Rhode Island
Two-sub build rate uncertain as Congress hashes out defense bills • Rhode Island Current
The push to continue the pace of building two Virginia-class submarines per year is in limbo as Congress works through defense authorization and funding bills that are currently at odds on procurement.
Connecticut lawmakers fear a reduction will have an outsized effect on suppliers around the state and the U.S. who work with Electric Boat in manufacturing subs.
The uncertainty started months ago when the Biden administration’s budget request for the Pentagon proposed procuring one Virginia-class submarine instead of the two-per-year cadence. They have cited budget caps as well as production delays for pulling back for fiscal year 2025.
Despite that request, House and Senate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act — the annual must-pass bill that authorizes federal defense programs — added back the second submarine, enabling $1 billion in incremental funding for it. But the current House defense appropriations bill leaves out funding for a second Virginia-class sub.
Congress confronted a similar push to eliminate a sub in 2013 with former President Barack Obama as well with former President Donald Trump’s budget proposal in 2020. In both instances, lawmakers revived the build rate for Virginia-class despite threats of cuts.
This year, Congress faces major budget constraints when crafting legislation to fund the government this fall as lawmakers continue to negotiate the NDAA and appropriations bills over the coming months.
“This program has had a history of ups and downs going back 10, 20 years and even longer, and that’s why we have a supply chain problem — a lot of people just got out of the business because it was just too unstable,” U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, said in an interview.
The current versions of the NDAA include language for two Virginia-class submarines. And while the bill got overwhelming bipartisan support out of the House Armed Services Committee, including from Courtney, the GOP-led NDAA ultimately included a number of amendments that were nonstarters for most House Democrats.
All five Democratic members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation voted against the House GOP’s version of the NDAA, citing “poison pill” amendments tacked onto the bill. Those included provisions to limit access to abortion and transgender health care as well as block diversity, equality and inclusion programs in the military.
“I applaud Chairman [Mike] Rogers [R-Ala.] and Ranking Member [Adam] Smith [D-Wash.] for reporting a bipartisan bill out of the Armed Services Committee,” U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District, said after the vote last week. “Unfortunately, Republican leadership has refused to take this critical legislation seriously and allowed the adoption of dozens of toxic amendments.”
As the House geared up for passage of the NDAA last week, the White House released a statement of administration policy that it was “disappointed” that the House Armed Services Committee did not go along with its shipbuilding request, adding that it “strongly opposes” the incremental funding for a second Virginia-class sub “which industry is unable to produce on schedule.”
The statement also said it hopes Congress supports submarine industrial base investments to “reduce the backlog in attack submarine production and sustainment” and get to a production rate “needed to support the Navy’s requirement and our commitment to the Australia-United Kingdom-United States security partnership.” As part of AUKUS, Australia has agreed to initially buy three Virginia-class submarines from the U.S., but the first transfer is not expected to happen until the early 2030s.
“This is not the final word by any stretch for either bill, for our NDAA or House appropriations’ bill,” Courtney said.
This program has had a history of ups and downs going back 10, 20 years and even longer, and that’s why we have a supply chain problem — a lot of people just got out of the business because it was just too unstable.
– U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, a Democrat who represents Connecticut’s 2nd District
On the Senate side, the Senate Armed Services Committee also easily approved its version of the NDAA with bipartisan support. The bill in its current form blows past top-line spending set by the budget caps in the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which was part of a deal to lift the debt ceiling last year.
“This national security support package recognizes the central role Connecticut plays in our nation’s defense efforts,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who sits on the Armed Services Committee. “During the markup, I won $1.13 billion in funding for a second Virginia-class submarine essential to our continued undersea superiority.”
Both NDAA bills from the House and Senate are not final versions, and Congress will need to work through the differences in negotiations, particularly on finding a compromise on the more partisan and controversial parts of the legislation. The NDAA typically passes out of Congress with bipartisan support.
On top of that, Congress will need to keep negotiating appropriations bills. Since the NDAA only authorizes these programs and priorities, the spending legislation approves the money for them in the next fiscal year.
