AMO Currents - National Maritime Day 2013: honoring service and sacrifice, fighting for the survival of the U.S. merchant marine

AMO Currents - Posted: June 3, 2013

National Maritime Day 2013: honoring service and sacrifice, fighting for the survival of the U.S. merchant marine

By Tom Bethel
National President

This year is the 80th since the establishment of National Maritime Day by presidential proclamation in 1933. On this occasion, I found it disturbing and ironic that, at the same time we were recognizing the tremendous and indispensable service provided to our nation and our Armed Forces by U.S. merchant mariners past and present, the U.S. merchant marine was being propelled toward the brink of oblivion by our own government.

On the 80th anniversary of National Maritime Day, we had the honor of recounting the heroic work of U.S. merchant marine veterans of World War II and thanking them for their service to our nation. Although the tradition - in fact the reliable role - of the U.S. merchant marine dates to the Revolutionary War, I think any observance of National Maritime Day opens with the mightiest sealift and the civilian seamen who manned the cargo ships and troop transports that carried our military presence and power to the Atlantic and Pacific Theaters.

During World War II, the U.S. merchant marine placed our Armed Forces and their equipment on hostile shores and sustained them there, knitting together the Allies separated by oceans into a unified wartime organization. U.S. merchant seamen suffered a casualty rate exceeded only by the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II, and those who were not killed, crippled or taken prisoner returned to sail and serve in the next convoy. The war could not have been won without them.

In the years that followed, many of these veterans went on to sail again in support of our Armed Forces. The U.S. merchant marine has reliably served an indispensable role for the military in every major conflict in our nation's history, including Korea and Vietnam, and in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm - providing a lifeline of supplies and support to our Armed Forces whenever called and wherever needed.

Sealift operations for U.S. forces in Afghanistan - the vast majority of which are being carried out by U.S.-flagged commercial ships manned by U.S. merchant mariners - continue through this day.

In May of 2011, General Duncan McNabb, who at the time was the commander of the U.S. Transportation Command, wrote: "over 90 percent of all cargo to Afghanistan and Iraq has been moved by sea in U.S.-flag vessels."

General McNabb also noted cargo preference laws and the Maritime Security Program serve to ensure "the continued viability of both the U.S.-flag fleet and the pool of citizen mariners who man those vessels." He pointed out: "the movement of U.S. international food aid has been a major contributor to the cargo we have moved under the cargo preference law that our U.S. commercial sealift industry depends on. Any reductions will have to be offset in other ways to maintain current DOD sealift readiness."

Although the truth articulated by General McNabb has not changed in the past two years, the significance of his statement seems to have been either forgotten or dismissed by the Obama administration.

In April, the White House released its budget proposal for fiscal year 2014, a proposal that confirmed the administration's intent to radically restructure the PL-480 Food for Peace program. As we now know, the administration would like to shift as much as 45 percent of the program's funding away from the purchase of U.S. food-aid from American farmers and use it instead for the 'local and regional' purchase of food-aid from foreign producers and expansion of the U.S. Agency for International Development's cash-based emergency assistance account.

There is much to say about the probable consequences of sending U.S. taxpayer dollars overseas in place of domestically purchased U.S. food aid. But the guaranteed outcome for us would be the loss of a substantial portion of the cargo base for U.S.-flagged ships. Without the foundation of food-aid cargoes, many of the commercial ships now operating in international trades under the U.S. flag would leave the fleet. With the ships would go the jobs of the American merchant mariners onboard them - mariners whose peacetime seagoing employment depends in whole or in part upon the availability of U.S. government-impelled cargoes.

This proposal would certainly be bad enough on its own, but it follows Food for Peace funding reductions that have already compressed the program by about 35 percent since 2008.

The reductions aggravate the impact of the direct cut to a key U.S. cargo preference requirement approved by Congress and signed by the President last summer, which lowered the U.S.-flag statutory share of PL-480 food-aid shipments from 75 percent to 50 percent.

The year prior to the sneak attack on cargo preference, we saw Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security, based on a request from the Department of Energy, issue a blanket waiver of the Jones Act to allow foreign-flagged tankers to carry oil drawn from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve directly between U.S. ports. The blanket waiver was withdrawn a day later, but it was followed by the issuance of some 48 unwarranted individual Jones Act waivers, allowing foreign ships to move SPR oil in domestic coastal trades.

This year, the day prior to National Maritime Day 2013, during a hearing conducted by the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation in the House of Representatives, the Department of Transportation reported that, for the first time, the Maritime Administration would not have enough funding for the Maritime Security Program to meet its contractual obligations to the carriers operating the 60 U.S.-flagged commercial ships enrolled in the program this fiscal year. According to the DOT, a combination of the practice of funding the federal government through continuing resolutions, rather than budgets, and sequestration will result in a reduced payment to MSP carriers in August and no payment in September.

The only encouragement to be found in all this is that we in U.S. merchant marine are not alone in our dismay, nor do we stand alone in our determination to fight for the survival of our industry.

During the same congressional hearing, the chairman of the subcommittee, California Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter, presented questions and statements that exposed the peril embodied both in the administration's fiscal year 2014 budget proposal and in its record of repression and negligence regarding the pillars of American maritime policy.

Congressman Hunter urged his colleagues to join him in rejecting the President's proposal, and in acting to revitalize the U.S. merchant marine.

And join him they did.

The ranking member on the subcommittee, California Democratic Congressman John Garamendi, and other members of the panel, said they would do all they could to prevent restructuring of the PL-480 Food for Peace program. They offered ideas for reinvigorating the U.S.-flag fleet and for making the maritime industry stronger. And the discussion has just begun.

In the months preceding the hearing, we witnessed an outpouring of support from scores of members of the House and the Senate, who addressed letters to the President, urging the administration to reconsider the ill-conceived plan to restructure the PL-480 program.

These lawmakers are acting in open acknowledgement of a simple truth: the U.S. merchant marine has reliably served an indispensable role for our Armed Forces and for our nation since its inception, and we do so today at a fraction of what it would cost the government to duplicate the manpower and commercial capacity of the U.S.-flag fleet.

Working together, we are fighting to sustain the laws and programs that make possible the peacetime prosperity of the U.S. merchant marine. We are fighting simply to maintain the ability to continue sailing and serving under the U.S. flag - the ability to be available to answer our nation's call the next time it is made. And we are fighting to ensure that seagoing opportunities exist for the next generation of U.S. merchant mariners.

During this struggle, and despite the assault on American maritime policy and our U.S.-flag fleet, we in the U.S. merchant marine will continue to do what we have always done. When called upon, we will deliver the cargo to any port in the world - on time, every time. In peace and war, that is what we do.

As always, I welcome your comments and questions. Please feel free to call me on my cell phone at (202) 251-0349.