Total BS. The steel for 8400 Hummers could be produced in few days at most mills. We aren't talking millions of tons here. And there is certainly more than one steel-fab plant in the US. Perhaps he means one steel fab plant has greased enough palms to get "pre-approved" by the DOD to manufacture this plate steel armor.
Never mind that Durbin never points to the fact that this decimation of American Steel and the manufacturing industry happened as a whole under the Clinton Administration.
That's a lie.
The all-time peak of US Steel and Metals Production was December of 1973. Production fell of 10% to the next peak in December of 1978. Production then collapsed another 20% to the next peak in January of 1989, with most of the fall occurring in industry recessions in 1973-1975, 1978-1982 and 1984-1987. Production grew 15% under Clinton, including the steel industry recession starting in December of 1999. Production under Bush has completely recovered to the level when he took office from the 2001 recession. The major hit to US Steel production int he past 30 years has been the decline in market share of integrated mills producing pig iron from iron ore.
US Steel Fabrication, on the other hand, is up 50% from the levels of the 1970's, went up 40% under Clinton, but is off around 5% under Bush due to the recession, because much of the steel we import is brought here to be finished and fabricated.
Peruse this:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/ipdisk/ip.sa
Now most of our steel comes from China. Remember?
Again, untrue. Imports total around 20-30% of domestic production, and most steel imports are from Brazil, Russia, and Korea, not China.
Maybe, maybe not.
As I commented elsewhere on this thread, a lot depends on what alloy is being used.
(I'm assuming Hummer armor isn't an "ordinary" alloy, and may require a "secret recipe" of 11 herbs and spices to produce.)
Yeah, other mills may (or may not) have the right combination of furnaces and equipment to produce the stuff, but they don't have experience with the precise formula, timing and temperatures to duplicate the witch's brew exactly. Then you run into the "problem" that they're reluctant to disrupt their normal production just to crank out a small, specialized batch of some alloy that they'll never be asked to produce again.
Yeah, such things can easily be done in case of a true national emergency. But it ain't gonna happen over this temporary political flap over Hummer armor. Face it, Hummers were never intended to be as heavily armored as Abrams Tanks, yet the jack@$$es in the left-wing newsmedia will report this story as if they should be.