As things stand in the House GOP-led defense spending bill, there is no money for a second Virginia-class submarine that the current NDAA bills are seeking to authorize.
“The reason the bill doesn’t fund a second submarine is very simple,” U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., chairman of the House Appropriations’ defense subcommittee, said at a hearing last week, according to Breaking Defense. “The contractors can’t build it. There are significant problems with the submarine industrial base that cannot be resolved with symbolic money.”
Pressure mounts on U.S. submarine industry
Members of Connecticut’s delegation have raised concerns about the lack of funding and what it would mean if implemented for Electric Boat and the smaller suppliers around the state. They also warned about the potential ramifications to fulfill shipbuilding commitments as part of AUKUS.
Electric Boat locations in Groton and Quonset Point in Rhode Island handle much of the Virginia-class shipbuilding, along with Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.
Courtney earned the nickname “Two-Sub Joe” when he first came to Congress in 2007 by increasing the production cadence from one to two subs per year. As the ranking member of the House Armed Services’ Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, he has been advocating to keep production at the same pace.
A combination of disruptions have put a strain on the U.S. submarine industry and procurement: the pandemic, supply chain issues and a workforce that is aging and retiring. Companies like Electric Boat are hiring to fill those gaps and add to the ranks as production grows over the next decade.
Electric Boat came close to meeting its hiring targets in 2023 with about 5,300 new hires and set a new goal of another 5,000 employees in 2024. If Congress ultimately cuts production, Courtney said, Electric Boat and its workforce can weather the change, especially with other big programs like the Columbia-class submarines.
He argues the burden will fall more on smaller suppliers who will not be covered by other federal funding for the submarine industrial base.
“I get asked a lot from people at home who have been seeing the reporting on the budget and are asking whether or not that means there are going to be layoffs or a halt to the hiring,” Courtney said. “The answer to that is emphatically no.”
“People are feeling pretty good about the fact that they’re really meeting the hiring goals that are there,” he said about Electric Boat’s workforce. But “the supply chain companies who do not have great capital reserves [who] can’t absorb peaks and valleys as well — those are the ones who are clearly going to be impacted by taking a submarine out of the procurement budget.”
Courtney’s position to keep procurement at the same levels runs counter to Pentagon officials’ stance. They have cited both budget constraints and production delays for cutting back with the hopes of letting the industry catch up and get back on schedule.
“Virginia-class, to be clear, was trying to get to a better, more healthy dynamic where we can get to the two submarine a year production rate, and we thought that going a different direction was our best move in that case,” Mike McCord, the comptroller of the U.S. Department of Defense, said at a March hearing, noting subs that are supposed to be delivered this year were months behind.
At a hearing last month, Courtney asked U.S. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro about the supply chain companies that would miss out on the proposed investments in advanced procurement meant to bolster the supplier industrial base and submarine industry.
“Regarding specifically to these vendors, we’re in constant contact with these vendors. The purpose of advanced procurement money, however, isn’t to fully fund all the vendors that are in the supply chain,” Del Toro said at the May hearing. “It’s to fund those vendors that are most critical to the supply chain. I don’t think there’s ever been a confirmation that we can support, you know, full funding of all the vendors across the entire spectrum.”
Del Toro and others within the department said they remain committed to the shipbuilding plan to have 66 attack submarines in the service’s fleet. He said there are currently 50 submarines with nearly a dozen under construction and an additional four under contract. But 19 boats will be decommissioned in the coming years.
“It’s a real difference of opinion,” Courtney said, “about how do we succeed in getting the production pace where everybody wants it.”
Connecticut Mirror is a content partner of States Newsroom. Read the original version here.
Rhode Island
R.I. House Finance budget phases in millionaires tax over three years – The Boston Globe
In January, Governor Daniel J. McKee touched off a debate about a millionaires tax by proposing a state budget that would impose a 8.99 percent tax rate on personal income of more than $1 million — a 3 percentage point increase over the current top bracket that would have generated $67 million in fiscal year 2027.
