Pending Defense Cuts Threaten Millions of Lives
and Tens-of-Thousands of Jobs.
Democrats are willing to sacrifice the lives, jobs and security of the United States her citizens and allies.
For what? More money (higher taxes) of course.
WASHINGTON — A top Pentagon official says automatic cuts in defense spending would force the military to reduce training for warfighters and trim the number of weapons purchased.
Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter outlined the impact of the $55 billion in across-the-board reductions that would hit Jan. 2 if Congress fails to produce a budget plan.
He testified Wednesday before a House panel along with the White House’s acting budget chief, Jeff Zients.
Zients said domestic programs would suffer too, with $55 billion in cuts to education, FBI agents, Head Start.
Zients called the cuts a “blunt, indiscriminate instrument” and urged Congress to reach a compromise.
President Barack Obama would exempt military personnel from any automatic defense spending cuts, the White House says amid the congressional clamor for specifics on how the administration would implement the looming across-the-board reductions.
Acting Office of Management and Budget Director Jeffrey Zients said Tuesday what military leaders had been suggesting for months – the president would exercise his authority under the budget law and spare uniformed men and women.
Zients and Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter were scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee on the impending cuts.
“This is considered to be in the national interest to safeguard the resources necessary to compensate the men and women serving to defend our nation and to maintain the force levels required for national security,” Zients said in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
“It is recognized that this action would increase the sequester in other defense programs,” he added, referring to looming across-the-board spending cuts.
Automatic cuts of $110 billion are slated to hit domestic and defense programs beginning Jan. 2 unless Congress can figure out a way to avert the reductions. The failure of the bipartisan congressional supercommittee to come up with $1.2 trillion in savings set the cuts in motion.
Democrats say the military can be spared if Republicans are willing to consider tax increases for high-wage earners. Republicans argue that the defense cuts could be offset with reductions in food stamps, benefits for federal workers and social services programs like day care for children and Meals on Wheels for the elderly.
With no signs of consensus, the automatic cuts probably will be addressed after the November election in a lame-duck session.
In the three months to the election, Republicans are using the looming reductions in military spending as a political cudgel against Obama, arguing that the commander in chief is willing to risk the nation’s security as he uses the leverage in the budget showdown with Congress. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has echoed GOP lawmakers’ criticism.
Democrats counter that Republicans who voted for the cuts are trying to wriggle out of last August’s deficit-cutting agreement and they must consider tax increases as part of any congressional compromise to stave off reductions.
Among the members of the House Armed Services Committee, 22 Republicans, including the panel’s chairman, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., and 18 Democrats voted for the cuts. Thirteen Republicans and seven Democrats, including ranking member Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, opposed them.
Raising the political stakes, three Senate Republicans – John McCain of Arizona, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina – spent two days touring presidential battleground states warning of the impact of the cuts on local businesses and jobs. They demanded that Obama negotiate with Republicans and Democrats to work out a solution.
Responding to the announcement sparing personnel, the three expressed frustration with the administration’s handling of the issue.
“Rather than coming to the table with Republicans and Democrats in Congress to finally address the issue of budget sequestration, the Obama administration is flailing around attempting to make sequester look less devastating than it actually is. Today’s announcement increases the impact of these arbitrary cuts on the readiness of our armed forces,” they said in a statement.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., noted that there are “a few Republicans wandering around the country stirring up things on sequester.”
He urged them to try to persuade other GOP lawmakers to back tax increases.
Major defense contractors are wary of the impending cuts and debating whether they need to advise employees 60 days in advance of possible layoffs. That would be four days before the election. A law known as the WARN Act says those notices would have to go out ahead of time.
The Labor Department, however, said Monday that federal contractors do not have to warn their employees about potential layoffs from the automatic, across-the-board budget cuts due to kick in Jan. 2. The guidance letter said it would be “inappropriate” for employers to send such warnings because it is still speculative if and where the cuts might occur.
The White House told agency officials Tuesday to “continue normal spending and operations” since more than five months remain for Congress to act to avert the automatic cuts.
According to a U.S. government official, the automatic budget cuts would slash about 10,000 jobs within the intelligence community. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the numbers have not been made public.
JOB LOSSES
ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOX) – If automatic budget cuts are triggered in January, Missouri stands to lose 51-thousand jobs, or so says the author of a study on the Economic impact of last year’s Budget Control Act.
First, Boeing is urging the elimination of both defense and non-defense sequestration within the balanced budget plan. Remember the process called sequestration.
