U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, panned the Biden Administration’s defense budget request Monday, saying a proposed reduction in spending on submarine production “makes little or no sense.”

The administration’s $895 billion defense budget for fiscal 2025, released Monday, includes $850 billion for the Department of Defense, about 1% more than the current budget. It eliminates funding for one of two Virginia-class submarines contained in previous budgets.

The submarines are built by Electric Boat in Groton and Huntington Ingalls Industries at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.

“At a time when the pace of all of Navy shipbuilding ― manned and unmanned, including carriers, submarines, destroyers, and frigates ― is recovering from the impact of the COVID pandemic and supply chain disruptions, the Navy’s plan to cut a submarine that has already been partially paid for and built makes little or no sense,” Courtney said in a statement.

“If such a cut is actually enacted,” Courtney said, “it will remove one more attack submarine from a fleet that is already 17 submarines below the Navy’s long stated requirement of 66.”

He said Electric Boat officials have indicated their recently announced 2024 hiring goal of 5,200 new workers will not be affected by fiscal 2025 funding.

Courtney, ranking member of the House Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, said the proposed defense spending would have a profound effect on both the U.S. and Australian navies, partners in an agreement the Department of Defense and Congress joined last year that calls for the United States to sell three submarines to Australia.

Courtney has been a leading proponent of AUKUS, the 2021 agreement among Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines.

“This deviation from last year’s projected Future Years Defense Program contradicts the Department’s own National Defense Industries Strategy issued January 11, 2024, which identified ‘procurement stability’ as critical to achieve resilient supply chains,” Courtney said. “For all these reasons and more, this hard rudder turn by the Navy demands the highest scrutiny by the Congress, which, at the end of the day, has the sole authority ‘to provide and maintain a Navy’ vested in Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution.”

Connecticut’s U.S. senators, Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, both Democrats, also reacted strongly to the Navy’s plans to procure only one Virginia-class submarine in fiscal 2025. In a joint statement, they called the proposal a “a concerning departure” from the existing two-a-year schedule, “putting at risk U.S. undersea superiority and alliance commitments made under AUKUS to improve Indo-Pacific security.”

“For years, Congress, the Department of Defense, and workers and small businesses in Connecticut have been working hard to restore the submarine industrial base, and we cannot afford to take a step backward now,” the senators said.

In a letter to Biden last month, Ed Jones, president of the Metal Trades Department, a union whose affiliates represent workers at Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding, urged funding for production of two Virginia-class submarines be maintained in fiscal 2025 and beyond.

Jones said any lapse in funding could jeopardize the stability of supply chains serving the shipbuilding industry.

Brian Bryant, international president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, another union representing shipyard workers, also wrote Biden to deliver the message.

“This industry cannot thrive as a feast-or-famine endeavor,” Bryant wrote.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com