The House Finance budget would phase in that millionaires tax by raising that top rate by 1 percentage point per year over three years — 6.99 percent for tax year 2027, 7.99 percent in 2028, and 8.99 percent for 2029. The move would generate an estimated $22 million in 2027, $68 million in 2028, $115 million in 2029, and $142 million in 2030.
Blazejewski said phasing in the millionaires tax will help Rhode Island deal with federal funding cuts as they take effect in the years ahead. Advocates see that tax as a crucial source of funding for essential programs amid federal cuts, he noted, while opponents predict it will hurt small businesses and drive away rich residents.
“We thought this strikes the right balance here for our state, given the situation we’re in with the federal government,” Blazejewski said. “We think this is a prudent way of increasing revenue over time, and then phasing it in, so it has less shock, it has more time to be absorbed, and then also comes online exactly when we need it.”
Rhode Island is pursuing a millionaires tax three years after Massachusetts imposed a 4 percent millionaires tax on top of its 5 percent income tax, raising billions in revenue. On May 25, the Globe reported that the Massachusetts surtax on that state’s highest earners has already generated more than $3.1 billion in revenue this fiscal year, with two months remaining — surpassing the $2.4 billion projected.
Inspector general
The House Finance budget includes $1.3 million to fund an independent inspector general’s office staffed with 12 full-time employees who will investigate waste, fraud, and abuse in state government.
Blazejewski called for creating an inspector general’s office soon after becoming House speaker on May 7. The move by the state’s most progressive House speaker came as a surprise to some because Republicans have long made the inspector general’s office a top legislative priority.
But Blazejewski noted he introduced inspector general legislation in 2015. On Friday, he said the federal government is cutting funding at the same time the state has seen “high-profile state failures” such as the closure of the Washington Bridge westbound and the botched rollout of a $99 million state payroll system.
McKee and Republican lieutenant governor candidate John J. Loughlin II questioned why Blazejewski wants the inspector general to oversee the executive branch — but not the Legislature.
On Friday, Blazejewski noted that voters approved a separation of powers amendment to the state Constitution in 2004 to ensure the three branches of government are separate and distinct, and that the inspector general’s office would be an administrative agency of the executive branch.
“If you allow the executive office to run roughshod over the Legislature, the judiciary, you no longer have three branches of government,” Blazejewski said. “It’s not original to Rhode Island. It’s a fundamental principle of government.“
RIDOT audit
The budget includes an audit of maintenance work by the state Department of Transportation. “We just have had too many high-profile failures, and we need to conduct an audit as to the maintenance program,” Blazejewski said.
The budget also removes the Department of Transportation director as chairman of the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority. Former DOT director Peter Alviti Jr. began serving as chairman of the bus agency’s board in 2023. But Blazejewski said, “We just think it’s a conflict of interest.” The DOT director can continue to serve on the board, but not as chairman, he said.
No line-item veto
The House Finance budget rejects McKee’s call for placing a constitutional amendment on the November ballot asking voters to give the governor line-item veto power, which would allow him to strike specific items from the budget without having to approve or veto the entire bill.
Last year, McKee refused to sign the state budget approved by the General Assembly because it raised taxes and fees, but he did not veto the bill. And McKee noted that 43 other states have some form of line-item veto authority.
But Blazejewski said, “That line item veto is about changing the power structure between the governor and the General Assembly,” and the current process works with the governor proposing a budget and legislators passing a budget. Other states have had “issues” with the line item veto, he said, noting Wisconsin’s governor used that power to delete words, numbers, and punctuation from a bill to change its meaning.
Budget exceeds $15 billion
The budget totals a record $15.2 billion for the fiscal year that starts July 1, marking an increase over the $14.859 billion proposed by McKee.
In August, the business-backed Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council warned that the state’s rate of spending was not sustainable. And in the Republican response to McKee’s State of the State, House Minority Leader Michael W. Chippendale said the state budget has grown by 200 percent since 2000, when it was about $4.5 billion.
URI medical school funding
The House Finance budget includes $5 million as an initial investment in creating a medical school at the University of Rhode Island.
The Senate had included that proposal in a 17-bill package aimed at strengthening the state’s strained health care system. Blazejewski said the medical school will help alleviate the state’s severe shortage of primary care doctors in the future.
