Posted on 08/09/2018 7:11:34 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Despite urgent warnings of the need to bolster the U.S. Coast Guard's ailing polar icebreaker fleet – now just a single functional 42-year-old vessel – some Republicans in Congress have proposed diverting $750 million planned for a new ship to President Donald Trump's long-promised border wall.
The Coast Guard currently has one working heavy icebreaker ship, the Polar Star, that’s been in service since 1976 – well past its intended 30-year service life.
Due to worn-out electric motors and other problems, the Coast Guard placed the ship in “caretaker” status in 2006. It was later reactivated in 2012 after requiring nearly $60 million in repairs, according to the Congressional Research Service.
“We need six icebreakers, three of them need to be heavy icebreakers, and we really need one today,” Adm. Karl L. Schultz, the new commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, said at an event in Washington last week.
“There’s still a lot of interest in getting an icebreaker to replace our 40-plus-year-old Polar Star, which is the only heavy icebreaker in the U.S. arsenal,” he said. “We need that ship now.”
The Coast Guard, under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security, requested $750 million in its annual budget that would go towards a new ship that would be ready for service by 2023, when the Guard expects to retire the Polar Star.
Even Trump himself promised a new ship while at a Guard change-of-command ceremony in June....
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Can they do that? Reallocate? If so, why even have budget fights ???
All the ice is melting because of Goebbels Warming, anyway, right?
Says, instead, that DHS removed it from their budget request to Congress.
But ABC wants Rs blamed. Never mind the facts: the Dems decide the facts.
Kabuki anyway IMO. Icebreaker will be funded. Wall too.
The USCG always gets screwed on budgets. They are all probably face palming right about now.
True to form though, the Coast Guard are very fiscally responsible, they learned it the hard way, they worked at it.
Wow.. that’ll pay for a whole 30 miles of wall. The sparrow has farted.
Obama had 8 tears to let them dwindle down.
But hey we wont need em with climare change. /s
I do think the US needs at least one super heavy, nuclear powered icebreaker. It also needs to equip it with high tech tricks to not just break ice, but to keep it broken.
How about cutting off the indigent-by-choice class? You know, the unemployable druggies, the babymamas, the injury/illness fakers, etc. That would pay for the wall AND a couple of icebreakers.
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