Congress Confronts U.S. Shipbuilding Crisis as Maritime Buildout Meets Reality Check

A rare joint House hearing on Wednesday laid bare both the ambition and the friction behind Washington’s growing push to revive American shipbuilding, as administration officials promoted an expansive maritime buildout while congressional watchdogs warned chronic delays, rising costs and industrial bottlenecks continue to undermine the effort.

The joint hearing, “Revitalizing Shipbuilding and the Maritime Industrial Base,” brought together the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, underscoring how commercial shipbuilding, naval readiness and industrial policy are increasingly converging in Washington.

“This is not abstract,” Chairman Mike Ezell said in opening remarks, calling shipbuilding “the keystone” of the administration’s Maritime Action Plan and backing the White House push to fund 41 new government vessels in the fiscal 2027 budget request.

At the center of the hearing was a fundamental debate over what is broken, and how to fix it.

Administration witnesses portrayed a maritime sector entering a historic rebuilding cycle. Jason Potter, performing the duties of Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition, pointed to the administration’s “Golden Fleet” initiative, backed by a proposed $65.8 billion in fiscal 2027 shipbuilding funding for 18 battle force ships and 16 non-battle force ships. 

Potter said the strategy rests on three pillars: maintaining maritime dominance, revitalizing the industrial base, and overhauling how the government buys ships.

“We are moving Navy shipbuilding acquisition from a compliance-based bureaucracy to an outcome-focused warfighting enterprise,” Potter testified.

Stephen Carmel, administrator of U.S. Maritime Administration, offered perhaps the hearing’s most striking testimony, arguing the U.S. has misdiagnosed the shipbuilding problem for decades.

In a sweeping systems-level argument, Carmel said shipbuilding is not the root of maritime decline but a downstream consequence of weak cargo policy.

“Cargo demand precedes and enables vessel deployment. Sustained vessel deployment supports shipbuilding,” Carmel testified, arguing maritime power cannot be rebuilt by subsidizing yards alone without restoring cargo flows to U.S.-linked shipping. 

The argument echoed a broader administration theme that maritime policy must extend beyond naval procurement to trade, logistics and commercial fleet capacity.

Rear Adm. Mike E. Campbell highlighted a major Coast Guard recapitalization effort, including $14 billion for new cutters under recent legislation, full funding for the first two Polar Security Cutters and all nine Stage 2 Offshore Patrol Cutters, and investment in the service’s aging fleet and repair infrastructure. 

Campbell also spotlighted an unusual international element in the strategy — the first four Arctic Security Cutters being built in Finland as part of a plan to import icebreaker expertise back into U.S. shipyards.

But optimism from administration officials ran into sharp skepticism from congressional watchdogs. Eric Labs of the Congressional Budget Office warned major Navy and Coast Guard programs continue to suffer severe schedule slips and cost growth, with destroyers and submarines now often taking 9 to 10 years to build versus 5 to 6 years in past decades. 

Labs said delays alone may have effectively deprived the Navy of roughly 20 additional ships that might otherwise be in the fleet.

At the Government Accountability Office, Shelby Oakley delivered an equally blunt warning, saying ambitions for a shipbuilding surge will falter without fixing acquisition discipline.

“Navy and Coast Guard shipbuilding programs have consistently fallen short of expectations,” Oakley testified, citing billions in overruns, years-long delays, and troubled programs from the Navy’s Constellation-class frigate to the Coast Guard’s Offshore Patrol Cutter. 

GAO also pointed to unfinished ship designs, weak industrial base planning, and unresolved supplier constraints as persistent structural problems.

The contrast was stark: administration officials argued historic investment and reform are finally aligning; watchdogs countered many of the same promises have accompanied troubled programs for years.

The hearing also reinforced a broader shift in how Washington is framing maritime power. Rather than treating naval shipbuilding, commercial shipbuilding and sealift as separate issues, lawmakers increasingly appear to be approaching them as a single industrial ecosystem — a theme central to the Maritime Action Plan and echoed repeatedly during the hearing.

That could have major implications for pending debates over cargo preference, commercial fleet expansion, workforce development, and possible legislative follow-ons to the SHIPS for America agenda.

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