of “household” in determining who is eligible to receive a coupon. The NTIA policies, according to a March 10 letter from NAB, could prevent senior citizens who live in group homes or assisted living centers from getting the coupons.
NAB suggests tweaking the rules so that seniors at a shared address could all be eligible for the coupons.
Ian Swanson
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