Tax on Social Security
The House Finance budget includes the first year of McKee’s proposal to eliminate state personal income taxes on Social Security benefits over three years.
Under current law, taxpayers who have reached full Social Security retirement age (67 or older) and have incomes of less than $107,000 for single filers, or $133,750 for joint filers, are exempt from state income tax on Social Security income. The House agreed to eliminate the current minimum age threshold.
Child tax credit
The House Finance budget does not adopt McKee’s proposal to replace an existing tax deduction for dependents with a new child tax credit that would refund families $325 on their taxes per child, per year.
But it does build on the existing tax deduction structure and adds a $330 child tax credit to help lower income families. Blazejewski said the new system “costs a little bit more but gives even more of a benefit to families in Rhode Island.”
Bond questions
The budget includes a record $600 million in bond questions on the November ballot, but it modifies some of the proposals in McKee’s budget.
- Blazejewski said McKee’s budget “underfunded” an integrated health building at URI. So the budget provides $275 million (rather than $215 million) for the state’s three colleges, including $165 million (rather than $105 million) for the URI building, $50 million to renovate Rhode Island College’s Adams Library; and $60 million for a workforce innovation center at the Community College of Rhode Island.
- $120 million for housing, including $25 million for producing housing units for homeownership.
- $100 million (rather than $115 million) for economic development, including $55 million (rather than $70 million) for site development at the Quonset Business Park and I-195 District.
- $50 million for the “cultural economy,” including $45 million for a State History Center that would display the state’s founding documents.
- $55 million for “green economy bonds.” Blazejewski said, “Our caucus spoke over and over about making the green bond greener, and we’ve done just that.“
- The House budget eliminated the $50 million McKee proposed for Career and Technical Education. Blazejewski said testimony indicated the proposal was underfunded even at $50 million, “so we’re going to go back to the drawing board.”
Energy proposals
The House Finance budget adopts some, but not all, of McKee’s proposals for lowering energy bills.
House Majority Whip Katherine S. Kazarian, an East Providence Democrat, said the budget expands the renewable energy standard to including hydro and nuclear energy, which will result in savings.
But she said the budget would reject McKee’s plan to push back the 2033 deadline to reach 100 percent renewable energy sources for state electricity until 2050. “We’re going to continue to keep that 2033 deadline, which is really important to our caucus and, frankly, to the renewable energy investments that have come to the state,” she said.
Central Falls schools
The budget returns the Central Falls school district to local control after 35 years of state control. Blazejewski said this was a priority of Central Falls Mayor Maria Rivera.
Domestic violence calendar
The House budget includes $600,000 to hire three full-time employees and create a domestic violence calendar in state Superior Court to address a backlog of 1,200 felony domestic violence cases.
The House Finance Committee voted 11 to 2 to send the budget to the House floor for a vote next Friday, June 5.
Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him @FitzProv.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WJAR) — Health professionals are warning Rhode Islanders to look out for a fast-moving threat in the brush this summer: the Lone star tick.
NBC 10’s Martha Konstandinidis went out to see the increase in ticks firsthand and has some simple steps to protect your family.
(WJAR) — The Rhode Island House has passed a Bill that offers a rare alternative when considering end-of-life options: water cremation and human composting.
These processes are actually considered better for the environment.
Instead of being rooted in flames during cremation, remains are placed in water and no greenhouse gases are released.
Tom Harries, CEO of Earth Funeral – Green Funeral Home, explains the natural organic reduction also known as human composting, process while standing in front of an actual vessel in the warehouse during a tour at their new location, which will open in Elkridge. Eventually it will house 126 vessels. Jeffrey F. Bill/Baltimore Sun)
Last year NBC 10 was able to get a first-hand look into how it works.
The John F. Tierney Funeral Home in Connecticut became one of the first in Southern New England to offer water cremation or “Aquamation” for humans.
Remains are placed into a machine, and water begins to circulate, leaving bone material behind.
Human composting uses fertile soil to break down remains.
Lawmakers on both sides spoke before the vote.
It passed 47-17.
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It now heads to the Senate.
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