Courtney Wild About Trump Reversal On Harry

WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney (CT-02), the chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces, issued the following statement Tuesday after Vice President Mike Pence announced that the Trump Administration has scrapped its plans outlined in the Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Request to decommission the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman:

"I am glad to learn that the Trump Administration has finally joined a broad and bipartisan range of opponents against the Trump Administration’s own plan to retire an aircraft carrier that is only about half-way through its planned service life," he said. "The Trump Administration proposed to decommission the USS Truman in the budget request they submitted to Congress in March, and since then a successive series of Navy and Defense Department officials have consistently defended and justified this proposal – including in public hearings and closed briefings just this week. So far, my subcommittee has received no further information about any formal revision to the budget request for 2020, or to the Navy's long-range fleet inventory plans and Aircraft Carrier force structure reflecting this change in position.

"I can only hope that we now have the Administration’s strong support as we prepare to mark up the 2020 defense authorization bill in the coming weeks and move ahead with our planned restoration of the refueling for the USS Harry S. Truman."

Today’s announcement from Vice President Pence comes as a reversal from a previously submitted budget proposal to Congress that called for the retirement of the USS Truman.

Courtney was part of a bipartisan group of U.S. representatives who questioned intentions to retire the USS Truman, stating that “in ‘carrier dog years’, it’s just a puppy,” and that “to reduce the size of the carrier fleet seems like a contradictory policy.”