Kilmeade: It's a 'sin' to cut defense spending
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade says that cutting defense spending is just not the Christian thing to do.
During a Thursday Fox & Friends segment about a defense industry-sponsored study that warns unemployment will rise if Congress does not find a way to avert $500 billion in sequestration cuts, Kilmeade declared that it would be a "sin" to reduce defense spending back to 2006 levels.
"Could the $500 billion in cuts from the next budget mandate potentially trigger a recession?" Kilmeade exclaimed. "According to the Aerospace Industry Association, the unemployment rate would climb above 9 percent and more than 2 million jobs would be lost all in the name of cutting back defense!"
"It threatens our national security, it threatens our economic security, it threatens our technological leadership, it threatens over 2 million jobs," agreed Jay DeFrank, a public relations official with defense contractor Pratt & Whitney.
"It's a sin that Republicans and Democrats both brought the defense industry in to this," Kilmeade asserted. "They had nothing to do with the [debt ceiling negotiations] impasse that took place last year."
But even as defense contractors are warning of a recession, their stock is up 11 percent this year, outperforming Standard & Poor's 500 Index.
Lockheed Martin CEO Bob Stevens recently told the House Armed Services Committee that "sequestration kills jobs," but his company's earnings are also up 26 percent.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Robert Stallard told Bloomberg that defense contractors that "stray into the area of politics" by threatening mass layoffs could open themselves up to questions about profits and executive compensation.
"It is potentially a risk down the line that these politicians come back with things that maybe the defense industry is not prepared for," he explained.
Watch this video from Fox News' Fox & Friends, broadcast Aug. 23, 2012.
(h/t: Media Matters)