Cara Brown McCormick
Many Americans may not realize that during peacetime, the U.S. Coast Guard operates as part of the Department of Homeland Security and is funded by it, not the Department of Defense.
Because Congress has not declared war, the United States is still technically in peacetime. That means Coast Guard crews now operating in the Gulf, deploying rescue swimmers into rough seas, and carrying out missions in the Strait of Hormuz are doing so while serving under a department that has been partially shut down.
The shutdown began Feb. 14 after Congress failed to pass a DHS funding bill before the deadline.
95% of the Coast Guard’s 52,377 employees are classified as exempt or excepted, meaning they are required to keep reporting to work during a lapse in appropriations, whether or not they are paid.
Civilian Coast Guard employees have not received a paycheck since February 14.
The service's vice commandant, Admiral Thomas Allan, testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security on March 26, tying the DHS funding lapse directly to missions in the Middle East.
“The gunner’s mate manning a weapon in the Strait of Hormuz should not have to worry if their family will be able to pay rent while being shadowed by Iranian vessels,” he said. “Our aviation survival technician deploying from a helicopter into treacherous seas should not have to worry if their family can buy groceries this week.”
Patrol Forces Southwest Asia, known as PATFORSWA, is part of the Coast Guard that has been based in Bahrain since 2003. They operate six 154-foot Fast Response Cutters and more than 150 support personnel, supporting U.S. Naval Central Command.
Congress left on a two-week Easter recess on March 27. Members of Congress are still being paid.
On April 3, after House Republicans blocked a Senate funding proposal that would have ended the shutdown, President Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to pay all DHS employees, including Coast Guard personnel.
But like so many of President Trump’s executive orders, it remained unclear where the money would come from and whether the move would survive legal challenge, since Congress controls federal appropriations.
“I have never been more disgusted by the failure of elected leadership in my life,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement after learning that the stalemate would continue with the Congress leaving town.
Lawmakers are set to reconvene on April 13.
Admiral Allan said the shutdown was the third of the fiscal year for the Coast Guard.
“In total, for 85 of the last 176 days, for nearly half the year, our service (The US Coast Guard) has been without the funding necessary to operate and pay our people."
Adm. Allan said crews deployed on national security missions had been left carrying thousands of dollars in unreimbursed official expenses on government travel cards, calling that personal debt an “unacceptable burden.”
He said the service was carrying more than $200 million in unpaid bills, including 5,000 unpaid utility bills. He said more than 16,000 merchant mariner credential applications were stalled, with the backlog growing by about 300 a day.
Even the vendor responsible for feeding recruits at the Coast Guard’s training center in Cape May, New Jersey, was not being paid, and contractors were beginning to walk away from Coast Guard work.
“What we worry about,” Allan told lawmakers, “is that it’s not only a near-term impact, but as we bid for these contracts with these companies in the future, they’re not going to come to the Coast Guard. They’ll go to the Navy, they’ll go to the Marines, they’ll go to the others.”
Allan said the shutdown was also beginning to hurt recruitment. “Now we are dealing with ‘If you go to other services, hey, you will get paid.’ At DHS, it continues to be a question,” he said.
The DHS funding standoff is tied to a broader dispute over immigration enforcement. Ironically, ICE and Customs and Border Protection are not affected in the same way because they received more than $150 billion in funding through a reconciliation bill passed last summer, including $75 billion for ICE and $64 billion for CBP.
When TSA workers went without pay and airport lines backed up across the country, there was enough public pressure that the administration found a way to redirect funds and pay them.
Coast Guard civilians are still waiting.
One Coast Guard worker told NBC News, "Don't get me wrong, we're very happy for the TSA workers. But what we were feeling, more than anything, was forgotten."
Christine O'Shields, a Coast Guard spouse whose husband has served more than 20 years, told CBS News that recent paychecks arrived without warning after families initially expected to go unpaid. She described the arrival of last week's paycheck as a "surprise."
"It is this roller coaster of, are we going to get paid, and are we not going to get paid?" she said. "We don't know, literally, till it hits our account if it's going to come or not."
“The Coast Guard will continue to serve because that is what our people have sworn to do,” Admiral Allan told lawmakers. “But a crew should never question whether the nation they protect will stand behind them and their families. Stable funding for DHS is not simply a budgetary matter. It’s a matter of trust, readiness, and national security.”