Freshman Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) came to Congress this year with one obsession: getting more money for attack submarines, a staple of significant employment in his district.

What his predecessor, Rob Simmons (R), fought hard to achieve but failed to deliver, Courtney — known as “Landslide Joe” since his 83-vote win over Simmons — can now claim as a victory.

Courtney disputes that stars aligned for him this year, but he can’t deny he has a formidable lineup of supporters: Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee; Murtha’s Senate counterpart, Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii); House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.); and Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Armed Services Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee.

When Simmons was on the Armed Services panel, he was able to secure authorization for the advance procurement of material to build the second Virginia-class submarine. But appropriators never approved the extra funds.

His victory did not come easily, explained Courtney in an interview with The Hill. While Taylor and Skelton were already on board to authorize funds leading to two submarines a year, Murtha, a close ally of Taylor, needed some convincing, Courtney said.

“Murtha was another hurdle in terms of just getting him to really buy into this,” said Courtney, recalling that it took a trip to General Dynamics’ Electric Boat yard in Groton, Conn., to set Murtha in motion.

“He was supportive, but he definitely had some historical skepticism about the shipyard, frankly,” said Courtney. “Electric Boat, the last [time] he visited, was experiencing difficulties with cost overruns and bad welds — and this was decades ago.”

Electric Boat Corp., a major district employer, has seen its government contracts for submarines decline due to the end of the Cold War and growing demands for other weapons systems, as well as funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Navy currently contracts for one submarine a year, costing about $2 billion. The work on the submarine is split between Electric Boat and Northrop Grumman’s Newport News yard. Electric Boat has already eliminated about 1,400 jobs at Groton, mainly because of the failure in past years to secure a contract for a second submarine. This year, the company could have put as many as 2,000 more jobs on the line if it did not receive assurances it could build the additional submarine.  

But the company’s prospects look far better ever since President Bush signed the 2008 defense appropriations bill into law, slating $588 million to accelerate the production of two submarines a year. The Navy was planning to start building two in 2012.  

Having the top House defense appropriator on your side is no small feat, but it still does not guarantee victory in conference negotiations with the Senate. Here again, however, Courtney had a stroke of luck: Inouye had campaigned for him in Connecticut. Inouye was instrumental in saving the Seawolf submarine program in the early 1990s and went back this year for the commissioning of the USS Hawaii submarine. Those efforts and others have prompted Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) to call him Connecticut’s “third senator.”

Inouye “has a special iconic status in Southeastern Connecticut,” said Courtney. As he recalls Murtha telling him, “Inouye’s heart was already there, and it was a question of really trying to make the numbers work at staff level.”

Courtney was not alone in his fight. The state’s two high-profile senators, Dodd and Independent Joe Lieberman, as well as Gov. Jodi Rell (R), deserve credit for the funding push.
While some Republicans and outside observers view Courtney’s success as a result of the Democratic leadership looking out for its own, Courtney sees it differently.

“This is one area where the change in control in Congress has had a beneficial effect, which is unlike past Congresses,” he said. “The leadership just does not accept the White House budgets and the Pentagon’s plans as a rubber stamp. We have a much more independent stance. As a result … I think we have a much more receptive ear with leadership than the last Congress, where I think their leaders were totally with the White House.”

But he pointed out that he never went to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to present his wish list for the submarines. In fact, he said, when Pelosi campaigned for him right before the election, she did not make any commitment to allotting more money for the submarine maker and indicated Courtney was on his own in that respect.

“I was blasted by the Republicans as evidence that Connecticut would go backwards if I got elected,” Courtney recalled.

“There have been earmarks that vulnerable Frontline members … have gotten help with, but this is much bigger than a [typical] road project,” he added.

But Courtney may not have needed Pelosi’s direct support: He already had Murtha, Taylor and the other defense leaders in the House and Senate. A campaign mailer that Courtney sent out shows him with Murtha at the submarine yard, a direct indication of the kind of support he was able to get. National security also was a strong argument in favor of more subs.

While Courtney and defense appropriators touted the advance funding for the submarines, Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter said that such money ultimately comes at the expense of other programs. This year, for example, Congress trimmed about $900 million from the troubled Littoral Combat ship, money that could go in part to the submarines.

The Electric Boat leadership, the General Dynamics political action committee that initially supported Simmons, now has become a hefty campaign contributor to Courtney, doling out about $9,000 this year.

Overall, Courtney has close to $900,000 in his war chest, leaving his opponent, Sean Sullivan, in the dust. But he still expects a difficult reelection in a state where voters can be unpredictable, and he receives regular contributions and campaign advice from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

“You just assume that you really have to plan for a rock ’em-sock ’em campaign,” Courtney said.

If funding for submarines was not a testy enough battle, Courtney also teamed up with other members in the controversial fight to keep the Joint Cargo Aircraft program shared between the Army and Air Force. He also secured, together with Dodd and Lieberman, $21.2 million for new construction at Submarine Base New London, which will house a new waterfront operations center and a submarine-learning center.

Courtney also was successful in passing legislation that would improve services for wounded members of the military by establishing processes to ensure that state-based veterans’ affairs departments can be full partners in their care.