A US congressional committee has proposed cutting funds as it delivered a rebuke to the country’s top agency governing domestic maritime policy over its “unsatisfactory” lack of responsiveness.
The House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations proposed bringing funding for US Maritime Administration headquarters in the 2024 fiscal year back down to 2022 levels with $60.9m in funding, slashing $13.9m from the $74.8m requested by the administration of US President Joe Biden.
The Republican Party-led committee’s bill proposes slashing MARAD’s overall operations and training account, which includes headquarters funding and the US Merchant Marine Academy, to $210m from $213m in the current fiscal year, despite the nearly $290m requested by the Democratic administration.
In a report submitted by US Representative Tom Cole, the appropriations committee said it values a collaborative relationship with agencies under its jurisdiction and that input from them can improve the effectiveness of a policy or successful implementation of a programme.
“Unfortunately, the committee finds MARAD’s responsiveness to requests from the committee to be entirely unsatisfactory,” the appropriations committee said.
“Starting immediately, the committee requests that MARAD provide written or electronic mail confirmation of receipt of all committee inquiries within 24 hours, and provide responses as requested by the requested deadlines.”
Asked to comment for this story, MARAD’s press office told TradeWinds it would work on a response.
The House committee is not the first to complain of unresponsiveness by MARAD.
In a legal battle over the agency’s decision to allow Switzerland’s Viking River Cruises to operate a vessel in the Mississippi River, lawyers for American Cruise Lines complained it took an extensive campaign of requests under a federal open records law to obtain MARAD’s December 2019 approval of the deal.
And even US lawmakers struggled to obtain information.
“Thus, ACL [American Cruise Lines] did not obtain an unredacted MARAD letter approving the Viking charter until April 28, 2020 — after submitting Freedom of Information Act requests and an appeal of the initial redactions by Marad,” Winston & Strawn lawyers Jonathan Brightbill, Charlie Papavizas and Spencer Churchill told the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Although members of Congress requested that MARAD provide its reason for the Viking charter confirmation, MARAD first refused to provide any justification. Then, MARAD only partly disclosed because it was forced to do so by Congress.”
The House appropriations bill, which advanced from the committee on Tuesday, is one step of a politically charged appropriations process, with a rival bill in the Democratic-led Senate and a September deadline to reach an agreement to fund the government or face a shutdown when the 2024 fiscal year starts on 1 October of this year.
The Senate Appropriations Committee’s bill, approved on Thursday, proposes nearly $284m in funding for MARAD operations and training, which is $6.23m below the Biden administration’s request.
The committee also took most of that reduction from the MARAD headquarters budget.
“The amounts provided for MARAD headquarters operations are sufficient to accommodate the adjustments to base and the request for 80 additional headquarters operations staff as proposed in the budget is not approved at this time,” the Senate committee said in its report.
