Category: Renee Dudley
Prospects for Stepped-Up Sub Production Dim
SUBS
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
April 25, 2007
WASHINGTON, April 25 —The “silent service” may be too silent for its own good, as the debate continues over increasing and speeding up production of the newest class of Navy submarines.
The dispute over advancing the 2012 target date for doubling the rate at which the new Virginia-class attack submarines are built involves questions of cost, parochialism within the Navy and, especially, the military role of the underwater fleet.
The usefulness of the American submarine fleet has been called into question at least in part because its missions remain almost wholly unknown to the public at large. They involve mainly intelligence gathering operations, defense experts say. But some analysts say that port surveillance via a periscope is not a good enough reason to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on an additional submarine each year.
Other defense experts say additional submarine procurement is absolutely vital to national security. But even while arguing for the importance of a strong and stealthy submarine fleet, they acknowledge that spending on the Iraq War renders quickened submarine procurement virtually impossible.
Currently, one Virginia-class submarine is being built each year, with production split in alternating years between shipyards in Groton and Newport News, Va.
The Navy had originally been scheduled to begin producing two Virginia-class submarines per year in 2002. President Bush’s most recent budget proposal calls for a second such submarine to be built each year starting in fiscal year 2012.
However, John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense think tank, predicted that stepped-up production will be indefinitely stalled. “They’re going to be stuck at one a year for a while,” he said. “It’s a combination of competing priorities, plus nobody can explain what these submarines do. What subs do is all highly classified, so it’s hard to prove their usefulness. It’s just hard to describe their utility relative to other things at present.”
Pike added that although he does not expect production to move to two a year, he also does not expect it to dip below one a year.
“It’s the silent service, but their silence is not serving them at this point,” Pike said.
“When sealift people come in, they can tell you a story – they’ve got a whole song and dance they can give you about operational maneuvers on the sea.” By contrast, he said, “missions that submariners can discuss do not arouse a great deal of enthusiasm.”
During World War II and the Cold War, he said, submarines had definite missions that could be understood by the public– to sink enemy ships and protect the American surface fleet. “But when the Cold War ended, subs were relegated to the ‘nice to have’ category.”
Former Connecticut Rep. Rob Simmons, an ardent supporter of expanding the naval submarine fleet, disagreed, saying “national security is not about telling stories to the media.”
He continued: “People in the Navy, Pentagon, White House and Congress have security clearances, and just because you can’t talk about these issues in public doesn’t mean they’re not important or that they lack clearly defined missions.”
A lack of clearly understood objectives is not the only reason that additional Virginia-class procurement is likely to be stalled. Some defense analysts say that within the Navy itself the submarine fleet, the smallest division, is the lowest “caste”.
Some of these analysts argue that the underwater fleet is being sidelined by high-ranking surface warfare officers who prefer to steer federal funds to programs that will help their own division.
Chris Griffin, an Asia defense analyst for the conservative American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, warned that this could lead to a serious breach of national security.
Last November, for example, a Chinese Song-class submarine surfaced within five miles of the USS Kitty Hawk, an aircraft carrier, an event, Griffin said, that surprised the defense community. “It is possible Chinese capabilities are greater than we expected,” he said. “There’s no indication the Chinese submarine threat is going to dissipate in the foreseeable future.”
Griffin said that in the Chinese navy the role of the submarine fleet is considered to be of the highest importance. In fact, he said, a submariner is on the senior military commission of the People’s Liberation Army.
In the U.S. Navy the surface fleet generally takes top priority, and submariners are underrepresented in the highest ranks of the Navy, which has not seen a submariner as Chief of Naval Operations in recent memory.
“It shows that submarines have pride of place when it comes to Chinese naval policy,” Griffin said. “And whoever has the strongest voice on policy has the strongest voice on procurement”
To Griffin, “it’s evident that it is in America’s interests to bolster sub capabilities.” He said the U.S. Navy should have learned “clear lessons” from history when confronting China’s “asymmetric” fleet. The 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, in which American surface warfare vessels were open targets for bombing by the Japanese, should have made it evident, he said, that “sub procurement shouldn’t be a debate, but a concern.”
But the Navy doesn’t carry all of the blame, said Loren Thompson, director of security studies at the conservative Lexington Institute. Congress made the decision to split production of the Virginia-class submarine between General Dynamics Corp.’s Electric Boat in Groton and Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Newport News facility.
In 1993, the Clinton administration attempted to have each facility concentrate on one type of submarine, but the Virginia congressional delegation argued that specialization would destroy competition. “If we [had] stuck with this plan,” Thompson said, “there wouldn’t be a problem” of cost.
The Virginia-class sub, originally designed to be a less-costly version of the Seawolf attack submarine, is becoming, in fact, more expensive than the Seawolf.
Congress and the Navy have put pressure on the shipbuilding industry to get down to the least-costly model possible. The Navy said it could fund two Virginia-class submarines a year in 2012 only if Electric Boat and the Newport News shipyard would be able to produce the vessels below a certain cost.
Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) said the debate over the split production process is “not productive to revisit that at this time,” even though it is proving to be costlier than production at a single shipyard. “Taxpayers should feel good that Electric Boat and the Virginia shipyard have been listening to the Navy’s demands” to keep costs down, he said, noting the importance of achieving economies of scale. But even greater economies of scale would result from the building of two Virginia-class subs a year, Courtney said in February.
