Defending Conversion in Congress during the Clinton-Gore Administration

Abstract

While both chambers comprising the US Congress have actively discussed defence conversion since the end of the Cold War, the House and Senate have been debating the issue for more than three decades. Indeed, George McGovern put forward the first such US legislation, the National Economic Conversion Act, favouring conversion planning in October 1963.¹ McGovern’s bill, co-sponsored by 30 senators,² would have established the National Economic Conversion Commission in the White House,³ and the bill mandated that each firm utilising more than 25 per cent of their employees for defence would be required to create an industrial conversion committee.⁴