NORFOLK, Va. — Perhaps no one would've been more impacted by a federal government shutdown than the Virginia Ship Repair Association, and it's more than 300 member companies and more than 60,000 people who work for them.
That's because the Navy plans to spend $84.6 billion on operations and maintenance in fiscal year 2024--a 3.8% increase over 2023.
But, if the government were to shut down, and the ship repair money spigot suddenly dried up, private ship repair shipyards in Hampton Roads would feel the pain.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) stood side by side with ship repair executives Monday.
He said the weekend's stopgap funding bill to temporarily keep government open is not much of a reason to celebrate, and all that's really happened is that the can has been kicked down the road.
"All we've done is maintain the operations of the government for 45 more days. So, the same movie we have seen so many times could repeat itself in the middle of November. That is completely irresponsible." he said.
For now, instead of a shutdown, the nation is operating under a continuing resolution — with this fiscal year's funding frozen at last year's levels.
"CR is bad under anybody's definition, it's bad for business, bad for the Navy, bad for folks who work in ship repair," said Warner.
Virginia Ship Repair Association President Bill Crow agreed, saying he wishes Congress would simply pass an on-time, full year's budget.
"We'd like to have one on 1 October, because that makes things a lot more stable. We've only done that like one time in the last 15 years," he said.
One of the concessions of the temporary CR was cutting off funding for Ukraine.
Warner — who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee — said the move "is not in our national interest."