Inside the Coast Guard Shutdown – When the Lights Actually Went Out

When the lights go out on a military base—and not because of a storm—a certain kind of silence descends. Last week, recruiters at a Coast Guard station in St. Louis continued to work by flashlight, sorting paperwork, taking phone calls, and performing the unglamorous administrative tasks necessary to keep the service operating. The electricity had been turned off. The bill was still outstanding. Because the US government was unable to reach a consensus on how to finance the Department of Homeland Security for 76 days, the bill had not been paid.

That sums up the peculiar and somewhat embarrassing tale of what recently transpired with America’s smallest armed force.

In ways that other branches just did not have to go through, the Coast Guard emerged from this shutdown battered. The Department of Defense, which retained its appropriations, is in charge of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Space Force. Due to a long-standing federal organizational quirk, DHS oversees the Coast Guard. Therefore, Coasties were watching their utility companies issue cutoff notices while Marines at Camp Pendleton went about their drills, and sailors at Norfolk received their pay on time. A uniformed military service with personnel deployed overseas, suddenly unable to maintain the water supply at a duty station in Port Huron, has an almost ridiculous quality.

In an interview with CBS News, Admiral Kevin Lunday described it as “feeling like a horror movie.” Yes, it’s a bit dramatic, but you begin to understand if you speak with anyone who attempted PCS this spring. In the military, transfer season is always costly, stressful, and full of moving trucks, security deposits, and school-related uncertainty. Junior enlisted families were instructed to follow orders to new duty stations and simply put the expense on a credit card this year due to restrictions on advance travel reimbursements. Many did. The interest continues to accrue.

Nearly 10,000 members of the civilian workforce were not paid in full from mid-February until early April, when a presidential order temporarily reinstated compensation. In short. Leadership warned that pay could stop once more in a matter of days by late April. Imagine working for the government for two months without receiving a check, then receiving one and being informed that the second one might not come either. Individuals stopped visiting the dentist. They ceased doing auto repairs. The routine, small-scale upkeep of a household life just stopped.

Observing this development, it’s difficult to get rid of the feeling that no one in Washington seemed particularly concerned about it. The Coast Guard patrols the Rio Grande, intercepts drug shipments, saves people from sinking boats, and, for some reason, it was used as collateral in an immigration appropriations dispute for 11 weeks.

Something is wrong with that. Trump signed a bill on Thursday that provides funding to DHS agencies not engaged in the immigration crackdown through September 30. This bill buys time rather than certainty. The credit card debt still exists for Coasties who are planning to relocate this summer. Eventually, the outstanding utility bills will be settled. It might take longer to build trust.

What long-term impact this has on recruiting and retention, or on a 22-year-old’s willingness to enlist in a service that Congress can seemingly overlook, is still unknown. Speaking with those who closely follow the service gives me the impression that something has subtly changed over the past two and a half months—a subtle, lingering reminder that institutions, even those that appear during every hurricane, are only as stable as the politics supporting them.