The Force is with her
The Cold War's over, but Star Wars funds are sky-high.
In Los Angeles, where Star Wars is considered a singular moment in film history, the movie's more expensive namesake -- the anti-missile program popularized by Ronald Reagan -- is still very much a present-day reality. And no Democrat in Congress is more responsible for keeping the project's funds flowing than California Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.). A political moderate who generally votes with her fellow Democrats on domestic issues, Harman is a zealot when it comes to the care and feeding of military contractors. Harman's congressional district, stretching from Venice to San Pedro, has the country's largest concentration of defense contractors -- including Hughes Electronics, TRW, and Northrop Grumman -- and their generous support has been the cornerstone of her political career.
Harman is the leading recipient of PAC contributions on the House National Security Committee, which oversees the Department of Defense and its Star Warsproject. In the 1995-96 election cycle, her sponsors include such Star Wars luminaries as Raytheon ($500), Boeing ($1,500), BDM ($2,500), TRW ($3,000), Lockheed Martin ($3,750), Rockwell ($4,000), Hughes ($9,500), McDonnell Douglas ($10,000), and Northrop Grumman ($10,000).
For defense contractors, a little political investment can go a long way. In 1995, PACs associated with contractors gave House members nearly $3 million; in return for this modest favor, Congress doled out more than $75 billion for new military hardware and R&D.
Almost seven years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, defense spending remains at Cold War levels, and talk of a "peace dividend" has long been forgotten. On the contrary, the House's recommended $13 billion increase in military spending this year was financed by equal reductions in spending on domestic programs. And there is no better example of this folly than the repeatedly discredited, but still healthily funded, Star Wars program.
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