America came perilously close to losing up to one-third of its US-flag international fleet to budget cuts in late 2013. The flag's top government overseer is determined to prevent that from happening again. US Maritime Administration (MarAd) acting administrator Paul Jaenichen, known as Chip to most, was facing $19M in cuts to the Maritime Security Program (MSP) last year under the infamous sequestration scheme devised by Congress to force itself to get its financial house in order. MSP was created in 1996 to subsidise a fleet of 60 privately owned vessels that shipowners, in exchange, would make available to the US government for national security purposes. The scheme had been in the gun sights of lawmakers looking for ways to save money.
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