Defense & National Security

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congressman Joe Courtney (CT-02), Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces, issued the following statement after the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released its official evaluation of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget request for Fiscal Year (FY) 2021. In their evaluation of the Navy’s proposed shipbuilding budget for FY 2021, CRS found that the Navy listed LPD-31 as a “new” vessel requested in 2021, despite having already been authorized and partially funded by Congress in 2020.

In case you’ve missed it, President Trump’s proposal to siphon resources from critical shipbuilding programs in his FY20201 Budget Request has already drawn bipartisan criticism from legislators in Congress, and from military and defense experts across the country. The President’s FY20201 Budget Request would truncate the build-rate for Virginia-class submarines in the years to come, while U.S. combatant commanders are expressing increasing concerns about naval buildups by aggressors like China and Russia.