Sponsors (5)
Official title: To authorize appropriations for the Coast Guard, to establish the Secretary of the Coast Guard, and for other purposes.
Introduced July 2, 2025 by Samuel Graves · Last progress July 23, 2025
The bill invests significantly in Coast Guard capacity, safety, victim support, oversight, and modernization—but those gains come with higher federal costs, substantial new administrative requirements, privacy and readiness risks, and potential compliance burdens for mariners and partners.
Coast Guard personnel and missions: the bill raises authorized end‑strength, provides multi‑billion annual procurement/operations authorizations, and expands training capacity—boosting search‑and‑rescue, maritime security, and overall readiness.
Mariners, port operators, and coastal communities: the bill strengthens safety and environmental protections (codified missions, anchorages redesign, ballast‑water data sharing, vessel firefighting/salvage standards, and risk‑based inspections), reducing spills, fires, and marine accidents.
Victims and Coast Guard personnel: expands survivor rights and care—longer forensic evidence retention, confidential return of property, expedited transfer rights, enhanced behavioral health staffing and pilots—improving access to care, reporting, and continuity for survivors and service members.
Taxpayers and federal budgets: the bill's higher authorizations, new offices, expanded personnel, long evidence‑retention obligations, and expected follow‑on investments increase federal spending and could force tradeoffs with other programs.
Coast Guard personnel and operations: numerous new reporting, briefing, pilot, and rapid‑implementation requirements create substantial administrative burden that can divert personnel time and resources away from operational missions.
Privacy, reputational, and due‑process risks: long retention of access logs and forensic evidence, broader misconduct reporting/public synopses, and expanded data sharing increase the risk of privacy breaches and reputational harm to alleged or unproven individuals.
Based on analysis of 15 sections of legislative text.
Authorizes higher Coast Guard funding and end strength through FY2029, expands operational and cyber authorities, reforms credentialing and academy safety/misconduct policies, and orders multiple GAO studies and reports.
Updates Coast Guard authorizations, personnel ceilings, training capacity, and funding levels for fiscal years 2025–2029; modernizes Coast Guard authorities, credentialing, academy safety and misconduct policies, maritime safety rules, and certain maritime statutory cross-references. It creates new cyber and international assistance authorities, requires tsunami and anchorage safety planning, expands college pre-commissioning and education assistance programs, tightens Coast Guard Academy access controls and misconduct reporting/retention rules, mandates GAO reviews on multiple topics, and sets deadlines for studies, reports, and rulemaking. The bill affects Coast Guard operations, workforce size and readiness, merchant mariners and credentialing procedures, maritime safety and environmental response rules, and victims’ support/transfer policies. It combines funding authorizations with operational, personnel, safety, and statutory housekeeping changes across Title 14 and Title 46 U.S.C., and directs multiple implementation actions, reports, and timelines for the Commandant and federal oversight bodies.