Prime Time for Accountability By Smith Word Consultants
Even with the coming spending cuts, the U.S. Government will continue to be an important part of our overall economy. According to the Office of Management and Budget, the White House wants to spend $525.4 billion in discretionary funding for the base Department of Defense budget alone in Fiscal Year 2013. That’s a big chunk of the expected $3.6 trillion anticipated 2013 federal budget. Although that is a decrease of 1 percent, or $5.1 billion below the 2012 enacted level for the DoD, it’s still a lot of money.
Prime contractors –companies like Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, SAIC, and Raytheon, to name a few—are the big players in federal contracting. According to Washington Technology, the Top 100 federal contractors accounted for $126.8 billion of federal spending in 2011, compared to $132 billion in 2010. In 2009, the total was $129.9 billion. Some experts predicted that when the numbers are final, 2012 would come out a little higher than 2011, but not by much.
Coming Cuts Needed, Not Necessarily Kind By J. Smith.
The US financial outlook ended on an extremely high note at the end of this first full week of March 2013. Wall Street set repetitive new records on the Dow, and the Labor Department announced stronger than expected job growth, bringing the unemployment rate down to levels not seen in years.
That said, sequestration anxiety looms in the background. Even if Congress can find a way out of automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that some say could stop this surge of economic recovery in its tracks, we know the cuts are coming. They have to come.