In an interview last January, Representative Frank Wolf (RVA) sent the Coast Guard an extraordinarily frank message: Find a new home. He said the Coast Guard "would be better off in the Department of Defense. Their problem is that they have been an orphan in the Department of Transportation." Having devoted six years to reducing Coast Guard budgets as chairman of the Coast Guard's House Appropriations Subcommittee, Representative Wolf knows full well the challenges confronting the fifth—and smallest by far—U.S. armed service.
The Coast Guard is located in the Department of Transportation (DoT), the result of a "marriage of inconvenience" when DoT was established in 1967. Previously, since its founding as the Revenue Cutter Service in 1790, the Coast Guard resided in the Treasury Department. The newest arrangement is inconvenient because the Coast Guard does much more than support transportation interests and programs. The Commandant, Admiral James M. Loy, has explained that no more than one-third of his service's missions support Transportation—the others support the Defense and Justice Departments and independent branches such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Environmental Protection Agency.
The critical element of the Coast Guard's dilemma is that its partners and stakeholders are in virtually all corners of government—from the local to the federal levels, including international governmental organizations—as well as throughout the private sector. If an issue "touches" an interest in the inland waterways, coastal zone, territorial sea and exclusive economic zone, or the high seas, it touches the Coast Guard.
Transportation in all forms is DoT's center of gravity and its reason for existence. Aviation, highway, and railroad affairs always have dominated its agenda, interests, and attention. The Coast Guard's missions and budget needs are peripheral concerns; they will remain so as long as the Coast Guard resides in Transportation. The Coast Guard must build and defend its one-year budgets through DoT and congressional oversight committees that maintain a perspective focused largely, if not exclusively, on transportation. Like DoT, the committees have little interest in the service's numerous roles and missions that have no relation to transportation functions. The result is a mad scramble for budget support every year.
For more than three decades, the Coast Guard has endured this awkward fit. To be sure, the Coast Guard's exceptional breadth of mission and unique status rule against a perfect fit in any single organization. It is the only federal agency whose people are simultaneously maritime constables, lifesavers, warriors, environmentalists, and regulators. While this multitasking should be an organizational strength, it has backfired. Broad and varied missions generate a bewildering image to all the public, Congress, and the White House. The Coast Guard's complex character is too hard to understand and too hard to rally cohesive support around. The time has come to find a better organizational home.
As a matter of priority, any parent department should place Coast Guard missions, values, character, and culture at its epicenter. The new cabinet-level department recommended by the Hart-Rudman Commission would do just that: Comprising three federal law enforcement agencies—the Border Patrol, Customs Service, and Coast Guard—and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the proposed National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) offers a sensible solution that groups like-agencies together for homeland security. It is a broad concept designed to counter the wide range of threats facing the nation. The NHSA would have law enforcement, maritime security, and sovereignty at its heart. Recall that law enforcement is the Coast Guard's "DNA" and the reason the Revenue Cutter Service was established in the first place. Thus, for the NHSA to be successful in its core functions, the new department would have to fight for a strong, vital Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard should be in a department that reflects its budgetary viewpoint. If the Bush administration and Congress establish NHSA, it could result in positive programmatic and budgetary tradeoffs. The Border Patrol, Customs Service, and Coast Guard each operate boats, aircraft, command-and-control nodes, intelligence centers, and communications networks. Tying them together under one department could bring substantial savings in training, procurement, and maintenance. Further, the NHSA would value operations and understand the budgetary requirements of operational—as compared to regulatory—organizations.
Although the proposed NHSA is not a perfect fit, it would be a significant improvement to the Coast Guard's current "home." Almost all Coast Guard missions would fit appropriately within a framework designed to prevent—or respond to the consequences of—incidents and emergencies in the maritime domain. President George W. Bush should act on the Hart-Rudman recommendations and transform U.S. agencies with homeland security responsibilities into a coordinated, mutually supportive whole that is far more effective than its parts in meeting threats to U.S. national security.
The National Homeland Security Agency might not be the ideal place for the Coast Guard—but it is clear that the Coast Guard has outgrown the confines of Transportation.
Captain Stubbs retired from the U.S. Coast Guard last year. He works at Anteon Corporation in Arlington, Virginia.