AIA and NDD United Warn Against Sequester

On February 11, 2013, the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) and NDD United, a group of organizations opposed to cuts to Non-Defense Discretionary (NDD) funding, held a joint press conference to warn against dramatic cuts to federal spending — the “sequester” —  that will take effect on March 1, 2013 if Congress does not act to stop them.  The sequester would cut $85 billion from defense and non-defense discretionary spending in FY2013.  Because FY2013 already is underway (the government’s fiscal year is October 1-September 30), those cuts would have to be absorbed in 7 months instead of 12.  Participants in the press conference agreed that the deficit must be cut, but not only by cutting discretionary spending.   There must be a balance between cuts to discretionary spending (defense, NASA, NOAA etc), cuts to mandatory spending (Social Security, Medicare etc) and increases in revenues to solve the deficit problem, they argued.

This SpacePolicyOnline summary of the press conference was published later that day.