Everyone loves the U.S. Coast Guard. Its cutters, with their white-painted hulls and orange stripes, offer the world a kinder and gentler image of American military power. It rescues seafarers in distress, protects marine life, oversees safety in ports and coastal waters, and combats illegal immigration and drug trafficking, making for an exceedingly lengthy list of duties. The Coast Guard, which legally is an armed service, is the sole federal law enforcement agency at sea. It is at once humanitarian, policeman and fighting sailor.
But the U.S. Coast Guard, which is the envy of other coast guards (indeed of many navies) and which enjoys a hugely positive reputation with the public, has a problem. The difficulty lies both in its diverse portfolio and in a service culture that traditionally has emphasized a modest, quiet professionalism rather than noisy self-assertiveness. One might expect the Coast Guard to be generously endowed with politically powerful constituencies, but it is not. The service is tiny, with only 34,000 active personnel (uniformed and civilian), and is underfunded at $4 billion a year -- slightly less than the cost of a single aircraft carrier.
A warm and fuzzy glow of public approval has not yielded reliable support for the Coast Guard when and where it matters most: among budgeteers in the executive branch -- including the Department of Transportation, wherein the service is housed somewhat uneasily -- and in the Congress. The Coast Guard may be the country's fifth armed service, performing vital work for national security, but in Transportation it competes with -- and routinely loses out to -- big ticket projects with enormous domestic constituencies.
