By BEN FREEMAN
While I, in The Hill, and many others have already critiqued the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) study claiming that over a million jobs will be lost if the spending at the Department of Defense (DoD) is cut during the debt deal, it's impossible to understate the lack of scientific rigor that appears to have gone into this analysis.
Most notably, there is no actual report. The “Full Impact Analysis” is a short document that literally claims to be a “Summary of Findings.” According to an AIA spokesman, this is the only written report produced by the analysis. I requested data files from the analysis, but have not received them. Without a full report or access to the data, it’s impossible to verify any of the authors’ claims.
What is known about the actual analysis indicates that the assumptions driving the jobs claim are, quite simply, not true.
First, the study begins by assuming that defense spending has already been cut, which Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Elmendorf debunked the day after the report was released.
Second, building upon this flawed assumption, the report assumes that if the Super Committee fails to reach an agreement and the dreaded sequestration is triggered, a total of $1 trillion will be cut from defense spending. Elmendorf’s written testimony shows that even in this worst case scenario for the Pentagon, its spending would be reduced by $882 billion over the next ten years. Most importantly, more than $500 billion of this reduction would occur from 2017-2021, which invalidates the report’s assumption that the defense budget will be reduced by $100 billion every year. Thus, even if we were to naively believe the report’s logic in this worst case scenario for the DoD, its spending would be reduced by less than $100 billion in 2013—and consequently the job loss claim is inaccurate.
Third, as I discussed in The Hill, the report fails to consider the fact that if defense spending is not cut, the government will have to cut other services or raise taxes. This report has thus done what we in the scientific community refer to as utilizing an underspecified model. In other words, the authors fail to consider alternative explanations—a core requirement of any scientific analysis.
All things considered, the AIA report is, at best, faux science.
Ben Freeman is POGO's National Security Fellow.
Why be nice? The report is a pack of lies, was formulated incompetently, and has zero, even negative, credibility--if that is possible. Thus, the well paid crew at AIA have been negligent in their service to member companies and have disgraced the industry through this transparent attempt at lobbying. The skill in lobbying shown would be suited for first or second grade. These incompetents can't play with the big dogs.
Posted by: Niko Borosky | Oct 28, 2011 at 08:51 PM