Coast Guard project: How government should work

Spectrum

Sometimes to save money you need to spend some. That may sound like a contradictory notion, especially coming from an organization such as Citizens Against Government Waste, which seeks to roll back, or at least hold the line, on most federal spending. But it may be, certainly in the case of the Coast Guard, both in terms of saving money and, more important, lives.

That fifth branch of the military has been handed more missions by Congress than any other. In the war against drugs, guardsmen track and interdict boats before they invade 95,000 miles of our coastline, last month reporting a single haul of 26,800 pounds of cocaine worth a whopping $500 million on the streets of this nation.

They guard hundreds of thousands of miles of water from foreign fishing poachers who threaten to deplete American waters of a vital resource. In case of any sea-going emergency, who do you call? The Coast Guard. Its crews answer 50,000 distress calls each year and save nearly 5,000 lives annually.

In short, the Coast Guard is lifeguard and drug cop, environmental protector and water safety inspector, immigration official and water traffic facilitator in 300 ports and hundreds of other bases near the nation's waterways and coasts.

And it performs almost all of these chores on a $4-billion budget, with rickety equipment and communications facilities. Its sea-going vessels average 37 years in age; its helicopters and planes are about a quarter century out of date. Its communications equipment often doesn't connect with other services.

And it is there that the waste of underspending comes into play.

Last year, the Coast Guard needed a $77-million special appropriation just to keep its ships afloat and aircraft flying. Its cutters are free of equipment problems only 40 percent of the time. That means they can't fully perform all of their missions more than half the time.

That means the Guard is less available to save lives, and that its own crew members' lives are put in greater jeopardy. In the last year, a plane crash took the lives of two crew members, and another nine were almost killed when a boat-hoisting arm on a 58-year-old cutter just broke, dumping them into the 36-degree waters of the Bering Sea.

Some in Congress are waking up to the fact that some penny pinching isn't wise, but a waste. The U.S. House, when it voted to reauthorize Coast Guard funding, included in the package $300 million for a project called Deepwater.

The General Accounting Office has criticized the program as risky, because it will involve a long-term commitment to buying equipment, and will involve a primary contractor coordinating the development and building of new equipment.

According to the House Appropriations Committee, these concerns can be addressed if there is a long-term commitment to the project by the administration, and other needs of the Coast Guard can be met within budget projections over the next five years.

Most federal acquisitions are dictated by rules, without regard to an item's purpose or place within the larger scheme of things. The innovative 20-year Deepwater project, though, provides a means of coordinating equipment development and purchases with the Guard's 14 mandated deep-water missions — those missions performed 50 miles or more offshore, requiring an extended on-scene presence, or, having operating areas that require traveling over long distances.

If it remains within budget projections, this approach could minimize duplication and maximize the utility of every piece of equipment, through its interoperability not only with its own equipment but also with other defense agencies.

In addition, Deepwater will provide some needed accountability, as potential prime contractors share the risk with the government by contracting directly with its subcontractors. If the prime contractor fails to meet project goals, the government can replace it with another.

Finally, at $500 million a year — the same amount as that huge drug seizure — the program should be affordable, as Congress would have to spend the same amount of money on either maintenance or new equipment anyway. If it proves successful, Deepwater could be a model that other government agencies might use in the future for major long-term procurement.

Thomas Schatz is president of Citizens Against Government Waste (www.cargw.org), the nation's largest taxpayer advocacy group.