State pleads case to Air Force chief

— Arkansas’ congressional delegation on Tuesday asked the Air Force chief of staff to visit the state in the latest move to save two Arkansas National Guard programs that the Pentagon wants to cut.

The request comes as the Senate focuses on passing its Defense Authorization Bill, a necessary step to avoid the pending “fiscal cliff.”

The tug of war between passing a federal budget with required spending cuts by the end of the year and a Pentagon proposal that includes cuts to Air National Guard units in all 50 states pits state congressional delegations against one another.

Both the House and Senate have included freezes in personnel and plane movements in their respective defense budget bills that would delay the Pentagon’s proposal until fiscal year 2014, which starts Oct. 1, 2013.

The Arkansas delegation’s request Tuesday that Gen. Mark Welsh III visit the 188th Fighter Wing in Fort Smith and reconsider his budget request is an effort to resolve the issue of Air National Guard cuts in Arkansas, not just this year but in the future.

For its part of the required cuts, the Pentagon previously recommended $460 billion in spending cuts over the next 10 years, with the bulk of the cuts hitting the Air National Guard.

Those cuts included a plan to shift planes and missions away from the National Guard and Reserve. In Arkansas, that includes ditching the C-130AMP avionics upgrade at the 189th Airlift Wing at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville — which has been 10 years and $5 billion in the making — and trading the A-10 Warthog mission at the 188th for one involving remotely piloted drones.

The shift would leave hundreds of maintenance personnel and other 188th airmen without positions.

“We are disappointed in the content of the [U.S. Air Force’s] revised force structure proposal and the process by which this revised proposal was developed,” the delegation wrote. “We cannot support a plan that was not developed in coordination with relevant entities and that does not have adequate analysis and justification of the proposed changes.”

It is the same argument the delegation as a whole has made in letters and meetings with Pentagon leaders since January. All previous requests for data justifying the Air Force’s decision to move the A-10 mission and cut the C-130AMP avionics upgrade program at Little Rock Air Force Base have gone unanswered.

Meanwhile, the Senate is expected to bundle new amendments to its bill — including two filed by Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark. this week — into one proposal for a single vote to expedite discussion and passage of the Defense Authorization Bill in the next couple of weeks.

On Tuesday, Pryor and Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., filed an amendment, the Helping Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Return to Employment at Home Act, encouraging states to consider military training in specific skills, such as heavy equipment operation or paramedics, when reviewing qualifications of veterans for employment. Some states overlook military training in specific skills that require a state license for employability.

“Many veterans have already demonstrated proficiency through military training and experience, and they have done so while performing in a war zone,” Pryor said in a statement. “Our bipartisan bill would encourage states to consider service members’ experience so we can eliminate the expensive and time-consuming hurdles service members often face as they re-enter the workforce.”

Johanns explained that while veterans are trained on and perform technical jobs, they fail to meet civilian certification requirements set by state licensing agencies to do the same job at home.

Pryor co-sponsored a second amendment with Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., recognizing Reserve and National Guard service members eligible for retirement pay as veterans.

The filings occurred as Senate leaders continued negotiations on the defense bill as well as the rest of the federal budget.

The Senate is expected to vote on the defense bill in the next couple of weeks. Then the two Defense Authorization Bills must be reconciled in conference committee before moving to the president’s desk for signing into law.

The entire budget has to be passed by Jan. 1 to avoid sequestration — automatic budget reductions that make up the largest part of what officials call the “fiscal cliff.” The Budget Control Act of 2011 put caps on spending and required a series of budget cuts, the first of which must be implemented in a passed budget by the end of the year or larger, across-theboard cuts will be triggered.

“If sequestration goes through, the cuts will be so dramatic that it would be like taking a meat cleaver to the armed services.” Boozman has said.

Pryor said earlier this month that “Everyone hates sequestration so much, it’s forcing people to talk.”

Front Section, Pages 4 on 11/28/2012

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