AIA Suppliers on Hill send message to budget conference.
Press Release Summary:
Aerospace and defense industry suppliers Joe Murphy, chairman of the board of the Ferco Aerospace Group and Gregory Bloom, president of Seal Science, Inc. visited Congress to deliver letter and send clear message to leaders of budget conference that sequestration budget cuts are harming national security and defense industrial base. Murphy and Bloom also requested meetings with leaders to discuss impact of sequestration on industrial base supply chain.
Original Press Release:
AIA Suppliers on Hill to Send a Message to Budget Conference
Aerospace and defense industry suppliers Joe Murphy, chairman of the board of the Ferco Aerospace Group and Gregory Bloom, president of Seal Science, Inc. visited Congress today to deliver a letter and send a clear message to the leaders of the budget conference that sequestration budget cuts are harming our national security and the defense industrial base.
“I’ve been in this industry a long time and lived through our experiences on the B-1 bomber program,” Murphy said. “My whole purpose in coming here today is that I don’t want to see people indiscriminately throw things away without understanding what they’re throwing away and then later try to reconstitute it and realize it may or may not be possible.”
Murphy and Bloom delivered letters signed by AIA President and CEO Marion C. Blakey, AIA Chairman and Northrop Grumman Chairman, CEO and President Wes Bush, and AIA Vice Chairman and L-3 Communications Corporation Chairman, President and CEO Michael T. Strianese to the leaders of the budget conference committee, Senators Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), and Representatives Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). The letter urged the leaders to end sequestration, saying:
“As you all convene to find a bipartisan solution to resolve our debt and deficit problems, we strongly encourage you to end sequestration. Its impact on the industrial base and national supply chain has eroded our ability, not only to create new jobs, but to maintain our current intellectual human capital … Until we end sequestration, our ability to maintain and expand small businesses – which serve as the main generator of jobs – will continue to erode. Even more important, we negatively impact the one thing that makes it all possible – our national security.”Â
Murphy and Bloom also requested meetings with the leaders to discuss the impact of sequestration on the industrial base supply chain.
“We’re here to tell Congress to decouple the conversation of sequestration from national security,” Bloom said. “Congress’ number one constitutional priority is to provide for the defense of the people.”
AIA is reaching out to our member companies to bring this message to our elected leaders, both here in Washington and out in the districts where the damage of sequestration budget cuts is being brought home. Congress and President Obama must work together to put aside sequestration, address the real drivers of our debt and deficit issues and avoid slashing the very innovation and investments we need to grow in the future.
Copies of the letters submitted to the budget conference leaders can be found here: http://www.aia-aerospace.org/assets/Conferee_letters.pdf.
Daniel N. Stohr
Director, Communications
Aerospace Industries Association
1000 Wilson Blvd., Suite 1700
Arlington, Virginia 22209 USA
T: 703-358-1078 C: 703-517-8173
dan.stohr@aia-aerospace.org
