Nethercutt ad not true, Coast Guardsmen say

A trio of retired U.S. Coast Guard brass fired a shot across the bow of Rep. George Nethercutt’s Senate campaign Thursday, calling on him to pull a radio ad attacking Sen. Patty Murray’s record on Coast Guard funding.

“Senator Murray has been a leader in improving our nation’s security and providing support to the Coast Guard,” the officers wrote Nethercutt. “The ad you are running is simply not true, and we request that you remove it from the airwaves.”

The letter, signed by Rear Adm. John W. Lockwood, Rear Adm. J. David Spade and Commander Kenneth Armstrong, all U.S. Coast Guard retired, was in response to one of Nethercutt’s campaign ads, contending that Murray “led the effort to cut the President’s Coast Guard Budget after 9/11.”

A Nethercutt spokesman stood by the ad Thursday and said the campaign has no intention of pulling it.

Murray, who has campaigned on stronger port security, said she has increased Coast Guard funding above what both President Bush and the House requested last year.

So which candidate is right?

Simple math says it’s Murray, who led the Senate Transportation Appropriations subcommittee in 2002 that proposed spending $6.072 billion for the Coast Guard for fiscal 2003. The comparable House subcommittee set aside $6.061 billion for the agency.

Nethercutt’s campaign ad, however, bases its claim not on how much the Coast Guard received or the president’s proposed budget – Bush actually wanted to spend $6.057 billion, less than either chamber – but where the money came from.

Because Murray’s budget total included giving the agency some $300 million from the Defense Department, which is controlled by another subcommittee, rather than from the Transportation Department, she showed a lack of leadership as chairwoman, Nethercutt spokesman Alex Conant said.

“It’s the Transportation Committee’s responsibility to appropriate the money for the Coast Guard, not to find other committees to appropriate it,” Conant said. “Murray’s taking credit for another committee’s work.”

That just shows Nethercutt doesn’t understand the Coast Guard’s budget process, which routinely gets money set aside for defense, said Murray spokeswoman Alex Glass.

“At the end of the day, the budget with Senator Murray’s name on it has more money in it than the House budget or the president’s budget, and the Coast Guard is better for it,” countered Glass.

Nethercutt’s charge seems to have a special sting to Murray, whose husband was in the Coast Guard.

“It’s insulting to suggest she’d underfund the Coast Guard,” Glass said.

An independent budget analyst says that the way Congress spends money is fairly complicated, but that Murray’s staff is correct on a key point. The Coast Guard for many years has received money from the same pot as the Defense Department because the maritime service performs key national security functions such as protecting American ports. It’s an accounting process called “scoring,” said Pat Towell, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“There’s always been Coast Guard money scored as a legitimate function of national security,” said Towell, who previously reported on Defense Department spending for Congressional Quarterly.

Nethercutt’s campaign argues that’s different from what happened in 2002, when the money came directly out of the Defense Department budget.

Maybe to an accountant, Towell said. Other people would probably see it as “equivalent ways of doing the same thing,” he said.

Todd Wiemers, a budget analyst for the Coast Guard, agreed.

“Congress can give out money in different ways. It’s an accounting function,” Wiemers said. “To us, it really doesn’t matter. We just need the money to do our jobs.”

In the end, the Coast Guard received $6.078 billion – more than the Senate, the House or the president originally proposed. Leadership in the Senate and the House agreed to take $340 million out of defense funds; Murray and Nethercutt both voted for the bill.