U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, reacted Monday to a Politico report that the House Armed Services Committee has recommended funding for a second Virginia-class attack submarine be restored to the Navy’s fiscal 2025 budget.

“Authorizing the second boat through incremental funding authority, which restores the two-per-year procurement rate and allows the Navy to contract for two submarines in FY25 will provide additional resources to ensure all suppliers are covered and increase the inventory of attack submarines for the Navy,” Courtney said in a statement.

Courtney, whom 2nd District Democrats nominated for reelection at a convention Monday night in Coventry, has for months championed the restoration of funding for submarines built at Electric Boat in Groton.

“What that effort clearly determined was that cutting a submarine would damage supply chain growth by injecting procurement instability in the Virginia program,” he said. “Given the critical need for attack submarines across the globe and the impending decision to certify the sale of three submarines to Australia starting in 2032, the subcommittee mark takes decisive action ― as required in Article One of the U.S. Constitution ― to add back the second submarine.”

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., led a group of 14 members of the Senate, including U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., in sending a letter Monday to the leadership of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense urging them to preserve the two-per-year procurement cadence of Virginia-class submarines to maintain undersea supremacy and prevent destabilizing the industrial base.