Bob Hamilton, spokesman for Electric Boat, said increasing submarine production would make Groton’s workforce more efficient. At the current schedule of one Virginia-class submarine per year, Electric Boat actually delivers one submarine every other year, while Newport News delivers ships in the alternating years. “As a result, our staffing requirements vary by 500 to 1,500 people annually,” Hamilton said, noting that when production is increased, labor costs will decline and overhead costs will be spread over a larger business base.
Steven Kosiak, vice president for budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan policy research group, said the argument that producing two submarines a year would achieve economies of scale is sound, but not feasible for everyone. “You can make that argument with all kinds of programs, but you can’t make everyone produce at their maximum efficiency rate,” he said. “If you add money to one program to increase efficient production rate, you take it away from another.”
But the need for a bigger submarine fleet is urgent, some defense analysts say.
“Subs are going to be more survivable than any other warship in the fleet,” Thompson said, adding that most people would not consider him a strong submarine advocate. In today’s Navy, submarines are charged primarily with collecting intelligence and carrying out reconnaissance missions in the Persian Gulf, the eastern Mediterranean Sea and southeast and northeast Asia. “Intelligence-gathering is one of the ways subs will become more relevant in the future,” Thompson said. “The question is, where are we going to find the money?”
“We’ll need more in the future than we have now because it’s unclear if surface ships are going to be able to operate in places like China,” Thompson said. “Are we going to put aircraft carriers in the Taiwan Strait 20 years from now?” he questioned, noting that destroyers and aircraft carriers will more vulnerable than submarines. “The Navy has stopped thinking seriously about the future,” he said.
The United States, he cautioned, could soon face a serious national security shortfall.
“We’re headed for a [submarine] fleet of less than 50,” he said. “Half those boats won’t be available; they’ll be in repair, transit or training. That leaves you with about two dozen subs to cover the whole world, and that is not enough for defense in Europe or Asia.”
He added: “If we ever have to face another threat, we’ll have to go to underwater warfare–and we won’t have enough subs to do that.”
Courtney said that “at the pace we’re going, starting in 2015, the fleet is going to be inadequate to address our national security needs. It’s not a coincidence that the original plan to build two submarines a year starting in 2002 has been pushed back to 2012. Funding is being cannibalized because of the war in Iraq.”
The Defense Department ‘s 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, a comprehensive examination of national security requirements, set as a specific goal the “return to a steady-state production rate of two attack submarines per year not later than 2012.” In addition, the Navy has said it needs a minimum of 48 submarines in its fleet. Unless submarine production is increased, it cannot maintain that number, given that some vessels will be decommissioned, while others will be in port for repair.
Thompson said that although he thinks the government is already spending too much money on the military, the Navy needs to procure two submarines a year starting in 2010 instead of 2012. “And to maintain a rational and efficient schedule, we’d build all boats at Electric Boat,” he said.
Harlan Ullman, a specialist at the Center for Naval Analysis and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said Congress will simply refuse to appropriate federal funds for two submarines a year because of ongoing costs incurred by the war in Iraq. “The Navy’s fiscal problem is the problem each of the services faces,” he said. “We have plans for 30 to 50 percent more stuff than we’re going to be able to buy, plus repairing the stuff that is being worn out in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Ullman warned that “unless Congress is prepared to spend more, you have an implosion coming, and there will have to be draconian cuts. “But in the past we have divided those cuts so each branch has suffered more or less the same.”
“In the case of China emerging as a potential threat, we have time to re-gear,” Ullman said. “People have to expect a huge compression inside the U.S. military, which could even mean going to one submarine yard.”
But Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Expeditionary Forces, disagreed, saying time is of the essence. “When a conflict starts, you don’t have any time – you have to do it in advance.”
Courtney added: “China is spending a lot of money on their military, and their Navy is getting most of it.” He said the Chinese Navy is building submarines at a rate of two-and-a-half a year. “Today we’re fine, but in 2015, who knows what the world’s going to be like?”
Advocates for accelerated procurement say that the existing underwater fleet is already overbooked with mission requests, even with a fleet that has what the Navy calls a number of vessels adequate for maintaining a moderate level of national security.
Former Rep. Simmons said that even with the current fleet of 54 fast attack submarines, the Navy still failed to fulfill nearly 40 percent of its top-priority missions. “It’s a serious national security issue,” he said. “The surface fleet was able to meet 100 percent of their requirements – yet more investments continue to be made in surface ships.”
The Navy denied hundreds of requests for intelligence collection last year because there were not enough vessels to fulfill the demands, Thompson said. “More than 300 days of intelligence collection were not served because they didn’t have enough subs that could go where they were requested,” he said.
But GlobalSecurity.org director Pike said this was not a good enough argument for increased procurement. “They talk about how they’re oversubscribed, but it’s easy to be oversubscribed when it’s a free commodity,” he said. “It’s trivially easy to churn out massive collection requests with no great effort.”
Pike added that he questions submarines’ effectiveness as information gatherers. “It’s less than evident to me that periscope depth is the best method for collecting intelligence,” he said. “If you took the money spent on subs and gave it to the intelligence community, would they turn around and spend it on subs? Probably not.”
