An article in the Wall Street Journal (August 9, 2011) describes the impact of decreases in spending by the federal government ($ 917 billion in cuts over 10 years) and the impact of the loss of their consistency in spending and reliability in contract execution.   From 97 % for Lockheed Martin to 27 % of volume for Dell , government contracts have a large impact.  Will the supply chain cost impact be larger than the magnitude of the demand impact due to a decrease in demand stability ? Will these demand changes result in a ripple effect across the supply chain ?  Will these changes have a disproportionate impact on domestic suppliers due to the need to satisfy “Buy American” policies for many government contracts ?