Duncan Hunter

If you don't have a long-term plan, this is just pie in the sky, right?

You have a total disconnect between the budget you are receiving, or the budget request the Coast Guard has given Congress.

After speaking with Mr. Garamendi, what we might do on the House floor is create this fund for you.

Yes, but what I don't understand is if you wait long, if you keep waiting, you are not going to need to do any service life extensions, because it is going to overlap the OPCs.

But if you keep analyzing things, you are never going to do anything.

Why would you go out and do market research on something the Department of Defense already has?

Well, why do you think the disconnect exists between what the President has said he wants to do and wants to use the Coast Guard for, and the lack of funding?

What we would really like to see is your 20-year plan, because, even when you get all--so say that everything works beautifully...

the Navy's budget this year produces no new ships over last year's budget.

So here is what we are going to do. We are going to have a hearing in July on the 5-year plan and the 20-year plan and on your unfunded requirements list.

And the committee would highly recommend that you don't do your own thing, and that you piggyback on DoD's plan.

We think that this has been one of the most legislatively ambitious chairmanships of this subcommittee.

You don't do that. In fact, you are highly censored by your overseers at OMB, so you are not even able to come in and say, 'Here are all the things that the Coast Guard really needs, OMB can go to hell.'

So, right now, the very first ship, the Dependable, should have been decommissioned in 2011.

A lot of these issues arise in the military.

So let me just go through this really quick. There are three issues here.

I am pretty sure he just requested it. So there you go. Congress just requested it.

But just in the marketplace why don't they care, the insurers?

OK, so let's go back and make this simple for me.

So you issue waivers and give them the opportunity to have alternative planning criteria in Alaska?

The problem here, which I think we are all trying to get at, is you are here to protect American companies and American interests.

So you say--so, for instance, you have it in the Gulf of Mexico, right? But you don't have planning criteria that can meet the actual criteria.

So they can say, 'here is our plan,' and then, when it comes down to it, they don't really have anything, but that is OK, because they had it--they had a plan for....

We need--and the problem that is being presented is that it is trying to do two things at once.

The airlines hate the American people, that is all I am saying.