Navy News, opinions, editorials, news from Iraq, photos, reports - Navy Times

House panel presses for details on CG plus-up

Members of a House panel on Monday pressed two top Coast Guardsmen for details on the service’s fiscal 2009 budget request, asking — at times pointedly — for more information about the lifesaving service’s goals for bigger end strength and its oversight on the failed 123-foot patrol boat conversion project.

Coast Guard Chief of Staff Vice Adm. Robert Papp and Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard Charles Bowen appeared on Capitol Hill before members of the House Transportation Subcommittee on the Coast Guard.

Minnesota Democratic Rep. James Oberstar, chairman of the full House Transportation Committee, asked Papp to elaborate on recent hints dropped around Washington by top Coast Guardsmen that it needs more people to meet its broadening portfolio of responsibilities. Papp, like Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen before him, demurred from giving a number or an estimate: “I don’t know how big the Coast Guard should be, but I now that it’s too small now,” he said.

“I think you know what you need,” Oberstar said, but Coast Guard officials have been pressured by the White House Office of Management and Budget not to disclose how much they want to grow the force until after the current cycle of budget approval, he said.

Not so, Papp insisted — the Coast Guard’s senior leadership just wants to “start a discussion” with Congress and federal officials about how much it should grow before it begins seriously getting into those details.

“If I knew how big the Coast Guard should be, I would tell you,” Papp said. “If anyone would know, as the chief of staff, I would know.”

Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, the subcommittee chairman, issued a statement after the hearing in which he expressed his support for growing the Coast Guard, but not before he and other congressional overseers got firm numbers.

“[I]t is essential that the Coast Guard provide us with the figures detailing the number of personnel and resources necessary to fulfill all of its duties in the most efficient and effective manner. Once we receive this information, we will be able to react accordingly via the FY2009 Coast Guard Reauthorization,” the statement said.

Allen, speaking with reporters after his annual State of the Coast Guard address Feb. 14, agreed with a reporter’s suggestion that the Coast Guard could in theory grow by about 1,200 people per year.

Papp had no such specifics at Tuesday’s hearing, but he spoke generally about the need for more Coast Guardsmen across the board. As an example, he recalled his tour in Cleveland as commander of District 9, which covers the Great Lakes, when he commanded a total of about 2,000 active-duty Coast Guardsmen. He had to disperse those personnel across eight states, the inland lakes and the international boarder with Canada, but Cleveland city officials had approximately the same number of police officers to cover just their piece of Cuyahoga County, Papp said. In Chicago, the biggest city in his area of operations, city officials had many more first responders than that.

It wasn’t only a proposed plus-up that drew questioning from the members of the subcommittee. Mississippi Democrat Rep. Gene Taylor, whose district includes the Northrop Grumman shipyards in Pascagoula, asked Papp why the Coast Guard wasn’t pursing a harder line against Integrated Coast Guard Systems, the joint Lockheed Martin-Northrop Grumman concern that modified eight 110-foot patrol boats, which later were taken out of service because of their shoddy construction.

The Coast Guard’s acquisition directorate in January asked for $96 million from ICGS to cover the money spent on the botched modification and the loss of the eight ships, and Taylor exhorted Papp to be sure the Coast Guard recovered the money.

“You and I would never treat our money that way,” Taylor said. “We shouldn’t treat the taxpayers’ money that way.”

Other panel members focused generally on their support for the Coast Guard’s budget request this year — Cummings said he “supports the request wholeheartedly,” and agrees that the Coast Guard must add end strength — although it is uncertain how any of President Bush’s record defense and Homeland Security budget requests will fare in the Democratic-controlled Congress.

The subcommittee’s ranking member, Ohio Republican Rep. Steve LaTourette, also mentioned his support for growing the Coast Guard, starting specifically with the FY09 request for 276 new maritime security watch-stander billets in the Coast Guard’s various sector commands: “The 276 bump is a wonderful thing,” he said.