Robert Work, vice president for strategic studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said increasing production was not a question of capacity or requirements. “The only thing in debate is how soon you should move,” he said.
“There are significant congressional interests to do this and significant Navy desires not to do it,” Work said. “What comes out of the budget deliberations I rate as a coin toss.”
Although the House Armed Services Committee supports the advanced procurement of a second Virginia-class submarine, legislation must still be approved in the Senate. Seapower Subcommittee chairman Taylor said his Senate counterpart, Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) has been a supporter of stepped-up procurement of the submarine.
Courtney said Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) have supported increased procurement before 2012.
In the House, Taylor’s subcommittee is scheduled to begin work on legislation the week of April 30. The full committee is expected to act in mid-June.
Both Taylor and Courtney express confidence that the House committee will approve the bill.
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Courtney’s Chief of Staff Feels Privileged to Work on Capitol Hill
GROSS PROFILE
New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
April 12, 2007
WASHINGTON, April 12 – When freshmen members of Congress arrive in Washington they must start from scratch: they have to hire staff, learn how to vote and how to navigate Capitol Hill, and organize furniture and computers left by previous inhabitants – and it is the job of the chief of staff to ensure that everything runs smoothly.
Jason Gross, chief of staff for Rep. Joseph Courtney (D-Conn.), says managing his boss’s office is a demanding job – made all the more challenging since Courtney has been in Congress less than four months.
“My job is like an air traffic controller,” Gross said during an interview in the 2nd District congressman’s office last month. But before he could explain more, Rep. Courtney burst into the office.
“Are you going to Dodd’s thing in the morning?” Courtney asked his 37-year-old chief of staff.
“Yes,” Gross replied.
“We need to talk about where that is,” Courtney said, laughing.
“How about – I’ll come pick you up?” Gross affirmed reassuringly, before the congressman darted to his next meeting.
Gross, like his freshman boss, is still discovering the nuances of his new job – although he is no stranger to politics.
“The responsibilities are incredible. The first month was mind-blowing,” Gross said, explaining that under normal circumstances, a freshman congressman’s first month in office is mostly ceremonial, giving the staff “a chance to catch its breath.” But the Democratic congressional takeover during last November’s election could hardly be considered normal circumstances.
“What we were then facing was a whole legislative agenda that had been pent up because the Democrats hadn’t been in power for 12 years,” Gross said. “The problem was that we didn’t have a full operation to deal with it.”
Courtney, who has known Gross for about 10 years, said he chose his chief of staff in part because of his experience both on Capitol Hill and in the district. “There are just so many potential pitfalls that a new person not understanding the process can fall into – but with him, there wasn’t going to be any learning curve,” Courtney said. “Of course it didn’t hurt that he went to Tufts,” said the congressman, a fellow alum of the Boston-area university.
Having received his masters degree from the London School of Economics, Gross was serving as a foreign policy expert in European affairs for the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election campaign, when a friend introduced him to then-Rep. Sam Gejdenson’s chief of staff. Gross was hired and served as a legislative assistant for four years to the Democratic congressman – who represented the 2nd District for 20 years before losing the 2000 election to Republican Rob Simmons.
Although Gross had not previously worked in the district, he quickly learned its towns and people, Gejdenson said. “The entire office depended on his leadership,” he added.
Gross became more familiar with the district as he campaigned in the Groton area for Gejdenson in 1998 and 2000, and for Rep. Courtney in 2002 and 2006. “When Sam lost in 2000, the Democrats in Connecticut thought Joe was the person to turn to,” Gross said. “I wanted to help out Joe in any way I could.”
In Courtney’s office, which looks as though it hasn’t been lived in for very long, interns still complain about deficient computers inherited from the office’s previous inhabitants, and over who has to lead the next tour of Coast Guard cadets and contend with hour-long waits to enter the Capitol building.
“We’re starting from scratch,” Gross said. “When we got here, there were computers set up, kind of working; and there was furniture, kind of.”
Gross said it is his responsibility to “get a schedule going” and set a tempo for the office.
“My job is to make Joe as productive as possible” by organizing constituent events, briefing the congressman on current legislation on the House floor, corresponding with staffers from the district office, and preparing for committee hearings – Courtney is a member of the House Armed Services and Education and Labor Committees. “You can hardly fit it all into one day.”
“My job is about giving things fair balance, but prioritizing: knowing what has to happen right now, what has to happen in four hours; what has to happen by the end of the week, what has to happen by the end of the month,” he said.
Beverly Bell, executive director at the Congressional Management Foundation, said having an effective chief of staff is important to any congressional office. “The chief of staff is the chief operating officer to the member’s role as chief executive officer,” she said.
And what happens when Gross disagrees with his boss’s priorities? “It’s his name on the door, it’s his name on the ballot – in the end, all we can do is give him our best advice,” the chief of staff said.
But Gross, who said he normally comes into the office before 8 a.m. and leaves after 8 p.m., is also responsible for Rep. Courtney’s most basic needs. “Sometimes it’s my job to make sure he’s eaten that day – he can’t function if someone didn’t get him a sandwich,” Gross said.