“The budget control act of 2011 requires fed govt to reduce spending by a certain amount over ten years if they couldn’t agree on how to do it
And they couldn’t agree, so the Jan 2013 decade of cuts became automatic.”
But study author, Dr. Stephen Fuller is director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University says little attention has been paid to non-Department of Defense spending.
In Illinois he predicts nearly 56-thousand jobs would be lose, a third of those federal employees, 20 percent fed contractors. And the remainder, the other 45 percent, are jobs lost all over the state because federal employees and federal contractors are not being paid anymore.
Two thirds of the job loss in Missouri would be tied to defense spending.
While it’s too early to tell exactly what the cuts will mean, Boeing Co. Pres and CEO Dennis Muilenburg says their planning is worst case scenario is a potential one-trillion dollar cut over the next ten years. To handle any outcome, Muilenburg says they are targeting new markets and pursuing international sales.
Dennis Muilenburg, president & CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security statement:
As to the deep cuts anticipated over the next ten years, in our planning we have made assumptions including the worst-case scenario and designing our cost structure to accommodate a potential $1 trillion cut.
At this point it is too early for Boeing to speculate on what deep defense budget cuts might mean for individual programs or the facilities that support them.
That said, Boeing has been anticipating declining U.S. defense budgets for several years and we have been making the changes necessary to compete and grow in this environment.
In addition to our pursuit of international sales and targeted new markets and adjacencies we have been taking significant steps to manage costs and increase productivity. This has included some facilities consolidation, workforce redeployment and several other initiatives to lower costs to make our products even more affordable for our customers.
We are not hunkering down. We will continue to execute on our core programs and aggressively pursue business in international markets and growth areas like cyber security, unmanned systems, C4ISR and other adjacent areas.
Boeing strongly urges elimination of both defense and non-defense sequestration within the context of a balanced agreement that addresses the broader fiscal issues facing the nation.
ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOX) – If automatic budget cuts are triggered in January, Missouri stands to lose 51-thousand jobs, or so says the author of a study on the Economic impact of last year’s Budget Control Act.
First, Boeing is urging the elimination of both defense and non-defense sequestration within the balanced budget plan. Remember the process called sequestration.
“The budget control act of 2011 requires fed govt to reduce spending by a certain amount over ten years if they couldn’t agree on how to do it
And they couldn’t agree, so the Jan 2013 decade of cuts became automatic.”
But study author, Dr. Stephen Fuller is director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University says little attention has been paid to non-Department of Defense spending.
In Illinois he predicts nearly 56-thousand jobs would be lose, a third of those federal employees, 20 percent fed contractors. And the remainder, the other 45 percent, are jobs lost all over the state because federal employees and federal contractors are not being paid anymore.
Two thirds of the job loss in Missouri would be tied to defense spending.
While it’s too early to tell exactly what the cuts will mean, Boeing Co. Pres and CEO Dennis Muilenburg says their planning is worst case scenario is a potential one-trillion dollar cut over the next ten years. To handle any outcome, Muilenburg says they are targeting new markets and pursuing international sales.
Dennis Muilenburg, president & CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security statement:
As to the deep cuts anticipated over the next ten years, in our planning we have made assumptions including the worst-case scenario and designing our cost structure to accommodate a potential $1 trillion cut.
At this point it is too early for Boeing to speculate on what deep defense budget cuts might mean for individual programs or the facilities that support them.
That said, Boeing has been anticipating declining U.S. defense budgets for several years and we have been making the changes necessary to compete and grow in this environment.
In addition to our pursuit of international sales and targeted new markets and adjacencies we have been taking significant steps to manage costs and increase productivity. This has included some facilities consolidation, workforce redeployment and several other initiatives to lower costs to make our products even more affordable for our customers.
We are not hunkering down. We will continue to execute on our core programs and aggressively pursue business in international markets and growth areas like cyber security, unmanned systems, C4ISR and other adjacent areas.
Boeing strongly urges elimination of both defense and non-defense sequestration within the context of a balanced agreement that addresses the broader fiscal issues facing the nation.
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Once again this is all a part of Husein Obama’s Islamic Agenda for the United States. Defense cutbacks will be necessary when the Muslims attack Israel. That way we won’t be able to respond in a timely fashion (if at all).
Also American Job loses help the Islamic cause and Obama being a Muslim is DUTY BOUND to help his Islamic brothers do the work of Allah. Hussein Obama does not care about American jobs. That much should be obvious by now. This is Jihad. His attacks on our system are a part of a Holy war.
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