Four top advisers to President Barack Obama met with CEOs of several companies about the impact that across-the-board federal spending reductions could have next month.
"For some of these major companies, the impacts would be long lasting, as they would have to make decisions about programmatic changes they would make and therefore contractual changes," White House spokesman Jay Carney said. "A lot of these companies, while they are defense contractors, also have a significant civilian side business operations that would be negatively affected by the impacts on their R&D budgets, for example. So this is a very serious matter."
In the meeting, Obama aides: Senior adviser Valerie Jarret, Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, Jeff Zients, director of the Office of Management and Budget and Alan Krueger, the president’s chief economist.
Business leaders include Wes Bush, CEO of Northrop Grumman Corporation, David P. Hess, president of Pratt & Whitney, Linda Parker Hudson, CEO of BAE Systems Inc., John S. Langford, CEO of Aurora Flight Sciences Corp., David F. Melcher, CEO of ITT Exelis, Mike Petters, CEO of Huntington Ingalls Industries and Marion C. Blakey, CEO, Aerospace Industries Association.
The meeting comes a day after Obama called on Congress to pass a package of modest cuts and tax changes as a way to delay the across-the-board reductions.
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