§50301 Vessel Operations Revolving Fund

Summary

Creates a Vessel Operations Revolving Fund with a working capital of $20,000,000 for the Secretary of Transportation to run, charter, maintain, repair, recondition, and improve merchant ships under the Secretary’s control. The Secretary sets the shipping rates and puts money received from those vessel operations into the Fund. Seamen hired through general agents are treated as Government employees under parts of the 1943 Act and may be employed using normal commercial maritime practices. With the Office of Management and Budget director’s OK, up to 2 percent of vessel operating costs may be moved from the Fund to the “Salaries and Expenses” account without that account’s usual limits. Unspent working funds or allocation accounts set up after January 1, 1951, and receipts from those activities can be transferred into the Fund and used for the same purposes. Money from this or other laws can’t pay for certain vessels unless the pay is calculated under section 56303 as the Comptroller General interprets it; that rule covers vessels the Government acquires by requisition or purchase, takes into use by requisition or agreement, or loses while insured by the Government, but not vessels under a construction-differential subsidy contract. The Fund also can pay costs tied to foreclosure or forfeiture of vessels, redelivery and lay-up of vessels chartered as of June 20, 1956 that were not to be returned, activation/repair/deactivation of merchant vessels chartered for limited emergency purposes in fiscal year 1957, and custody and maintenance of Government-owned vessels not in the National Defense Reserve Fleet. Receipts from chartering Government-owned vessels go into the Fund.