Collins 'encouraged' by meeting with Navy secretary at Portsmouth Shipyard

Yahoo

17-04-2025

Apr. 17—KITTERY — Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she was "encouraged by the reaction" of Navy Secretary John Phelan after he toured the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for the first time Thursday afternoon.
"It was a great pleasure for us to welcome the new secretary of the Navy to our nation's oldest and best shipyard," Collins told reporters from just outside the shipyard gates. She met with Phelan alongside Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, for a roundtable discussion following his tour. Collins and Shaheen spoke to reporters after the meeting.
Phelan seemed "very impressed" by the facility, and he offered ideas to increase productivity and efficiency, Shaheen said.
In addition to the repair and maintenance work central to the facility, the senators emphasized to Phelan the importance of also having robust parking, child care and housing infrastructure — "all the things that it takes to make sure we have a workforce that is able to do the job," she said.
In a written statement, King said he was "proud" to accompany Phelan on his first visit.
"The United States Navy and the state of Maine have worked together for generations to protect our nation and maintain the best-built ships in the fleet for the fight," King said. "Our shared commitment to our national security relies on continued, sustainable investments in our workforce."
The shipyard has been a target of the Trump administration's attempt to shrink the federal workforce.
After the federal government issued a broad hiring freeze for civilian workers, Collins and Shaheen publicly called for the shipyard to be exempted in a letter to Navy leadership. That exemption came in March, after the shipyard had already canceled a planned hiring event, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a new directive excluding certain "readiness-centric facilities" from the freeze.
Also last month, a half-dozen workers were temporarily terminated before being reinstated about a week later, though one was then terminated for cause.
"We talked about the impact of the deferred resignation program on the yard and the importance of ensuring that we do not lose expert workers by giving them an incentive to retire early," Collins said.
Collins said the United States' Navy is at risk of being outnumbered by the Chinese Navy. She said the U.S. currently has just shy of 300 ships and submarines in its fleet, while China is expected to expand its fleet to 400 within the next decade.
"So being able to keep our submarines out there, rather than waiting for maintenance, for it to be overhauled ... is absolutely essential," Collins said.
Collins said tariffs on raw materials, particularly steel and aluminum, will impact the yard's bottom line, but she argued that it will be less sharply impacted than shipyards charged with building new vessels from scratch. Still, she said the shipyard's workforce — currently about 6,800 workers — is forecast to grow to 7,700 in the coming years.
"The future of the shipyard is very bright," she said.
The senators' visit came just one day after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced a federal lawsuit against Maine over a state law that allows transgender girls and women to compete in girls and women's athletics. Bondi charged that doing so violates Title IX, the landmark civil rights law designed to ensure equal access to academic and extracurricular opportunities between men and women.
Collins touched briefly on the lawsuit by the Trump administration, largely reiterating her previous stance as a "strong supporter of the original intent of Title IX."
"I do not think that it is fair or safe to allow biological boys or men to participate and to compete against girls and women," Collins said.
She paused and began stepping away from the microphones before circling back for a final word.
"That doesn't mean that I think that the federal government should be cutting off funds to the state," Collins said.
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