The most comprehensive legislative bill proposed in 1988 to implement such a plan was one sponsored by Ted Weiss and called for the establishment of Alternative Use Committees, comprised of an equal number of representatives from management and labor. The committees would have been tasked with preparing "a complete technical economic plan for the use of the people and facilities following termination of work for the Pentagon."
The legislation would have also mandated occupational retraining for engineers and managers who were veterans of Pentagon work for 10 years or longer. This was to ensure proper training for cost-minimizing instead of the entrenched practice of cost-maximizing fostered in the defense industry. The conversion program would have been overseen by the Commerce Department to encourage all levels of government to prepare their budgets accordingly in support of conversion.
This bill (HR 103) was the culmination of meetings that then-House Speaker Jim Wright had convened of congress members committed to the conversion opportunities that the end of the Cold War provided.
In the weeks following the bill's historic introduction, however, a smear campaign against Speaker Wright was initiated -- led by Newt Gingrich, who's district just happened to be home to the headquarters of Lockheed Martin -- based on trumped up charges of financial misconduct, forcing Wright's resignation.
With the bill's most powerful shepherd effectively eliminated, the legislation died quietly.
What Failure of the Peace Dividend Meant for the US
As the end of the Cold War beckoned in the late 1980s and, along with it, the potential for redirection of resources to improve the living standards of communities across America, Melman noted that 50 percent of the discretionary federal budget at that time went to the Pentagon. The percentage projected for the 2015 budget was 54 percent. Meanwhile, 3 percent is allotted to "international affairs" -- meaning that some portion of that 3 percent goes to diplomacy, which speaks volumes about our leaders' priorities and approach to international relations
What all that investment into militarism ultimately translates into is investment not made into the infrastructure for American citizens and their day-to-day needs. To illustrate this point, Melman also discussed the state of American domestic infrastructure by 1990 and how it had suffered from the diversion of resources into the MIC:
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