Defense spending critics bullish on sequestration’s outcome

Freeman noted that at Monday’s industry press conference, The
Analytic Sciences Corp. CEO David Langstaff’s suggested there could be another
$150 billion in Pentagon cuts. But that did not go far enough, he said.

{mosads}“When they actually got down to hard numbers, when he said
the $150 billion figure, I cringed,” he said. “When you break that figure down,
150 over 10 years, that’s only $15 billion per year.”

On the call held by the liberal-leaning defense think-tank
National Security Network, Freeman applauded Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush
saying that the defense industry is “not a jobs program.” Preble, meanwhile,
noted “the fact remains that the industry engaged in a very public, very
expensive campaign” to convince voters that the sequestration defense cuts
would lead to more than 1 million in job losses.

Hartung said the industry was playing “defense” in the
fiscal cliff talks, and that it had acknowledged cuts were coming. Now
executives were trying to keep that number “as small as possible,” he said.

The optimism on the call highlighted the fact that the
defense industry and defense-minded lawmakers are being crowded out of the
fiscal cliff debate that’s mostly focused on tax rates and entitlements,
despite there being $500 billion in Pentagon dollars at stake through
sequestration.

While the defense spending critics acknowledged that the
mechanism of sequester was not good policy, they endorsed the level of cuts to
the Defense Department, and suggested there would be future “bites at the
apple” after the sequester fight.

The industry, however, is making a push for a fiscal cliff
deal that does away with the sequestration cuts.

In addition to Monday’s press conference, the industry’s
leading trade group Aerospace Industries Association sent a letter to President
Obama signed by 115 industry members calling for a fiscal cliff solution that
avoids sequestration.

“With the elections behind us, the time for a solution to
sequestration has arrived,” AIA CEO Marion Blakey said in a statement
Monday. “We have only 28 days to act. No more pressing issue remains on
the national agenda this year.”