U.S. Coast Guard deserves more attention amid government shutdown

With all the intense focus on long TSA lines at American airports, a vital national security problem is being overlooked: Critical parts of the United States Coast Guard are not being funded.

Ever since 2003, the Coast Guard has operated under the umbrella of U.S. Homeland Security. That means that for more than six weeks, some 10,000 civilian officials in the service have not been paid. And while the salaries of uniformed members are quietly being funded, the money is being taken from other accounts, including essential operations.

Most Americans think the Coast Guard’s major jobs are cleaning up oil spills and rescuing stranded sailors. That’s a comfortable myth. But there are so many more.

The U.S. Coast Guard plays a vital roll in national security and is actively keeping track of a diverse range of global concerns. They oversee maritime security, coastal defense, search and rescue at sea, and maritime environmental protection. Last year they deployed their one and only icebreaker, Healy, to monitor and query two Chinese vessels operating in American waters off the coast of Alaska. The service is always on the lookout for environmental crises while fossil-fuel laden tankers from Russia and China make the treacherous Bering Strait crossing.

The Coast Guard must be ready to respond to extreme weather events, such as Typhoon Merbok in 2022. Without adequate and uninterrupted  funding, such essential response is at risk.

Expanding role

Keep in mind that when operating in the Arctic, the Coast Guard’s job is expanding. The Arctic ocean, as it melts, is opening a portal to a vital international fishery, not to mention vast stores of unexplored energy and critical minerals. What’s more, the Arctic is fast becoming a viable, global shipping route unlocked by a warming climate and melting sea ice.

The U.S. has sovereign rights to many of the assets found there. But enforcing those rights requires having ships that can operate in various ice conditions. We are woefully behind in getting those ships and icebreakers into the field. Our first Arctic Security cutter is not scheduled to arrive until 2028. Keep in mind that Russia already has 41 icebreakers, some nuclear-powered.

Further south, the Coast Guard has expanded its critical role in preventing the spread of drugs and illegal immigrants into the U.S. Last year, the service seized 510,000 pounds of cocaine — the largest amount in its history. This means the Coast Guard is seizing approximately 1,600 pounds of cocaine per day.

Consider this: In 2024, land-based U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials captured 28.4 metric tons of cocaine at the U.S. border. During the same period, the Coast Guard intercepted 106.3 metric tons at sea. That is the vast majority of all intercepted drugs because so much is transported to our borders by sea.

While it runs massive drug operations and tracks Chinese and Russian naval activity, the Coast Guard is also responsible for 4.5 million square miles of oceanic surveillance. Scientists currently are tracking the northward migration of fish stocks into increasingly ice-free Arctic waters. These fish soon will be followed by foreign, global fishing fleets, often defended by China’s very own Coast Guard. In 2020 Russia conducted a military exercise in the U.S. economic zone in the Bering Sea, a routine provocation that the Coast Guard observed and analyzed.

Unique service

In short, the Coast Guard is a unique service within American defense. It is both military and civilian, a law enforcement agency, a regulatory body, and a vital piece of our intelligence community. No other service branch does all of that.

Created by Congress in 1790, it is in fact our oldest naval service. And yet it is not managed like our other branches of the military. At various times placed under the U.S. Treasury Department and then later, the Department of Transportation, the Coast Guard was moved into the Department of Homeland Security when that body was created in 2003.

Due to the many different missions within the Coast Guard, government shutdowns and the DHS funding standoff affect it differently than other military services. While its core missions of national security support and search and rescue have remained funded, non-emergency activities have not.

Civilian workers have not been paid now since mid February. And the Coast Guard has a much larger percentage of civilian workers than the other service branches. Inside the Department of Defense, many more civilian personnel are covered by special measures to “pay our military” because they are considered direct support for military activities.

Huge disruption

Nonetheless, when shutdowns stop or threaten their pay, Coast Guard workers still report for duty even if their families have no food in their pantries. This cannot be good for morale, let alone help improve recruiting and retention. The start-stop pattern of payment is hugely disruptive for a military force that depends on steady, predictable, multi-month training cycles and long-term ship maintenance schedules.

In this fiscal year, the Coast Guard has been without funding for 85 out of 176 days, or nearly half the year. This is crippling the U.S. in more ways than we realize.

Given the importance of the Coast Guard to a wide swath of American life — from shipwrecked sailors to Chinese spy ships — surely the agency deserves a more stable home, protected from the vicissitudes of partisan politics. While there is no perfect administrative home for a service of so many mixed missions, the Department of Defense seems far more logical.

Alice Rogoff is the founder and publisher of Arctic Today.