WASHINGTON: If Republicans don’t agree to a “balanced” deal that raises revenues, Democrats are willing to let sequestration strike on Jan. 2nd — and the Bush tax cuts expire on Dec. 31st — Sen. Patty Murray said this afternoon in a major escalation of Congress’s ongoing game of chicken. “If we can’t get … a… Keep reading →

George Hill is president of Advex Corporation, a company based in Hampton, Virginia and a member of the Aircraft Carrier Industrial Base Coalition (ACIBC). Unless Congress acts to change the existing law, sequestration will automatically cut $1.2 trillion from the President’s budget over the next decade-including $492 billion from military spending. These cuts threaten one… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: “Trust us.” That’s the last thing an irate Congress is ready to hear from the Air Force right now, but it’s the essence of what a three-star general told legislators today in a hearing on the administration’s hugely unpopular proposal to cut the Air National Guard. A Senate-proposed commission on the size and… Keep reading →

Washington, DC is echoing with a chorus of “sequester fear.” It is an election year and the cacophony is deafening: sequester is a budgetary Pearl Harbor, a “doomsday machine” that will shred our national security. The Pentagon says it, members of Congress from both parties say it, and the defense industry is jumping up and… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The nation needs cyber-security legislation to authorize sharing of threat data between industry and government in real time, said Gen. Keith Alexander, chief of both the National Security Agency and the US Cyber Command, and it can be done without any danger to individual privacy. “This cyber legislation that’s coming up is going to… Keep reading →

FARNBOROUGH AIR SHOW: One of the topics dear to the hearts of Beltway bandits, defense lobbyists and — let’s be honest — reporters, is always who will run things after the November elections. Few people wise in the ways of Washington I know are willing to predict what will happen when the people vote. But… Keep reading →

On the eve of the international Farnborough Airshow, a prominent aerospace and defense analyst says there is a wave of investment ready to pour into the defense sector – but investors are “paralyzed” by the unresolved threat of sequestration. “A lot of people in the industry and a lot of investment capital outside the industry… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: The US must not go ahead with planned cuts to the Afghan National Army and police, a panel of experts urged the House Armed Services Committee today. Instead, we must keep spending $6 billion a year to support 350,000 Afghan security personnel, go slowly on drawing down our own forces — and escalate… Keep reading →

McKeon just posted letter to Harry Reid demanding Senate stop #sequestration: http://1.usa.gov/LFOzHW. More from McKeon: http://aol.it/MbAL8K SydneyFreedberg

It is long past time for Congress to reform the current laws governing the export of commercial satellites – an outmoded and counterproductive system intended to enhance national security while inadvertently undermining America’s domestic space industry, a recent Defense Department report makes clear. Whatever Congress’s good intentions when it passed this law in 1998, the… Keep reading →