Lockheed Martin Leads Expanded Lobbying by U.S. Defense Industry
Roxana Tiron
Washington Post
January 24, 2012
Defense contractors Lockheed Martin Corp., General Dynamics Corp and Raytheon Co. spent a combined $33.4 million on lobbying in Washington last year, a 10 percent increase from 2010, as Congress and the Obama administration weighed cuts in the Pentagon budget.
A review of lobbying disclosures filed with the Senate by a Jan. 20 deadline showed Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense company, led such spending last year with $15 million for lobbying, a 19 percent increase.
Pentagon contractors face an era of limited government spending after an impasse on how to cut the federal budget left open the prospect of $1 trillion in defense cuts over a decade. Even with future cuts looming, defense companies focused their lobbying last year on protecting contracts and programs from immediate cuts, according to Michael Herson, president of American Defense International, a defense lobbying and business- development firm in Washington.
“The contractors were focused on their programs in fiscal year 2012 — that was the more certain problem at hand,” Herson said in an interview yesterday.
