Coast Guard. Observations on the Fiscal Year 2009 Budget, Recent Performance, and Related Challenges

The Coast Guard's fiscal year 2009 budget request is approximately 7 percent higher than its fiscal year 2008 enacted budget, which continues the upward trend seen in recent years. Major increases in this year s budget are attributable to operating expenses for the funding of additional marine inspectors and new command and control capabilities. Major increases in this year s budget are also attributed to acquisition, construction and improvements for continued enhancement and replacement of aging infrastructure. Within this budget, there are also a number of reallocations that do not impact the total amount of funding. With respect to the agency s performance, the Coast Guard expects to meet its performance goals for 6 of its 11 mission areas for fiscal year 2007, consistent with its performance for fiscal year 2006. The Coast Guard also continues to develop additional performance measures in an effort to capture additional segments of program activity and to develop ways to better understand the links between resources it expends and the results it achieves. The Coast Guard continues to face challenges balancing its various missions within its finite resources. For several years, we have reported that the Coast Guard has had difficulties fully funding and executing both homeland security missions and its traditional non-homeland security missions. Our work has shown that the Coast Guard s requirements continue to increase in homeland security in part due to additional statutory requirements. In several cases, the Coast Guard has been unable to keep up with these security demands, for example, by not meeting its own requirements for providing vessel escorts and conducting security patrols at some ports. In other cases, the Coast Guard is facing additional requirements to conduct more inspections of maritime facilities or provide security at a growing number of facilities that import hazardous cargos such as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).