Hampton Roads economy tied to the world, Webb says

By Bill Bartel

The future of the Hampton Roads economy doesn't just depend on preserving military installations and growing ports at home. It also requires the country to protect commerce on the other side of the world, U.S. Sen. Jim Webb said Tuesday night.

In a speech at Chrysler Hall sponsored by The Norfolk Forum, the senator said the further development of the region's deep-water ports and rail links to the country's interior have set the stage for Hampton Roads to prosper when a widened Panama Canal allows more goods from Asia to reach the East Coast.

Equally important, the Virginia Democrat said, the United States must protect the security of the shipping lanes used by Japan, South Korea and smaller emerging nations in Southeast Asia.

While China continues to grow commercially and militarily, other Asian nations are "exploding economically," he said. "Thirty-four of the top 50 ports in terms of tonnage are in East Asia."

"The main guarantor of security in the region is the presence of the United States," said Webb, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "This part of the world is very important to the future of our country."

The former secretary of the Navy restated his concerns about the shrinking size of the Navy, noting that the number of combat ships has decreased from 568 in 1987 to 287.

At the same time America protects international trade, it has to take stronger steps to reverse the flow of jobs overseas, Webb said.

"We seemed to have convinced ourselves that we can't grow a manufacturing base," the senator said, noting that Germany competes by producing specialized products. Its balance of trade is almost as high as China but its population is less than 10 percent the size, he said.

"They do it with quality products.... They take care of their people," Webb said. "We can do this."

In response to audience questions, the senator was critical of the legislative gridlock in Congress, saying Republicans deliberately tried to block any progress on key bills but conceding Democrats had their own problems.

The Obama administration "did a really terrible job handling health care reform," he said, because the president relied on Congress to draft a plan.

"You can't turn something that complicated loose on the United States Congress," he said, adding that the resulting debate led to great public confusion.

"People got scared. People got mad.... We lost an enormous amount of time on health care.... Both sides made bad mistakes."

When asked whether the federal tax code could be simplified, Webb sighed loudly, prompting laughter. He said he wants a simpler tax system, but "it's pretty complicated to get those changes made."

"I would like to see greater movement to taxing consumption rather than income."

Webb 's six-year term ends in two years, and he said before his speech that he'll decide in the next few months whether to seek re-election.

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