The speakers spoke passionately, using words like "must" and "have to." Audience members nodded in agreement. The more dire the rhetoric, the more ardent the nods.
This scene didn't play out in a house of worship, but at a conference sponsored by the hawkish Foreign Policy Initiative, where Republican lawmakers spoke recently about pending defense cuts.
Preacher, meet the choir.
Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who moves to the Senate next month, told the audience lawmakers "must" increase the annual defense budget. Sitting alongside, House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., nodded. Incoming Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., delivered a similar sermon.
More nodding. The choir seemed relieved.
Last month, Marion Blakey, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), told Politico that the organization plans a new anti-sequestration campaign. "We firmly believe the sequester is undermining not only our national security but our economic interests in this country," Blakey said.
AIA will focus more on the need to undo the pending cuts because of new threats, from Russia to China to the Islamic State group.
Missing is any mention of the remaining cuts to domestic programs called for under the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA). We've seen before how this kind of campaign ends.
Passing anything more than temporary relief would require a small number of Democratic votes and the signature of a Democratic president. That means a bill that leaves the domestic cuts in place, as the hawks describe by omission, would likely be DOA.
Previous industry anti-sequester campaigns featured events in communities around the US that host military bases or industrial facilities.
Preacher, meet the choir.
In a statement last week, Blakey said AIA's "member companies will be reaching out to members of the new Congress regarding the goal of raising both the defense and non-defense BCA caps going forward.
"We are planning a very broad effort, not only seeking meetings with our traditional allies on the House and Senate Armed Services committees and the Defense Appropriations subcommittees," she said, "but also with new members of Congress. With a large incoming class in both the House and the Senate, there will be quite a few new members who may be unfamiliar with our industry and the contribution it makes to our economy and national security."
That sounds more like vote-counting than lobbying members and Average Joes mostly concerned with deficit reduction and domestic programs.
The politics of deficit reduction have always been entirely about deep ideological differences between Republicans and Democrats. Those differences have party leaders still unable to assuage various factions of their caucuses enough to pass a "grand" or even "mini" bargain.
Where Blakey's strategy shows pragmatism is its focus on raising defense spending caps, something Congress did once before. But if the defense sector wants to help strike a fiscal deal that ends the sequestration era, its preachers will need to see in the pews faces from blue-state America. Can I get an amen? ■
Editor's note: In a Monday statement, Aerospace Industries Association spokesman Dan Stohr responded to this column, in part, by saying: "We're on the record that America can't cut our way out of our debt and deficit issues — we need a grand bargain that puts revenues and mandatory spending on the table and doesn't cut the very investments — both on the defense side and the non-defense side — that we need to grow our economy."
