Supporting Our Coast Guard

Floor Speech

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Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the House of Representatives will be taking up H.R. 4275, the Coast Guard Reauthorization Act of 2025. That is legislation that updates and codifies changes and reforms to America's oldest continuous maritime service, the Coast Guard. It is actually called the first fleet because technically, actually the Coast Guard is older than the U.S. Navy.

This bill contains many good, bipartisan provisions that are addressing many of the challenges that the Coast Guard faces every day, whether it is drug interdiction, obviously doing the work in terms of our coastal, littoral regions of the country, and making sure we have safe passage of commercial and civilian maritime activity.

Included in this bill is a provision to reach out to our great ally Finland to update and modernize our icebreaker fleet. Our Polar Star large icebreaker is now 50 years old, and it is long past due, particularly with the challenges in the Arctic with Russia and China, to make sure we update and modernize our Coast Guard and icebreaking fleet.

This bill also contains a long overdue provision to reform the Coast Guard statutes regarding protecting victims of sexual assault and harassment both within the Coast Guard service and also the Coast Guard Academy. I represent New London, Connecticut, which is home to the Coast Guard Academy that is an outstanding institution that builds future leaders for the Coast Guard. It actually has a large international contingent of allies such as Iceland and Pacific Island nations that come to learn at the cutting edge institution in terms of coastal activities that are there.

Like all the military academies, there has been a shadow of, unfortunately, activity regarding female cadets over the years that have had to put up with totally unacceptable conduct and forcing them into almost an impossible position in terms of reporting this activity over the years.

The bill includes a safe-to-report policy, which will protect members reporting sexual assault. Again, sometimes incidents occur where there may be minor misconduct issues where both the victim and the perpetrator are involved, and that risk of being punished for those minor misconduct has really inhibited people to come forward and report sexual assault. This is an issue which was the subject of exhaustive hearings at the Oversight and Government Reform Committee over the last 8 years. Our dear, late Congressman Elijah Cummings conducted many of those hearings. There were brave whistleblowers that came forth, such as Dr. Kim Young-McLear who is now a retired commander from the Coast Guard. She testified before that committee and talked about, again, some of the hard experiences that she went through.

Other military academies, such as West Point and Annapolis, have actually adopted safe-to-report policies, and tomorrow's bill will get the Coast Guard Academy in line with those institutions.

This bill also extends the safe-to-report policy to the entire Coast Guard personnel, the entire service. That was done administratively by the last Commandant of the Coast Guard, Linda Fagan, who, again, I think was very focused in terms of making sure that the safe-to-report policy was going to be in place to eradicate activities that really harm the readiness and effectiveness of the Coast Guard.

Women Coast Guard officers are some of the finest, most talented people who are doing the important work of the Coast Guard, and we need to make sure that there is a statutory structure in place to make sure that with this type of activity, people will be able to report it and get a remedy and a response, in some cases punishment to, again, make sure people are not hindered because of this unacceptable conduct.

Tomorrow when we take up this bill, those brave women who came forward to testify and report their experience--and sometimes watched their dreams and their careers end because of the fact that they were subjected to unacceptable pressure and retaliation for reporting--will see that by law that is now going to be a thing of the past. It is long overdue, and, again, I just want to take a moment to publicly thank Commander Young-McLear and her colleagues for having the courage to step forward and make sure that the Congress is aware of this situation and will end it in the passage of tomorrow's bill.

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