Brian Farber, Courtney’s communications director, said Gross also is responsible for motivating the rest of the staff. “Jason runs a tight, but very responsible ship so that Congressman Courtney can best address the needs of the residents that he was elected to represent,” Farber said.
Another part of Gross’s job is carving out personal time for Rep. Courtney. “He’s separated from his family while he’s here [in Washington], and this is new for them,” Gross said of the congressman’s wife and 16- and 12-year-old children. “They have to have some time to themselves.”
Gross lives in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Northwest Washington and commutes to work either by subway or car, depending on his daily activities. His schedule is so crowded that he apparently hasn’t yet had enough time to decorate his Capitol Hill office, which is neat, but almost entirely devoid of personal effects.
But Gross admits that even after a long, exhausting day, he feels privileged to work on Capitol Hill – and is especially reminded of this privilege when he steps onto the House floor and when he leaves his office late at night and sees the Capitol dome lit. “Those moments will fill you with energy and get you going to the next day,” he said. “There’s just this energy – if you don’t feel it, you’re really working in the wrong place.”
And working for a member of Congress has other perks, too. Gross, who likes to read non-politically themed books in whatever spare time he has, particularly revels in his access to the Library of Congress. “Having this nation’s history of books which staff and members can check out is a great resource,” he said.
While studying political science at Tufts University, in Medford, Mass., Gross also served as the school-wide coordinator for former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign. But Gross said that he had been interested in politics long before that. Growing up in a Washington, D.C., suburb, he said “the city itself nurtures you.”
Gross said his parents, both retired economists who worked for the federal government, nurtured the “ideal of public service around the dinner table” which “got me involved in politics at a young age and made me respect how important it was.”
From 2000 to the start of his current position, Gross was managing director of the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign, a group that raises awareness about American engagement abroad. Given Courtney’s membership on the House Armed Services Committee, Gross said his background in national security and defense has been useful.
Gejdenson said he hopes Gross eventually runs for public office. “He would make a spectacular senator, congressman, governor, president, or whatever he decides to do,” the former congressman said.
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Senate Joins House in Setting Timeline for Troop Withdrawal
AMENDMENT VOTE
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
March 28, 2007
WASHINGTON, March 28 – Voting Tuesday to keep a timeline for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the Senate joined the House in opposing President Bush’s stay-the-course plan, as debate about funding and a timeline continued Wednesday in the Senate.
The Senate narrowly rejected the Republican amendment to strike the timeline language from an emergency spending bill, 48-50. A final Senate vote on the bill is expected Thursday.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), voting with the Republicans, supported the amendment that would eliminate the timeline for troop withdrawals from Iraq while Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) voted against the amendment.
Dodd said that although he would have preferred an earlier start date for troop withdrawal, he remains in strong support of keeping the bill’s March 31, 2008, target date for ending combat operations. The bill would provide $122 billion most of it for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The decision of both houses of Congress to support a timeline for withdrawal for the first time since the war began could have symbolic implications, even though Bush has already said he plans to veto the bill. The House passed its emergency spending plan, which includes similar troop withdrawal measures, last week.
“This vote sends a clear message to President Bush and others who believe that a protracted, embattled stay in Iraq is preferable to a clear course of action,” Dodd said.
“Even if the President vetoes this bill…Congress has taken a critical step in taking the U.S. policy in a new direction,” he said, adding that Congress will lead future efforts to reverse the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.
Lieberman, speaking to the Senate just before Tuesday’s vote, said the withdrawal provision “is contrary to our traditions; it is contrary to our values; and it is contrary to our interests. And yet that is precisely what this Congress will be calling for if we order our troops to withdraw.”
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House Votes for Better Health Care Management for Veterans
WOUNDED WARRIOR
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
March 28, 2007
WASHINGTON, March 28 – The House voted unanimously Wednesday to require better and more individualized case management for veterans receiving outpatient health care and for the creation of a new hotline for reporting deficiencies in health care facilities.
Aiming to reduce bureaucratic procedures in the wake of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal, the Wounded Warrior Assistance Act also would require the Department of Defense to physically provide medical records of retiring or separating veterans to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
During debate before Wednesday’s vote, Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) called the existing method for the transfer of medical records “inexcusable,” saying it is the biggest problem with the current system and has left some servicemen unaccounted for. He noted that patients in Connecticut sometimes wait more than 600 days for claims to be processed.
“There is a poor system of interface between the two” departments in caring for veterans, Courtney said in an interview last week. With the passage of the bill, he said, “there won’t be this paper chase that’s going on right now that’s slowing down and backing up the system.”
Courtney successfully offered an amendment in the House Armed Services Committee to take the bill a step further by requiring that the Department of Veterans Affairs also notify the state veterans affairs departments when a veteran is returning home.
“The state VA can’t even get involved to help people because they don’t know when people are getting discharged back to Connecticut,” Courtney said, noting that the Connecticut Department of Veterans’ Affairs offers programs beyond the offerings of the federal department , including educational benefits, tax abatements and certain job preferences in hiring for state employment.
“The quicker the DVA can start interacting with the families and the veterans, the more help they can get,” Courtney said.
Because some opponents said the release of a veteran’s contact information would be an invasion of the veteran’s privacy, he said, the measure was amended to require a veteran to consent to the release of information to the state departments.
