The U.S. Coast Guard faces some budget choices that would make even strong stomachs queasy. Newly burdened with Homeland Security duties but committed to maintaining its historic search-and-rescue role, the Coast Guard and its Congressional allies must choose between adapting its existing fleet to new conditions and – over a longer period of time – building a new fleet that’s better suited to the future. (A third choice – cutting back services – is likely to be politically unpalatable.) Already, the sickening signs are surfacing: vessel refurbishing projects underway but over budget, a Vessel Documentation Office that’s months behind in its work, other unanticipated problems with aging equipment. As we report this month, most of the Coast Guard’s cutters were built 30 years ago, and many of its aircraft date from the 1970s and 1980s. The Coast Guard’s ambitious “Deepwater” project would pay for repairs, upgrades and the kind of high technology required to look for modern terrorists, but the Bush Administration’s $7.4 billion request for next year doesn’t even include it.
“In the first four years of the project,” writes Maine Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the committee that oversees the Coast Guard’s budget, “the Coast Guard has already spent $140 million above what it had planned to keep its aging fleet operational.” Meanwhile the modernization effort has years to go. If someone doesn’t pay this bill, can we really expect the Coast Guard to be there when we’re in trouble at sea?