Price Statement on Coast Guard 2015 Budget Request
Admiral Papp, we are glad to have you before the subcommittee today to discuss the Coast Guard’s budget request for fiscal year 2015. And because this is your last appearance before the subcommittee to testify in support of the Coast Guard’s budget as Commandant, I want to take the opportunity to thank you for your service: to the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, and the nation.
The Coast Guard budget request is for $8.1 billion in discretionary funding, a cut of $364.1 million, or 4.5 percent, from the current year appropriation.
This proposed funding level improves on last year’s request, but it still far below what is needed, and I suspect you may feel the same way. In addition, we have still not received the five-year Capital Investment Plan, which is supposed to be submitted along with the budget request. The late submission of the CIP has become a perennial problem, and appears to reflect a continuing mismatch of expectations between the Coast Guard and the Administration regarding the Coast Guard’s future.
Admiral, I suspect you have done your due diligence on the CIP, but to those who are here representing the White House and OMB, we cannot continue this game of under-resourced budget requests that require us to divert funding from other parts of the bill to make the Coast Guard acquisition budget reasonable.
Acquisition programs for vessels and aircraft are long term propositions that require long-term budgeting. How can we have a reasonable discussion this morning about recapitalizing the Coast Guard fleet without the current CIP? There is simply no excuse for the Administration withholding the 5-year budget for Coast Guard acquisition until after our Coast Guard hearing.
We have withheld $75 million from the Coast Guard headquarters budget until the CIP is submitted, but that is apparently not applying leverage in the right place.
The underlying problem is that the Coast Guard’s mission needs, as they are currently defined, are not supported by the acquisition budgets the Coast Guard is allowed to put forward. Either the budget requests need to increase, or the missions need to be re-scoped. We need to resolve that disconnect sooner, rather than later.
The FY 2015 request for the Acquisition, Construction and Improvements is $291.4 million, or 21.2 percent, below the FY 2014 level. Compared to FY 2010, the proposed FY 2015 funding level would represent a nearly 30 percent reduction in ACI funding. Admiral, you have said before, that in order to properly recapitalize the Coast Guard fleet you would require at least $1.5 billion a year. Yet here we sit again, with a request that obviously does not address the known needs of the Coast Guard.
In addition to recycling a flawed acquisitions budget, this budget request repeats another proposal from last year, to significantly reduce the Coast Guard workforce. Under the FY 2015 budget request, you would be down to 49,093 positions by the end of the fiscal year, a reduction of nearly 1,200 positions below the end of FY 2013, and more than 800 positions below the current year. Perhaps the proposed attrition is justified by the more efficient use of personnel and assets, but we will want to know how such personnel loses would affect your operational capacity.
Admiral Papp, we know the Coast Guard is committed to doing its part to find savings in these lean budget times, and we also know that you are committed to ensuring that the Coast Guard is able to do more with less. But the Coast Guard has an important set of missions that require a certain level of resources. We need to know if fiscal pressures have upended the balance between them.
As you can see, we have a number of topics that need to be explored in depth this morning and I look forward to our discussion.