Commissioner Linda Schwartz of the Connecticut Department of Veterans’ Affairs said her office has advocated for this measure in the past.
But she said she worries that some veterans who have traumatic brain injury may be unsure of how to respond to the question about keeping their contact information private. “Leaving it up to the veterans sometimes is not as productive as it could be,” she said.
Schwartz said she herself was a reservist injured in an aircraft accident while on active duty and had to wait three years before receiving help from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
With the service member’s consent, members of Congress also would be notified every time a patient from their district is being treated within the Veterans Affairs health care system. Courtney explained: “If I’m notified there is someone from Vernon, for example, that is going to be treated, we’ll certainly assign a staffer to let them know contact info for their families to let them be in touch.”
The bill also would assign each veteran a case care manager to assist with medical care, a service member advocate to assist with the patient’s general welfare and quality of living and an officer from the physical evaluation board to ensure consistency and fairness in determining disability ratings.
“When you’re at war, it’s the last time you want to skimp on programs for your servicemen and women,” Schwartz said. “If something happens, they have to be able to trust that this system will be there for them when they get back.”
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House Members Endorse Construction of Additional Virginia-Class Submarine
SUB HEARING
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
8 March 2007
WASHINGTON – Members of a House Armed Services subcommittee Thursday urged the building of an additional Virginia-class submarine each year starting next year, saying the gap in production could lead to a breakdown in national defense.
The infrastructure for production is already in place in Groton, Electric Boat President John Casey testified before the Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee. He said that building an additional submarine each year would help Electric Boat to further reduce costs.
President Bush’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2008 calls for the production of one Virginia-class submarine each year until 2012, when the Navy would increase production to two Virginia-class submarines a year.
At the current rate of procurement, given that ships currently in the fleet will continue to be decommissioned, the Navy will fall short of the size fleet recommended to maintain “acceptable risk” for national security by 2020, several witnesses said.
“Despite this increase [in 2012], the plan will leave the Navy short of its attack submarine force level requirement for 14 years… going through 2033,” Casey said.
Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), a member of the subcommittee, said he requested the hearing to examine the Navy’s fleet strength. The committee hearing is not about the sub force today, Courtney said. “It’s about the sub force we’ll have 10 or 15 years down the road.”
“Of course I would love to have the additional submarines,” the Navy’s commander of submarine forces, said, noting they would help mitigate the anticipated shortage starting in 2020. But Vice Adm. John J. Donnelly said he stands behind the Chief of Naval Operations 30-year shipbuilding plan. “It’s the most balanced plan for the nation,” Donnelly said.
However, even if Congress gave the Navy a check today for an additional submarine, the ship would not be ready for deployment for another nine years, Donnelly said. He said two years are needed to secure funding authorization; five years are needed for production; and an additional two years after that are needed for sea trials and other pre-deployment measures.
But Ron O’Rourke, senior naval analyst for the Congressional Research Service, testified that the first two years can be avoided, as was done in the 1980s for the commissioning of an aircraft carrier. “You can fund the entire cost of the ship up front and declare that to be the cost for procurement,” he said.
Casey agreed, repeating that Electric Boat could start building immediately, which would help the firm to further cut the costs of production and move closer to the targeted $2 billion price. “If you increase the volume, you can bring that price in earlier,” Casey said.
Mike Petters, president of the Northrup Grumman production facility in Newport News, Va., agreed. “The sooner we start producing two subs a year, the sooner we can save costs,” he said.
O’Rourke testified that the Navy estimates increased production could save an average of $185 million per boat.
Casey said it could also lead to more effective employment infrastructure.
“In the last 18 months, about 2,000 jobs have been lost at Electric Boat because of this production cycle,” Courtney said.
“Subs are not a Cold War relic,” Donnelly said. “They have been used extensively in the global war on terror.”
Courtney said there is support within the Armed Services Committee to increase shipbuilding, including the addition of another Virginia-class submarine.
“Under our current plan we are simply not constructing enough submarines today to meet the challenges of the future,” he said, citing a submarine buildup in China as a potential threat.
Subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) agreed, announcing the support of the subcommittee for the procurement of an additional ship each year. “This subcommittee finds it troubling that the Navy’s inventory of fast-attack submarines drops below 48 in the year 2020,” he said.
“Decisions we make today will have an effect on the levels we have down the road,” Donnelly said. “We will be paying the price of a long period of time when we did not build subs [in the 1990s.]”
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State Awarded More Than $2.8 Million for Emergency Management
EMERGENCY
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
6 March 2007
WASHINGTON, March 6 – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will allocate more than $2.8 million to support local emergency management in Connecticut.
Deputy Commissioner Wayne Sandford of the Connecticut Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security said the grant, although it is a $230,000 increase over last year’s sum, is still not enough.
Sandford said Connecticut would need $750,000 to $1 million more than the new grant to be able to share the funds with every city and town in the state. He added that the emergency management performance grant is the only federal money that contributes to emergency planning on the local level.
Connecticut’s grant allocation has decreased since 9/11, but this year’s increase brings funding back to immediate post-9/11 levels, Sandford said.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, called the new grant “a step on the road to ensuring that the state has what it takes to prepare for, respond to and recover from any type of hazard that might strike – from natural disasters to terrorist attacks.”
