Senators ask industry for help explaining danger of defense cuts

The senators, led by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), say in a letter sent to
the contractors last week that the administration’s “apparent unwillingness to conduct
any meaningful analysis or planning for sequestration is alarming.”

{mosads}“Recognizing that you, like the Congress, have received no
guidance from the administration on implementation of sequestration,” the
senators write, “we would appreciate your answers” on the cuts, roughly $500
billion across the board to both defense and non-defense discretionary
spending over the next decade.  

Among the questions in the letter:

• What’s the number and dollar value of contracts that could
  be terminated or restructured?
• When do
  contractors expect to have to issue layoff notices under the Worker Adjustment
  and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act?
• Has there been a slowdown in new contracts “attributable
  to the uncertainty of funding available” because of the threat of
  sequestration?
• What’s the impact of sequestration on capital and research
  investments and recruiting?

Most Democrats and Republicans, as well as the Obama
administration, want to stop the automatic cuts, which were included in last
year’s Budget Control Act. However, the two parties have deep disagreements about
how to find the alternative revenue to do so.

Many don’t expect movement until after the November election,
and the latest tactic from defense hawks has been to try to gather evidence
about how bad sequestration would be.

In the letter, signed by McCain and Sens. Joe Lieberman
(I-Ct.), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)
and John Cornyn (R-Texas), the senators tout the amendment that passed the
Senate requiring the administration to explain the impact of sequestration in three reports.

That amendment, which passed on the Senate’s farm bill, still must pass the House to become law.

Stevens, who is leaving his Lockheed post at the end of the year, has also called on the administration to explain
sequestration more clearly. At a media day Q&A last month where Stevens made the layoffs threat, he said the industry was in a “fog of uncertainty”
because of sequestration.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who has been one of the
loudest voices about the “devastating” impact sequestration would have,
provided McCain and Graham a similar assessment on the impact of sequestration to
the Pentagon back in November.