800 companies and some 43,000 jobs in the Phoenix metro area are up for the chopping block of sequestration hits in full. The $1.5 trillion dollar decades long set of cuts set to hit the country like a meat axe swung by a depraved butcher will harm Arizona's aerospace and R&D sectors on top of hitting social programs that might help those displaced by the other effects. Right or Left, everyone in America is suffering the consequence of congressional gridlock.

Automatic federal spending cuts set to take effect March 1 under sequestration could end up costing Arizona more than 49,000 jobs and could take big bites out the state’s defense, aerospace and R&D sectors.

Looming cuts under the 2011 sequestration deal brokered by President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans also display the behometh size of U.S. defense spending ($711 billion) and the economic importance and dependence on military spending in states such as Arizona.

There are 2,000 defense, aerospace and related supply-chain companies in the state. They employ 43,000 workers and 800 of those companies are in the Phoenix metro area.

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