When you think of the U.S. Navy, you probably think of historical conquests against Barbary Pirates or heroism on the high seas. But one key thing our Navy needs today to thrive is a little more mundane. If we want a healthy and growing naval shipbuilding industrial base, we must change the accounting practices used at the Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget.

The Navy proposed the Shipyard Accountability and Workforce Support plan last year to help financially troubled shipbuilders get healthier within existing budgetary resources. But the Biden administration shot down the idea on the grounds that it moved money around too much within the shipbuilding budget, after Congress had firmed up the earlier plan in its annual authorization and appropriations bills.

Despite my five years of experience a generation ago at the Congressional Budget Office, I do not have the ability to dispute OMB’s decision on the technical merits. Nor was there anything sinister about the decision. But it does appear that a plan hatched in good faith by the Navy itself to make naval shipbuilding dollars go further — for example, for the construction of attack submarines — was shot down on what seems to me a........

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