SURFACE NAVY 2025 — Outgoing Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro had some sharp parting words for lawmakers today, saying he rejects their accusation that the service has failed to be transparent with Capitol Hill. Rather, he asserted the delays in communicating funding gaps can be traced back to the legislators’ own inability to pass an annual budget on-time.

“The bottom line is on this most recent issue where members of Congress have criticized the Navy about not being transparent. That’s just not true at all. It’s false is what it is,” the secretary told a group of reporters today. “The fact is that Congress has an obligation to pass budgets every year. And for the past several years they have delayed passing those budgets and have had continuing resolutions that really have a negative impact on the military services’ ability to execute their programs across the entire threshold.”

Del Toro was referring to accusations lawmakers made in their recent defense policy bill, which claimed the Navy failed to notify either Congress or the Office of Management and Budget about plans the service was developing with industry to rectify issues in the submarine industrial base.

The secretary said his service has been “transparent all along” and that lawmakers’ claims are “false accusations.”

“The reason why the final gaps in funding were … discovered and actually reported to the Congress is largely because there was a six- to seven-month gap associated with the continuing resolution...

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