“The largest defense contractors have shielded their bottom lines from the sequester,” The Hill reports.

“Defense firms are boosting their profits despite the automatic spending cuts by laying off workers, cutting facilities, buying back stock and taking advantage of prior-year contracts.”

“Experts agree the cuts will have an increasingly large impact in the coming years; the sequester will take a $20 billion bite from the Pentagon in January. But for now, the cuts aren’t hitting contractors’ bottom lines, which makes their case for ending the sequester a tougher sell.”