The Coast Guard is facing $1.3 billion in cuts in the Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget guidance, a move that will “severely undermine U.S. national security,” according to one GOP lawmaker.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., sent a letter to President Trump on Thursday to say that the cut to the Coast Guard “egregiously conflicts with your stated goal to strengthen national security.
“These proposed cuts, should they proceed, will guarantee negative consequences,” Hunter wrote. “Undoubtedly, America would be less safe based on the suggested recommendations of career bureaucrats positioned within OMB.”
As part of the proposed cuts, the blueprint from the Office of Management and Budget would cancel a “roughly $500 million new ship,” which is likely the ninth National Security Cutter built by Huntington Ingalls Industries.
“The termination of this contract is especially disconcerting when considered alongside the operational successes these assets have demonstrated, not to mention the hundreds of high paying American jobs that would be lost,” Hunter wrote.
Beci Brenton, a spokeswoman for Huntington Ingalls Industries, said the company has already begun work on the ninth ship.
“The impact of OMB’s direction to the Coast Guard is unknown at this time. We have already purchased long lead materials and have begun pre-production,” she told the Washington Examiner.
The Coast Guard falls under the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Defense, but still fulfills several domestic safety missions such as counter narcotics, border security and law enforcement missions.
“I must emphasize that the Coast Guard is without question a branch of the U.S. military, which is a fact that has been apparently discounted by OMB given its obvious lack of respect for the Coast Guard,” Hunter wrote. Trump plans to request $603 billion for the Defense Department, $54 billion higher than the level set by the Budget Control Act and only about $19 billion more than what was projected by former President Obama for fiscal 2018.
