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With summer upon us
and visitors enjoying our beaches and waterways, the
Coast Guard will protect us more than most of us
would ever realize. With over 3,500 miles of
coastline, Maine has strong ties both to our water
and necessarily to the Coast Guard.
Their
record is truly amazing. Last year alone, the Coast
Guard conducted more than 36,000 port security
patrols, boarded over 19,000 vessels, escorted over
7,200 vessels, and maintained more than 115 security
zones. In 2004, it responded to over 32,000 calls
for assistance, saved 5,500 lives, seized 376,000
pounds of illegal narcotics, and stopped more than
11,000 illegal migrants from reaching our shores.
It conducted 4,500 fishing vessel boardings and
responded to 23,904 pollution incidents.
Now that
is impressive, but what is truly staggering is that
the Coast Guard is able to accomplish these various
missions at all. Since September 11th,
the Coast Guard has been asked to take on an
entirely new mission - protecting our homeland.
This is a tremendously important task in this post
9/11 threat environment where as a nation we must
stand ready to protect our borders and our coasts
like never before - with the brave men and women of
the Coast Guard working harder than ever securing
the nation's coastline, waterways, and ports.
While the
Coast Guard must maintain a robust homeland security
posture, these new priorities cannot diminish its
focus on its traditional missions such as marine
safety, search and rescue, aids to navigation,
fisheries law enforcement, and marine environmental
protection. The impressive achievements by the
Coast Guard of its traditional and its new homeland
security missions, however, may not be sustainable
unless Congress renews its commitment to fully
supporting the Coast Guard.
I have
long believed that we can only ask the Coast Guard
to do this much for so long. Of the 42 Coast Guards
around the world, our Coast Guard ranks third from
last - just ahead of the Phillippines and Mexico -
in terms of the age of the their assets, like the
Cutters that protect our coasts. That is why it is
essential that we provide the Coast Guard with
more. I have introduced legislation that recently
passed out of the Senate Commerce Committee that
would authorize funding for Coast Guard programs at
$8.2 billion for Fiscal Year 2006 and $8.8 billion
for Fiscal Year 2007. This represents an 8 percent
annual budget increase over the levels in last
year's authorization bill. This funding, I believe,
reflects the increasing investment our nation must
make to allow the Coast Guard to meet its mission
requirements.
My bill would authorize full funding for
the Coast Guard’s Deepwater Modernization and
Recapitalization Program at $1.1 billion in Fiscal
Year 2006 and $1.2 billion in 2007. This program is
critical to the Coast Guard's future. Since 9/11
the Coast Guard has to travel further out to sea
into “deep water” to protect our shores. But the
ships they need to go that far out – including
several cutters that date back to World War II – are
technologically obsolete, require excessive
maintenance, and lack essential speed.
I believe the Coat
Guard’s Deepwater enjoys strong and near-universal
Congressional support, and I have personally made it
a top priority to further advance – and even
accelerate – this vital program. This legislation
demonstrate our commitment to modernizing the Coast
Guard's fleet, and to the possibility of
accelerating this procurement program should
additional funds become available. Considering the
state of the Coast Guard’s assets - from cutters to
aircraft - we clearly must given the Coast Guard the
resources they need to accomplish their missions.
What’s
more the Deepwater Program if accelerated and
expanded - as I would like to do - to be completed
over 10 years as opposed to 20 could help support
additional work at Bath Iron Works (BIW). Cutters
are not currently built at BIW, but as Ronald
O’Rourke with the Congressional Research Service
told me at a hearing I recently chaired,
“[A]ccelerating procurement of Deepwater National
Security Cutters (NSCs) and Offshore Patrol Cutters
(OPCs) could help support the two shipyards that
have built the Navy’s larger surface combatants in
recent years – General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works of
Bath, ME, and Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls Shipyards
of Pascagoula, MS.” I cannot say that this will
happen, but my commitment to the men and women of
BIW will translate into action in pressing for an
expanded and accelerated Deepwater Program.
With the
summer in full swing, we will see the Coast Guard
off our coasts doing the job they are committed to.
When you see them, remember how hard they work for
us. Remember to thank them for the sacrifice they
give to our nation each and every day.
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