Lieberman has proposed, in legislation being debated in the Senate this week, nearly a quadrupling of funds for emergency management grants. “Hurricane Katrina demonstrated just how ill-prepared government at all levels is to respond to catastrophes,” he said. The proposed increase, he added, “will better prepare all states for an ‘all hazards’ approach to homeland security.”
Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) said that he backs up Sen. Lieberman’s efforts but that this year’s grant is not enough for Connecticut.
“Although we’re a small state, we’re a densely populated state,” Courtney said, noting Eastern Connecticut’s proximity to New York City as well as the presence of the Groton submarine base. “We’re a significant potential target.”
He added: “If New London port had to be evacuated, it would be a nightmare. Our system of emergency response needs to be upgraded to post-9/11 environment.”
Courtney said that since a “post-9/11 burst of resources” Connecticut has struggled to get sufficient funding. “If we don’t get adequate resources through [the grants], it’s almost impossible to get them through local property tax.”
Sandford said the grants are neither competitive nor hazard-based but instead are awarded based on a formula weighted by population. “The [U.S.] Department of Homeland Security wants every community to have an up-to-date and fully functioning emergency plan.”
Sandford said the grant can be used to fund anything related to emergency management, including supplies, operating expenses and salaries of local emergency response personnel. About 70 towns in Connecticut are currently receiving funding, he said.
“We roll out as much as possible to local municipalities,” he said, adding that the amount received must be matched by local funds, which could include payments-in-kind, such as services or salaries.
Branda Napper, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman for grants and training, said the emergency management performance grant program “provides assistance to state and local governments by sustaining and enhancing local emergency management.” She said the funding is intended for emergency management-related equipment, training and exercises.
New London City Manager Martin Berliner said that New London has already applied to the Connecticut Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security for a share of the funding as a part of the Council of Governments of Southeastern Connecticut, a group of towns in the region. Berliner said it was uncertain when the grants will come through and that in the past New London worked directly with the state to apply for the grants.
The performance grant program, which announced the allocations last week, has awarded $194 million to state and local governments this year. Emergency managers have been awarded more than $750 million since 2004 through the program.
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Conn. Gets High Marks and Low Marks on Education Report Card
EDUCATION NEW LONDON
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
1 March 2007
WASHINGTON, March 1—Despite ranking at the top of the nation for overall academic achievement, Connecticut ranked near the bottom for academic achievement of low-income and minority students in a new state-by-state report card on educational effectiveness.
Connecticut received an A in academic achievement generally, but only a D in academic achievement of low-income and minority students, reflecting what local school administrators call a well-acknowledged achievement gap.
New London School Superintendent Christopher Clouet said educators can close the gap but need adequate resources and more time with students to succeed.
“It reflects one of the unfortunate aspects of American society – de facto segregation, a chasm between haves and have-nots,” he said, noting public education has long been underfunded. “But that does not mean that family income predetermines your academic achievement: we just need the adequate resources to help them meet those needs.”
Tom Murphy, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Education, said, “Connecticut has one of the most pronounced achievement gaps anywhere,” but that it is an issue addressed in Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s proposed educational reform package.
“A major foundation of her package is to equalize education finance around the state,” Murphy said, adding the proposal has support from many education groups and legislators.
Pam Aubin, superintendent of Norwich Public Schools, said the state is working to close the achievement gap through summer school programs, staff development, culturally relevant instruction and equity in funding. “The governor’s effort to bring greater equity in education funding is a key area,” she said.
The Chamber of Commerce report, made public Wednesday, graded student academic achievement by comparing the scores of fourth and eighth graders in each state to the national averages scored in the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress, a nationwide math and reading exam.
The survey was conducted in association with two think tanks, the liberal Center for American Progress and the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Tom Donohue, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president and CEO, said struggling schools throughout the country could benefit by a business-management approach.
“The business community cannot sit on the sidelines while another generation loses its chance at the American dream,” he said. “We must immediately ensure that… education systems are innovative and employ sound management principles.”
Clouet said that business has long offered criticism of public education but has not helped by doing things like giving working parents breaks to go to school meetings. “There is a lot of room for improvement in education – but business better help out a little more,” he said.
“I’m just concerned that measuring success in education from a business model we’ll forget we’re talking about human beings and not about selling more air conditioners in the second quarter.” Clouet said.
Murphy said that schools should cautiously encourage participation by the business community through the existing magnet, vocational and technical schools. “But not all business practices are transferable to the classroom,” he said.
Connecticut was one of only 10 states to receive an A grade in overall academic achievement, but rated 36th in the country for academic achievement of low-income and minority students.
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Proposed Budget Cuts Could Force Conn. Residents to Foot the Education Bill
EDUCATION
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
21 February 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21-- Connecticut may have to use state tax dollars to fund education programs which would otherwise be cut if President Bush’s budget is passed, according to a new study by a liberal think tank.
Under Bush’s proposed budget, $75.3 million of federal aid for elementary and secondary education in Connecticut will be cut by 2012, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities , a national research group that examines the budget’s effects on low- and moderate-income families.
