Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday testifies on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, in Washington during a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee hearing for a review of the Coast Guard’s fiscal year 2027 budget request. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
WASHINGTON — Coast Guard leaders on Tuesday urged lawmakers to end an unprecedented 74-day Department of Homeland Security shutdown as funding for paychecks dwindles and the risk of widespread utility shutoffs rises.
“The reality today is the Coast Guard is operating in a crisis,” said Adm. Kevin Lunday, the service’s commandant. “This is needlessly harming our people and hollowing out our readiness.”
In testimony to a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee overseeing the service, Lunday described the wide-ranging consequences of the lapse in federal funding in stark terms.
More than 6,000 Coast Guard units and homes are in danger of having their electricity, water and other utilities shut off, he said, with the service already suffering some shutoffs last week.
“Each day we’re begging frustrated service providers to keep that power and water going and we’re destroying the trust of the local businesses — many of them small businesses — that are providing those critical services,” he said.
The processing backlog of merchant mariner credentials has grown to 18,000 and the ability of the service to suspend or revoke the credentials of mariners engaging in sexual assault has been frozen, Lunday told lawmakers.
Thousands of military personnel moving stations this summer are not receiving advance allowances, forcing them to take on debt, take out loans or deplete personal savings, he said. Some service members are delaying medical treatments due to the uncertainty over pay.
“My greatest concern is the toll this is taking on our people and their families, the severe hardship and uncertainty not knowing whether they will be paid after this week,” said Lunday.
Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, said last week that his department would run out of the “emergency” funds it was using from last year’s Republican tax and spending law to pay employees by the first week of May.
Coast Guard service members have been paid since the beginning of the partial shutdown on Feb. 14 but civilians went two months without pay before President Donald Trump issued a directive in early April to resume paychecks for all department employees.
The service’s civilians were left feeling “betrayed” by the missed pay, said Lunday. Master Chief Phillip Waldron, the senior enlisted member of the Coast Guard and the principal adviser to the commandant on personnel, said one civilian working at an Alaska station repairing ships sold his car to be able to pay rent.
All across the service, people are working under “uncertainty, fear and anger,” Waldron said, as fights in Congress over immigration enforcement have repeatedly forced the department into shutdowns, including a 43-day stoppage last year.
While retention has been relatively stable, there have been “a lot” of conversations among crews wondering if they want to continue doing jobs with such uncertain compensation, Waldron said.
Lunday told lawmakers that he was worried service members, particularly those who work in cold and wet conditions, will soon begin to “lose heart.”
“They’ve given of themselves to step forward and do this … and they simply expect that in response they’re going to be supported for the sacrifice that they’re giving,” he said. “We’re the only military service that is not within the Department of War so the only military service that’s not being funded.”
Congress appeared no closer to a resolution on Tuesday.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Monday said House Republicans may scrap a bill passed by the Senate to fund nearly the entire department except for its immigration enforcement operations in favor of a “modified version” of the legislation that would require another vote by the Senate, likely extending the shutdown.
The bipartisan Senate measure has been stalled in the House for a month as Republicans have pursued a plan to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection through a separate bill that could be pushed through Congress without the need for Democratic votes.
Department leaders have blamed Democrats for refusing to fully fund the agency without new restrictions on immigration agents while Democrats have pointed the finger at Republicans for failing to move forward with the Senate’s funding bill.
Rep. Addison McDowell, R-N.C., called the ongoing gridlock “ridiculous” as he reflected on the shutdown during the hearing on the Coast Guard on Tuesday.
“We have a job to do,” he said.
