Pols push back on Navy decision
A group of U.S. Senators, including Maine's Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, yesterday threatened to hold back funding for the Navy if it does not provide more explanation about its decision to scrap its $20 billion, next-generation destroyer program, which would have provided billions of dollars of work to Bath Iron Works, according to the Boston Globe.
The Navy earlier this week said it would not build more DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyers after the first two are finished at BIW and at a shipyard in Mississippi around 2014, and would instead buy more of an older, and less expensive, destroyer. Collins released a statement on Wednesday saying the Navy's decision was "a blow" to BIW and that the shipyard would not be able to maintain its current workforce level under the new plan.
The coalition of a dozen senators, reportedly led by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D - Mass.), wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that such a large change in the Navy's ship building plans required congressional oversight. "To do otherwise would undermine the Navy's shipbuilding plan in Congress and could result in the Congress providing no funding for new surface combatants in" fiscal year 2009, the letter said, according to the Globe.
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