The Bay State is considered particularly vulnerable. From providing training shoes for soldiers to supplying sophisticated cruise missiles for Navy destroyers, companies here have played an outsized role in defense contracting.
The industry generates a significant number of indirect or direct jobs in Massachusetts - about 115,000 in 2009, the most recent year cited in a recent report by the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute. Defense companies and their lobbyists are focusing much of their efforts on a 12-member bipartisan super committee assigned the task of cutting the nation’s projected deficit by at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, sits on the committee.
“We think the stakes are quite high on two fronts, both on ensuring that soldiers are well protected, but also the economic impact that it can have in the United States,’’ said David Costello, managing director of Boston-based ADS Ventures, whose lobbying team works on behalf of companies that outfit soldiers, including Massachusetts companies Polartec LLC in Lawrence, New Balance in Boston, and Duro Textiles in Fall River.
The Aerospace Industries Association, a trade group that represents Raytheon and other large companies, launched a public relations campaign last month to persuade Congress not to cut the Pentagon further. The group will make its case “anywhere people will listen,’’ said the association’s president, Marion C. Blakey.
“Make no mistake, combining the cuts that have already occurred and the potential for more cuts defense cuts … hundreds of thousands of American workers’ jobs are at risk,’’ she said.
