Chris Dodd: “This bill, if reauthorized, would reauthorize the Defense Production Act for 5 years. Presently there is a system in…”

“This bill, if reauthorized, would reauthorize the Defense Production Act for 5 years. Presently there is a system in place which allows defense contracts to go to prime contractors, where, as a result of a provision that existed since World War II, offset agreements are permitted in such a way that despite the amount of money we will allocate for these defense contracts, these offset agreements basically wipe out the dollar amounts that would go to subcontractors and others. The net result is that each year we are losing about 10,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector because of these offset agreements, which were written primarily--I am almost quoting--to provide assistance to war-torn Europe at the end of World War II.”