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Gulf Spill Demands Restoring Coast Guard Budget Cuts

05/05/10

For Immediate Release: May 5, 2010
Gulf Oil Spill Demands Restoration of Coast Guard Budget Cuts

(WASHINGTON, DC) – Key House Appropriations Committee Member John Carter (R-TX) says the burdens placed on the U.S. Coast Guard by the Gulf oil spill demand Congress reject the Administration’s plan to slash the Coast Guard’s budget for fiscal year 2011.

"The U.S. Coast Guard response to this spill has been outstanding, but we cannot expect that capability to survive with the kind of draconian cuts requested by the Administration," says Carter, a member of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security, which oversees Coast Guard funding. "The current budget plan to drop 1100 military personnel would have seriously jeopardized this level of response had those cuts been in place today."

Carter says the Coast Guard is in dire need of increased funding, not cuts. The House Republican Conference Secretary inspected Coast Guard facilities in the Arctic last year, where new resources are badly needed to replace aging Coast Guard cutters and equipment under pressure from increased usage. In the Caribbean, 10 of 12 cutters dispatched as emergency relief following last year’s earthquake in Haiti suffered mechanical breakdowns. The average Coast Guard cutter is 41 years old, compared to the Navy’s 14 year average ship age.

The Obama Administration 2011 budget request would cut Coast Guard funding and personnel by 3%, dropping the department’s budget to $10.1 billion and around 42,000 personnel. Carter has called for restoration to a minimum level of last year's 2010 budget with an inflation adjustment, with corresponding cuts elsewhere in the federal budget to compensate.