“States can scale back services they provide, they could increase taxes, or they could do some combination of both,” said Sharon Parrott, the group’s director of welfare reform and income support. “The cuts will place heavier burdens on state and local governments… which leaves our communities greatly diminished since education is universally accepted as a driving force in determining the state of our economic viability.”
Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) said that a re-write of the federal budget is likely but added, “If the budget is passed, it would shift the burden further down the food chain to state governments to local governments, then to students and their families.”
Congressional Democrats are expected to write their own budget from scratch and eventually negotiate out a compromise document with the Bush administration.
Douglas Hall, associate director of research at Connecticut Voices for Children, a children’s advocacy research group , said the overall education budget for Connecticut is a mixed bag. On one hand, he said, Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s budget advocates for significant new education spending, while on the other hand the federal budget makes significant cuts in education spending. “So in Connecticut, we took two steps forward with our state budget, and one enormous step back with the federal one,” he said.
Hall said that passing Bush’s budget proposal would only exacerbate income and wealth disparity in the state.
“Connecticut gets hit harder than most states,” he said. “With Bush’s tax cuts, the rich are getting richer here in Connecticut as a net effect of the budget policy. But the poor are getting poorer as a result of the cuts.”
Courtney said he is worried about the disproportionate effect of the cuts.
“For K through 12 education, we’re seeing school systems that are unable to keep up,” Courtney said. There’s a tangible anxiety in the room because they’ve already stretched very hard to maintain programs with the reductions that have already taken place,” he said of his meetings with district superintendents.
He added that communities like New London, Norwich, and Willimantic, which generate the weakest revenues from property taxes, would especially feel effects of education budget cuts.
“Their ability to compensate for those reductions is almost non-existent,” he said. “It puts pressure on school systems, making them less attractive for families to move into.”
Hall, noting that redirected state tax dollars will detract from community development, added: “In lower income schools, they’re feeling the pinch more. There’s no question that at the state government level, there will need to be a response to this. But it’s unlikely that the state government will be able to pick up the slack. Some people will fall through the cracks,”
Parrott argued that Bush’s budget proposal, which was released more than two weeks ago, would undo earlier progress in elementary and secondary education spending and would fail to keep pace with inflation, especially for Head Start programs, which have been spending fewer federal dollars per child rather than cutting enrollment.
Hall said the proposed federal budget would set the wrong priorities for a state like Connecticut by emphasizing tax cuts for the wealthy over spending on community development.
“If you look at any of the cuts, you could say a deeper cut would’ve been worse,” Hall said. “But if that’s your silver lining, you’re in pretty rough shape. Legislators will find ways to reduce harmful impact of these cuts, but it’s a budget environment that’s not entirely favorable, and there isn’t a lot of room to reduce the impact.”
Parrott said the only good news the budget proposal offers is a small increase in funding for the Pell grants, money awarded to financially needy college students.
Courtney said that Congress’s continuing resolution will offer funding for Head Start, Title I funding, and Pell grants.
Jim Bradshaw , a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education, said that the budget “includes sizable increases from 2001 for the highest priorities” including Title I money for low-income students; English Language acquisition support programs; special education state grants; and Pell grants. “We are quite proud of the investment that this $56 billion discretionary budget would make in promoting excellence in American education,” he said.
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Political Climate More Important Than Spending, Experts Say
CAMPAIGN FINANCE
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
15 February 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 – Although Republican incumbent Rob Simmons had a three-quarters of a million dollar advantage over Democratic challenger Joe Courtney, national political climate accounted for more than campaign spending did in the most recent elections, campaign finance experts said.
“The electorate was sending a message to the president more than a giving personal repudiation of Rob Simmons,” said Eric Janney, Simmons’ campaign chairman. “Clearly the political climate has changed – it’s a miracle the race was as close as it was.”
Simmons lost to Courtney in one of the closest House races in the country.
“Once you reach a certain level of spending, I don’t think a gap in spending makes that much of a difference,” he added. Simmons spent nearly $3.18 million, while Courtney spent more than $2.41 million, according to campaign finance data processed by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Massie Ritsch, communications director at the Center for Responsive Politics, a group that tracks campaign finance, said that anti-Republican sentiment helped to usher Democrats into the House during the most recent election.
“To defeat an incumbent in 2006, it was helpful to have a ‘D’ next to your name,” Ritsch said. “The electoral tide went the Democrats’ way, and a number of challengers got swept in, even with less money. The biggest advantage Joe Courtney had was that he is not a Republican.”
Arthur Paulson, a political science professor at Southern Connecticut State University, said that raising the most money is not critical for waging a successful campaign in the 2nd District.
“I don’t think the money made the difference for Connecticut-two,” Paulson said, noting the 2nd District is usually hotly contested since its electorate is demographically diverse. “Courtney just had to have enough money to be competitive – he didn’t need to out-spend [Simmons].”
“If you have enough to compete, you have enough to win,” he said. “All the Democrats had to do this time was raise enough money to mount a campaign.”
Paulson said that Democratic candidates throughout the country, especially those waging close races, were significantly funded by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“Ideological supporters of both parties were running a national campaign this year,” he said. “They coordinated their giving nationally to increase their chances of winning the House.”
Chris Healey, Simmons’ campaign manager who is now the Connecticut Republican Party chairman, agreed that Democratic challengers were aided by the pervading political climate. “Democrats were able to get national support in a coordinated effort to win back the House,” he said.
