"Dodd Hints at Changes to Emergency Industry Law"

“Dodd Hints at Changes to Emergency Industry Law”
Defense News – 6/11/2007

U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., is asking Defense Secretary Robert Gates to spell out how the Pentagon is working to improve U.S. industry’s ability to build Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles.

In a June 7 letter, Dodd expressed concern that industry cannot meet the Pentagon’s desire to buy 1,200 of the vehicles per month, and said that changes are needed if orders cannot be filled.

In May, a Defense Contract Management Agency report found U.S. industry able to produce 900 MRAPs a month, less than the 1,200-a-month rate requested by Marine Corps Systems Command, the lead on a joint procurement effort to equip the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps with a total of 23,200 MRAP vehicles.

Dodd is chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Defense Production Act (DPA), a law that allows the government to direct U.S. industry in times of war and other emergencies.

“Currently, the DPA calls for ‘the expansion of domestic productive capacity beyond the levels needed to meet the civilian demand,’” Dodd writes in the letter to Gates. “If the DPA cannot fulfill this responsibility, as currently enacted, if it cannot ensure that industry is supplying our military with the tools it needs to defend itself, Congress must carefully review the existing statutory requirements and explore possible changes to the DPA.

“I know that you share my deep belief that we should have no higher priority than the safety and well-being of our troops deployed in harm’s way, particularly given the abundance of roadside bombs in Iraq,” Dodd says in the letter.