CNN "Erin Burnett Outfront" - Transcript

Interview

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Earlier today, I spoke with Congressman McKeon, whose first television interview since that comment. And I asked him exactly what he meant by that statement.

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REP. BUCK MCKEON (R-CA), CHAIRMAN, ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: My position is the same as in my speeches and in my votes. I think we should address the issue right now. That was the point that I was trying to make.

BURNETT: You're saying -- you were saying that in frustration, not that you wanted to kick the can down the road, but you're so darn sick of everything and everybody not working together, that that's how it's going to be, so -- gosh darn it, do it?

MCKEON: That's -- my position is it should have been done earlier and it should be done today, not "let's wait" because I met with these industry leaders. It met with one today. And their attorneys are explaining the law to them. The Warren Act says they're going to have to notify their employees 60 to 90 days before a potential lay-off.

BURNETT: Right.

MCKEON: And the chairman of Lockheed told me they're going to have to probably in January layoff 10 percent of their employees. They have 126,000 employees. We're looking at, if this full sequestration kicks in, we're looking at, on top of the $487 billion that we've already cut, another $500 billion, $600 billion, which brings it up to $1 trillion over the next 10 years. We're going to be losing about a million and a half jobs.

BURNETT: And let me ask you about that, because, you know, it sounds like a lot of money. But devil's advocate for a moment, it's over ten years. So, it's about $100 billion a year. Lockheed really needs to lay off 12,600 people on January 1st? Do you get the feeling that some of these cuts don't make sense, but some headlines like that would require pink slips to go out right before the election might be more political than anything else?

MCKEON: Well, the reason he even brought this up is they went to the director of OMB to get some guidance from the government. The director of OMB says don't pay any attention to this, it's not going to happen, don't worry about it.

Well, that's some direction to our government -- don't pay attention to our law. The law says on January 1st, sequestration kicks in.

They were looking for some guidance. They said, what should we do? Stick your head in the sand, forget about it, don't pay any attention to it.

Well, their attorneys say you can't do that.

BURNETT: So let me ask you about how we're in that position. We're in this position because there was a deal struck after the debt ceiling last summer by Speaker Boehner. That deal was, look, we're going to find cuts. If we don't find cuts, we'll do these $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts, which are designed to be awful for both Democrats and Republicans and cause a lot of lay-offs. By putting that scary bogeyman out there, the super committee will surely find cuts.

Well, we all know that they abysmally failed in doing that. Here is what you had to say about John Boehner and that vote recently.

"Speaker John Boehner came and met with our committee and assured us last summer that sequestration was so bad, it was planned to be so bad that it couldn't possibly ever happen. And with that, most of the members of the Armed Services Committee did vote for it," including you.

MCKEON: Yes.

BURNETT: Are you angry about that? Do you regret it? Do you feel misled?

MCKEON: I'm frustrated because we were under the belief that it would not happen, and I think that there's still a lot of people like the director of OMB tells these industry leaders don't pay any attention to it. It's not going to happen.

What I'm saying is it is happening now. They are already making business decisions based on this. They can't wait until January 1st to decide what to do and then let their people know. They have to plan ahead. And they can't take the position that the government is telling them to take.

The law is the law. It kicks in January 1st, and it's going to be very destructive.

BURNETT: All right. Well, Chairman McKeon, thank you very much for taking the time. We appreciate it. See you soon.

MCKEON: Thanks for having me. Thank you very much, Erin.

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