Both candidates had more than a third of their itemized contributions coming from out-of-state, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. The center reported that Courtney received more than $130,000 from leadership Political Action Committees, funding groups that other politicians use to funnel campaign dollars into the accounts of candidates running more competitive races.
“When you have a House seat that is one of the top 10 contested in the country, it is relatively normal that candidates from both parties would raise money from individual contributors around the country,” Janney said.
Ritsch also said that higher volumes of out-of-state contributions to Connecticut candidates are to be expected.
“Connecticut is more part of a region rather than out on its own,” he said, adding that Courtney likely had help from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
For example, a New York-based group called “New Yorkers to Take Back the House” raised money for Courtney’s campaign before the election. Members of the group, which was started in late 2005, interviewed candidates from the tri-state area in search of one particularly competitive district where they thought their contributions would have an impact on the outcome of an election, said member Jack Levy, an attorney at Morrison Cohen LLP, a New York City law firm. According to Congressional Quarterly’s “Money in Politics” database, at least six other lawyers at Morrison Cohen contributed to Courtney’s campaign.
Michael Connolly, a member of the New York fundraising group and also an attorney at the Morrison Cohen law firm, said the group chose Courtney because of the competitiveness of the 2nd District. He said Courtney’s fund-raising efforts in the 2nd District were not attracting big spenders. “They were getting a bunch of $25 contributions,” he said. “We were able to get higher minimum contributions.”
The group raised more than $133,000 for Courtney’s campaign in the form of individual campaign contributions.
“It’s pretty cool to think that our money may have had an effect on the outcome of the election,” Levy said. “And we enabled [Courtney] to keep campaigning in Connecticut.”
Healey, Simmons campaign manager, said he did not know if additional money would have made a difference in the 2nd District race, but said that it is an expensive district for campaigning.
“This district requires a lot of resources – it is geographically large and not as densely populated,” Healey said, noting expensive costs for advertising. Janney said that media advertising was the biggest expense in the most recent election. Both candidates ran ads on the major channels in both Hartford and New Haven.
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Courtney on List of Vulnerable House Members to Receive Aid
FRONTLINE
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Washington News Service
15 February 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15-- Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) is on a list of Democratic House members who are already considered vulnerable in 2008 and are being tapped to receive extra fund raising and organizational help by a Democratic campaign organization trying to insure their re-election.
“Frontline” is a program devised by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) which aims to keep incumbent Democrats in their House seats. The committee has selected Courtney as well as nearly 30 other members of Congress, mostly freshmen, to participate in the program.
A spokesman from the DCCC, said the members were chosen for the program because they ran successful campaigns in 2006 despite coming from competitive districts and are likely to have competitive races again in 2008.
“Frontline’s success in the last cycle speaks for itself,” said a party spokesman. “By the fall of 2005, half the seats on the [2006 election] Frontline program were considered safe.”
The spokesman said that the program has been running since 2002. “All the candidates on the list know this is a competitive program,” he said.
The spokesman explained that the candidates are selected and interviewed by the campaign committee, but once they agree to be on the Frontline list, they are required to meet demanding fundraising goals.
“The candidates are chosen based on how competitive their races were, but they enter into this exclusive program of their own accord,” he said. In exchange, the DCCC provides them with fundraising and organizational support.
Another spokesman from the DCCC said that the organization has a significantly larger Frontline list this year than in previous election cycles because the Democrats won more seats in the last election, and therefore have more incumbents to support.
When asked if any of the members are offended at being tagged as vulnerable, the spokesman said: “Absolutely not, it’s just to show that there is strong support for them and that the party is backing these individuals.”
“The whole point is that the candidates know they’re in a vulnerable situation, we at the DCCC know, and the Republicans know,” he said, adding that members agree to be part of the Frontline program before the list is publicly released. “The point is to make sure they know they’re not alone.”
He added: “We’re preparing to back them up, but we don’t want the efforts to be one-sided. It gives us that warm feeling that both sides are working together for the same purpose to accomplish the same goal.”
Jennifer Crider, the committee’s communications director, said that the members are expected to raise between $600,000 and $1 million in campaign funds by the end of June.
Rep. Courtney was not available for comment, but Brian Farber, communications director for Courtney’s office, wrote in a statement: “Congressman Courtney appreciates the support that the Democratic Party has offered for the next election cycle.” He would not comment on the specifics of the program, such as fundraising requirements.
Chris Healy, managed the campaign of ex-Rep. Rob Simmons, whom Courtney defeated in November, and is now chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party. Healy said he was not surprised about Courtney’s appearance on the list.
“For someone who won by 83 votes in the most Democratic district in the country against a Republican, and your views are still outside the political mainstream, then you should be considered vulnerable,” Healy said in reference to Courtney’s defeat of Simmons. “He obviously has big shoes to fill and right now he’s barely filling a size six.”
He added: “In fairness to Joe, first-termers are always vulnerable. This is just a way for Democrats to gather support from special interest early so they can go out and protect their own. Nationally, the Democrats have been very effective in bundling money.”
Other House members from New England on the Frontline list include Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Rep. Paul Hodes (D-NH). Over 80 percent of the members on the list are freshmen.
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