Cut the Crap, Congress

Sequester, which will resume in September if Congress doesn’t act to repeal it, will send a grave message to allies and would-be partners around the world, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said Tuesday. It would “give our allies reason to doubt, it would give our potential adversaries cause for opportunism, and for those on the fence”—trying to choose between the US or its opponents—”they’ll sit on the fence because they’ll have incentive to hedge, Work said. Addressing a McAleese Associates/Credit Suisse conference in Washington, D.C., Work said sequester will cut “50 percent of the money in the Fiscal 20?15 increase” over Budget Control Amendment caps, because “most of it” is in modernization. That in turn will have “two pernicious effects,” said a clearly irate Work. “It will increase weapon system procurement costs because we’ll be forced to stretch out programs; … we’ll have to cut multi-year contracts, which are very efficient. It will require us to do stupid business things that no business leader in the United States,” a chief executive officer, operating officer, or financial officer “would survive … if they allowed that crap to happen in their businesses.”