Offer Coasties some love

“We love the Coast Guard,” President Trump pronounced from the South Lawn on the Fourth of July. Nice words, but the president needs to show the service some love. He could advocate for more funding for the Coast Guard’s growing drug interdiction, immigration enforcement and coastal defense activities.

Instead, the Trump administration’s proposed budget reduces Coast Guard funding by 2.4 percent in order to accomplish the president’s No. 1 campaign promise — building a border wall. Better to invest more in the Coast Guard, which last year seized more cocaine than all other law enforcement agencies combined and intercepts on average 17 unauthorized migrants a day. Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security, John Kelly, told Congress that the most effective way to keep out illegal drugs is to stop them at maritime borders.

To do that, the Coast Guard needs to replace aging ships and obsolete technology. From 2010 through 2015, Congress cut the Coast Guard’s capital budget by 40 percent. Funding was restored in 2016, but now the service needs to move faster to launch new cutters, surveillance aircraft and detection technology. With receding Arctic ice opening up new sea lanes, the Coast Guard needs more than two aging icebreakers (the Russians have 41, and 11 on order) to protect U.S. interests in this expanding frontier.

Of course the president loves the Coast Guard — Coasties protect him during his frequent visits to Mar-a-Lago. California, with 840 miles of vulnerable coastline and 12 ports, and other states need a robust Coast Guard presence, too.