Article/Column

Typically, I take the opportunity afforded by this monthly column to write about the most recent activities of the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, including the issues we have considered in our busy hearing schedule.  This month, however, I want to step back for a moment and take a broader look at some of the issues that confront our United States Coast Guard.

 

It has been 27 years since the seminal oversight report “Semi-Paratus: The United States Coast Guard, 1981” was issued during the 97^th Congress by the then-Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Navigation of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries.

 

This report presented the results of a series of hearings held by the Subcommittee in 1981 on the Coast Guard’s programs and procedures. 

 

The introduction to the “Semi-Paratus” report notes that the Subcommittee’s decision to conduct the hearing series was “made in response to a widespread impression that a serious and growing imbalance existed between the Coast Guard’s resources and its responsibilities under the law.” 

 

Unfortunately, this describes a situation that is still all too familiar today.

 

I have seen throughout my legislative career how critical issues get kicked around and around year after year without any definitive actions being taken to resolve them. 

 

This is a phenomenon that I have always found deeply saddening and frustrating, which is exactly what I feel when I realize how long some of the most critical issues regarding the Coast Guard have been under consideration.

 

Even though the Coast Guard’s responsibilities have changed significantly since the “Semi-Paratus” report was issued, unfortunately, many of the problems identified by the report are essentially unchanged.

 

For example, the report contained this important conclusion: “[T]he Coast Guard needs approximately 14,600 additional people to maintain its current level of services through the coming decade” and then added that “an increase of 35,000 personnel – almost a doubling in size – would be necessary [for the Coast Guard] to function at the optimal level by 1991.” 

 

To put this in perspective, the Coast Guard concluded fiscal year 1981 with an end-strength of 38,804 military personnel.  It then concluded fiscal year 1991 with an end-strength of 37,380 military personnel – 1,424 fewer military members than the end-strength a decade earlier.

 

Even after assuming the significant homeland security missions assigned to the Coast Guard after September 11, 2001, the service concluded fiscal year 2007 with an end-strength of 40,698 – fewer than 2,000 military personnel above the end strength of 1981. 

 

As I argued in last month’s column, I firmly believe that the Coast Guard must grow to meet its new responsibilities, but expanded personnel numbers have been recognized as necessary to strengthening the Coast Guard for decades.

 

In 1981, the “Semi-Paratus” report also identified significant asset needs.  The report noted that the average age of the cost Guard’s “major cutters”—which were designed to serve for 30 years— was 27 years.

 

Since 1981, the Coast Guard’s assets have only continued to age.  At the present time, the average age of the Coast Guard’s high endurance cutters is now 39 years – 9 years over the designed service life of these vessels.  The average age of the 210’ medium endurance cutters is 41 years. 

 

The Deepwater program, which is long overdue, is essential to recapitalizing the Coast Guard. The service will be relying on the assets acquired under Deepwater for decades to come, and the Coast Guard must be structured to effectively manage this complex effort. 

 

Finally, I note that the “Semi-Paratus” report also discussed the Coast Guard’s marine safety program in some detail. 

 

In 1981 – as today – the Subcommittee was wrestling with how to balance an essential regulatory program with the Coast Guard’s operational missions, such as search and rescue and drug interdiction.

 

There are many eerily similar conclusions reached by a report recently issued by retired Coast Guard Vice Admiral James C. Card on the marine safety program and the testimony of the Transportation Institute before the Coast Guard Subcommittee in 1981, which stated in part:

 

 

As an aside, I note that many of these problems were not new even in 1981; they were foreseen decades earlier.  In 1946, Congress was considering whether to permanently transfer the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation to the Coast Guard, where it had been temporarily placed during the years of World War II. 

 

During a series of hearings considering the proposed transfer, at least one witness noted that “under the Coast Guard the Bureau has been loaded up with a lot of inexperienced personnel, many of them graduates of the United States Coast Guard Academy.”

 

Confronted with the challenge of finding balance among the Coast Guard’s missions, the authors of the “Semi-Paratus” report reached conclusions that I do not support at this time. 

 

Specifically, the report’s authors recommended that the Coast Guard “should be relieved of any responsibilities which can be fulfilled with equal or greater competence and efficiency by other federal agencies, by state or local government, or by the private sector. Particularly strong consideration should be given to the transfer of some duties in the areas of Bridge Administration, Commercial Vessel Safety, towing and salvage operations, and icebreaking.” 

 

Importantly, however, the “Semi-Paratus” authors warned that “Congress should not dismantle a regulatory system which one maritime disaster later will – in response to a public outcry – have to be re-assembled.”

 

Today, under the leadership of Congressman James L. Oberstar, Chairman of the full Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, we are responding to the challenges in the marine safety program that have festered for decades. We are trying to design a program that will not have to be “reassembled” after shortcomings are identified following a major marine casualty – which is, unfortunately, the typical catalyst for such a “reassembly.”

 

The marine safety program performs a vital public safety function through a regulatory process.  If we continue to kick this issue down the road along with so many others that are tumbling along, we risk leaving mariners and the public in harm’s way.  That is not something Congress, the maritime industry, or the public should tolerate any longer.