A bipartisan group of 60 lawmakers are urging President Donald Trump to undo his proposed $1.3 billion in cuts to the Coast Guard, with one congressman saying the cuts "would break" the military branch.
In a letter to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, the group — led by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and John Garamendi, D-Calif. — said the cuts run counter to Trump's mission on border control, the Washington Examiner reported.
"It's nonsensical to pursue a policy of rebuilding the Armed Forces while proposing large reductions to the U.S. Coast Guard budget," the letter says, the Examiner reported. "Without question, OMB's proposed cut targeting the Coast Guard directly contradicts the president's stated goals and should be dismissed."
The cuts, totaling 14 percent of the Coast Guard's $9.1 billion budget, would go to funding the border wall, robbing Peter to pay Paul, argued one expert.
"To the extent that you prevent the Coast Guard from protecting the seas, then you're building a wall that can then just be sailed around," Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, told The Washington Free Beacon.
Further, Hunter, a member of the Armed Services Committee, says the cuts would be catastrophic to the Coast Guard, charged with securing the Caribbean Sea.
"The cuts would break them," Hunter told the Beacon. "You don't just wait until [migrants] reach the U.S. border to stop them. You have to work along the coasts of Central America to prevent them from reaching the border. The Coast Guard is all we have."
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