Says Companies Are Already Starting To Downsize Anticipating
Austerity Budgets
In a statement released shortly after the President rolled out
his FY2013 budget outline, AIA president Marion Blakey released a
statement calling the budget a "direct hit" on American aerospace
and defense workers. She says the result of the approximately $487
billion, ten-year cut to the defense budget alone, buying power to
procure technologies that fuel U.S. military strength will be
reduced in 2013 by approximately $20 billion.
"The American warfighter and our national security are not the
only victims of this first, drastic result of the 2011 Budget
Control Act," Blakey (pictured) said. "The budget released
today (Monday) takes direct aim at the first wave of 350,000
aerospace and defense workers who will be out of work if Congress
does not find a solution to the sequestration trigger being pulled
in 321 days. In the mean time, hundreds of companies that together
form the "defense industrial base" have already begun to downsize
in response to the cuts already enacted."
Blakey said sequestration-driven budget cuts will most certainly
hit the FAA and NASA as well. "More aerospace companies and workers
in all 50 states will share the pain of those 350,000 employees
projected to be jobless following a $1 trillion cut to the defense
budget," she said.
Blakey says the solution to the country's budget crisis does not
lie in further indiscriminate cuts to defense that put our country
at risk and will throw hundreds of thousands of skilled workers out
of their jobs. It also does not lie in reversing progress toward
safer, more efficient air travel made through investments to date
in the FAA's NextGen air traffic management system. And, she says,
renting Russian rockets to take American astronauts into space
sends American space jobs offshore and poses an immediate threat to
our country's goal of maintaining a space program that is second to
none in the world.
"There is no rocket science to finding the only solution to
America's budget crisis. Reform of entitlement programs and current
tax policies are the only answers to a multi-trillion dollar budget
deficit. The notion that adequate spending on our country's
defense, infrastructure and future in space is in any way
"discretionary" is, simply put, dangerous," Blakey said.
The AIA president reminded the U.S. President and the Congress
that the one-million aerospace and defense workers in America are
proud, patriotic, well-educated and highly skilled. "As the
election season heats up, current and aspiring members of Congress
will face these one-million voters who demand an answer to the
central question of today's budget crisis – are those we
elect to office prepared to make the tough decisions on realistic,
long-term budget reform? The thousands of aerospace and defense
workers who find themselves out of work this year as a result of
the budget crisis will undoubtedly be the first to demand an
answer."