Oh noes. Sequestration is making it hard for defense contractors to know how many zeroes will be in their annual profits, and
they would appreciate some certainty about what to expect, thankyouverymuch. According to Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson, the company is:
... unsure how the automatic cuts will play out this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, much less in 2014. The company has said the cuts could reduce its sales this year by about $825 million, but Hewson said the estimate was based on “modeling” in the absence of hard numbers from the Pentagon.
“What have we seen so far?” she said. “We have had some reductions as a result of sequestration of programs that have gone away, but very minimal.”
Next year, though, could be a different story. “It’ll be a larger impact in 2014 and beyond,” she explained.
She's urging Congress to "come together with a balanced approach" to increase revenue and cut entitlements so that Lockheed Martin can move past all this nasty uncertainty and get its traditional fat government contracts. It would be so much better if that uncertainty could be passed along to seniors currently living on Social Security; human food vs. cat food is just a simpler, cleaner form of uncertainty than
$4.5 billion vs. $4.35 billion in profit.
Nationwide, parents waiting to hear if their kids will have slots in Head Start in the fall, to say nothing of Head Start teachers waiting to hear if they'll have jobs in the fall and seniors waiting to hear if they'll have Meals on Wheels next month, are doubtless nodding in sympathy with Lockheed Martin's horrible predicament.