WASHINGTON: The White House has dropped plans for a 14 percent cut to the Coast Guard, instead promising a budget that “sustains current funding levels.” The bad news is that “current funding levels” are already too low. The Coast Guard has to give almost 600 drug shipments a pass each year because they don’t have the ships or planes to catch […]
WASHINGTON: The Navy League of the United States just issued a withering denunciation of President Trump‘s proposed $1.3 billion cut to the Coast Guard. Trump’s 2018 budget plan has already come under fire from both sides. Democrats reject it for cutting domestic spending too much. Pro-military Republicans reject it for raising defense too little. The Republican […]
CAPITOL HILL: The Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee thinks President Trump’s 2018 spending plan is dead on arrival and has already gone to the Budget Committee to get a much bigger defense budget. Mac Thornberry also doesn’t want defense increases offset by steep cuts to the Coast Guard or State Department, as Trump proposed. Thornberry […]
WASHINGTON: After a decade of dithering, the White House and Congress have finally come close to agreeing that America must build a new icebreaker. One congressional subcommittee, the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, has actually come up with the $1 billion needed to build it in less than a decade. But the money wasn’t put in […]
[UPDATED with Adm. Papp comments] SURFACE NAVY ASSOCIATION: In an important step to filling the increasing gap between American’s Arctic strategy and our capabilities, the Coast Guard has released its “notional program schedule [and] notional Polar Icebreaker requirements” for two new heavy icebreakers today. “This will be available to industry at noon today and I’m sure […]