Grundman cited in Defense News, “AIA Launches Campaign Against Budget Cuts”
“I saw the Second to None release and I said bingo, this is exactly the kind of friction that was set up by the debt ceiling agreement,” said Steve Grundman, former Pentagon industrial affairs chief and founder of the consulting firm Grundman Advisory. “This sort of anxiety, pitting jobs in the defense industry and national security against tax increases, is exactly the clamor that the administration was inviting by the political dynamic that got set in motion by the debt ceiling agreement.” . . . The alarmist circumstances described by the AIA are not inaccurate, Grundman said, but it’s not the total number of potential cuts that is the most troublesome. “I don’t think that the depth of reductions that are implied by a failure to reach a budget agreement is as profound as in the 1990s,” he said. “What’s scary about sequestration is the rate of the reduction.” And contractors are likely to face the burden if the sudden cuts happen, Grundman said. “When you have to make big reductions fast, the only place you can go is the investment accounts, because the operating and maintenance accounts, and God knows the force structure, are just much more sticky than that.”
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