11:30 a.m. — A program to recapitalize a large portion of the agency’s ships, aircraft and communications — got a more than 20% bump up from FY08 levels. The FY09 Department of Homeland Security budget provides $990 million for the program over the $783 million provided in FY08. The budget conveniently ignores the major flaws in management structure of this acquisition and keeps the money flowing. In fact, Deepwater represents almost a third of the Coast Guard’s nearly $680 million boost over FY08 levels to $7.8 billion.

As far as problems with Deepwater, you don’t have to take our word for it. Here are links to testimony on the project by the DHS Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office (GAO pdf).

Check Deepwater funding out on page 503 of the appendix on page 29 (pdf | 460 KB).

**Note to readers, all the verbiage in the brackets is text from the FY2008 spending bill that has been deleted.