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House passes bill that CG, Bush oppose

The House of Representatives on Thursday ramped up the possibility of a confrontation with the White House and the Coast Guard by passing a Coast Guard authorization act for the fiscal year that began last October — over the objections of Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen and President Bush, who threatened to veto the bill if it reached him as originally written.

The bill would authorize $8.7 billion in spending for the Coast Guard and grow the service to about 47,000 people, but the Coast Guard and the White House cited several objections, most notably its requirement that Coast Guardsmen provide security for ships and terminals that handle liquefied natural gas, known as LNG. Today, the Coast Guard shares responsibility for guarding LNG ships and equipment with state and local law enforcement agencies, but it doesn’t have enough people or gear to always secure each one, top service officials said.

A statement from the White House Office of Management and Budget called the LNG guarding provision “an unwarranted and unnecessary subsidy to the owners of private infrastructure” that would siphon away finite Coast Guard’s resources from other important missions. A statement from Allen said he was “deeply concerned” that the bill’s passage “would have a detrimental effect on the Coast Guard’s ability to carry out our many vital maritime safety, security and environmental protection missions.”

The Coast Guard’s legislative overseers didn’t see it that way. Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat who chairs a subcommittee that oversees the Coast Guard, issued a statement saying that he was “simply appalled” at Bush’s veto threat. “Vetoing this bill would be the equivalent of vetoing the safety and security of American families, vetoing safe air and water, and vetoing the rights of the men and women working in our marine industry,” Cummings said.

Rep. James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat who chairs the main committee that oversees the Coast Guard, said during the debate on the House floor that the plussed-up Coast Guard created by the bill would mean “there would be no excuse” about insufficient Coast Guardsmen to patrol LNG ships and sites.

The Senate is considering its own version of the bill.

U.S. demand for LNG is projected to spike in the next decade; federal regulators are considering more than a dozen applications for terminals around the country, according to the Government Accountability Office. Terrorism analysts have worried about a worst-case scenario in which an attack on an LNG tanker or one of the eight existing terminals could result in a devastating explosion, although the February 2007 GAO report said a nightmare explosion was unlikely.

Allen has said on a few occasions in his appearances around Washington that he wants a larger “national discussion” on federal oversight of moving hazardous materials, including fuels and chemicals beyond LNG. But that issue wasn’t the only sticking point for the executive branch in opposing the House version of the authorization bill.

According to an April 23 post on the Coast Guard Journal blog signed by Rear Adm. Mary Landry, the Coast Guard’s director of governmental and public affairs, the Coast Guard opposes several other changes that the House bill would make including:

å Changes to the Coast Guard’s acquisition process and its $24 billion Deepwater recapitalization portfolio, which Landry said would add delays and costs to the already troubled effort to modernize.

å Changes to the admissions process for the Coast Guard Academy, which neither the Bush White House nor the Coast Guard say they’ve had a chance yet to seriously review.

å Changes to the Coast Guard’s internal bureaucratic structure that are somewhat similar to the ones Allen has asked for — including a single, unified operations directorate and a four-star vice commandant — but still not quite right, Landry wrote. She said the new internal structure as outlined by the House would be no better than the current one.

Contentious issues like these make Coast Guard authorization bills comparatively rare. The last one was passed in 2004 and rather than making updates each year as it considers each new Coast Guard budget request, Congress has voted to carry over the existing details from the last authorization bill.