Boeing Co. said Friday that it will begin shutting down the Long Beach production facility for the C-17 cargo plane, the last aircraft manufacturing plant in Southern California, because Congress will not provide funding for new aircraft.

“We simply cannot continue the process of funding the production of this aircraft on our own,” said John Sams, the vice president of Air Force programs for Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems.

The Chicago-based company said it has begun the lengthy process of shutting down the Long Beach facility by informing suppliers and subcontractors with long lead times to stop work on all orders past mid 2009, when the last jet is scheduled to be produced. Many systems and parts, such as landing gear assemblies, require up to a three-year lead time.

This move is said to effect more than 22,000 workers across the country and more than 5,500 in California. C-17 facilities in Macon, Ga., Mesa, Ariz.. and St. Louis will be affected as well. The economic impact is estimated to be around $8.4 billion nationally, with $3.7 billion of that here in the sate. The facility is capable of producing 15 of the $200-million jets a year.

The government’s original contract was for 220 of the high-tech jets however under the Donald Rumsfeld-run Department of Defense that number was cut to 180, due to cost concerns. Defense analysts and officials have expresses concerns overt that move due to the aging fleet of C-5 cargo jets, the only comparable airframe to the C-17, and the increased use of the C-17 in the war on terror due to its ability to land on makeshift airfields and its high reliability rate. While the C-17 only makes up 55 percent of the Air Forces cargo jet fleet, it has been shouldering 88 percent of the workload the past few years.