Specter visits steel plant

BY JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF REPORTER

NEW CASTLE, Pa. — With time off between Senate sessions and “a chance to travel the state,” U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., paid a visit to a steel plant here.

Ellwood Quality Steels, 700 Moravia St., welcomed the senator Thursday afternoon. Specter donned a hard hat and goggles and got a glimpse inside the plant.

The steel made at EQS, which employs 195 people, goes into components for wind generators, landing gear for 747s and crankshafts for locomotives, said Bob Barensfeld, chairman of the board of Ellwood Group Inc., EQS’ parent company.

“Impressive,” Specter said after the tour, talking about the huge, rectangular steel bars in various stages of production and cooling inside.

“The steel coming out is 4,000 degrees,” Specter said, adding that the huge lift to move the bars around is extremely costly.

“That’s called a manipulator,” Barensfeld told him.

“I thought we only had those in Washington,” Specter joked.

The steel bars are actually 2,300 degrees, said EQS President Bob Rumcik. But Specter did get another detail right: “Steel has been the backbone of Pennsylvania for a century,” he said about the industry that has employed so many people here.

Specter chatted with Barensfeld and Rumcik about the history of their plant, which was bought in 1942 by the Navy and leased to United Engineering and Foundry. The government sold the plant to United after the war, said Barensfeld, and the plant had been vacant since United went out of business in the 1970s. EQS bought part of it in 1984, and kept expanding until it owned the entire plant.

Specter asked how business was: Was it tough getting credit these days because of the financial crisis? Barensfeld said the company has been able to work around it.

Specter touched on the financial crisis and other issues the country’s facing now, such as options for energy and the election.

“We’re going to have to diversify,” he said about energy, adding that “we’ve passed some very big tax credits for solar and wind.”

Nuclear power will be in the mix, but can be expensive, he said, and there have been technology improvements for clean coal.

Offshore drilling, he said, should occur only “where it’s safe.”

On the economic crisis, Specter said that Congress should be back on duty the day after the election to deal with it.

“We’re talking about a stimulus package,” he said. “It has to create jobs,” he said, specifying that some of those jobs might come in the form of work on Pennsylvania’s highways and bridges.

Specter, who voted for the $700 billion government bailout, said he doesn’t want to see banks nationalized. He also said it isn’t easy to tell when the bailout will begin to work.

Specter said he does favor some re-regulation of the financial industry.

“You don’t want to overregulate,” he said, but added that there has to be some restraint on “these commercial transactions that are so complicated no one understands them.”

Specter also had words of praise for vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, saying that she has added a lot of spirit to Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s campaign. “He chose her for two reasons,” Specter said. “Her ability to govern, and her ability to help him win.”