‘Cliff’ deal gives defense a reprieve
Jeremy Herb , The Hill
01/02/13 04:32 PM ET
The “fiscal cliff” deal gives the Pentagon and defense industry only a temporary reprieve Tuesday from across-the-board spending cuts.
The 11th-hour agreement did little to address the defense industry’s biggest complaint about the fiscal cliff: possible cuts have created an uncertainty that’s terrible for business.
“[I] hope they come to an arrangement sooner rather than later because the continued uncertainty is really bad for the industry on the whole,” said Michael Herson, president of American Defense International, one of the largest defense lobbying firms.
Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the two-month delay failed to address the primary reasons that sequestration is bad policy.
“The two big problems with sequestration are the abruptness of the cuts and the across the board nature of the cuts — and both of those things still exist even with this delay,” Harrison said. “This merely extends the uncertainty and perhaps increases it.”
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