Subcommittee rejects plea to prevent base closings

A House Armed Services subcommittee voted Thursday to spend $10 billion on military construction projects next year, but rejected a plea to prevent a round of base closings scheduled for 2005.

The Military Installations and Facilities Subcommittee approved its portion of the fiscal 2003 defense authorization bill (H.R. 4546) by voice vote.

"Despite what many are thinking, this is not an exercise in unneeded spending," said Subcommittee Chairman Jim Saxton, R-N.J. "Every project before the subcommittee today was validated as a military necessity by the Pentagon."

The legislation also includes a provision to tighten language pertaining to base closures in the fiscal 2002 defense authorization law (P.L. 107-107). That law authorized a new round of base realignments and closures (BRAC) in 2005, despite opposition from most House members.

Saxton said the BRAC provision in this year's bill would serve as a "placeholder" enabling House conferees to raise the issue of base closures again this year when they meet with their Senate counterparts.

But Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., argued that the subcommittee should do more to protect the nation's military bases, and offered an amendment that would have prevented the 2005 base closures by repealing the BRAC provision from last year's law.

Taylor argued that "there is absolutely no logical reason for closing bases right now," particularly in light of the Sept. 11 attacks and the war on terrorism, which is expected to last years. "How do you grow your force and shrink your number of bases at the same time?" Taylor said.

Pentagon officials maintain that the base closures are an economic necessity, and a crucial component of the Defense Department's ongoing efforts to transform its military and administrative capabilities in a manner that reflects the global transition from the industrial age to the information age.

They have also pointed to a General Accounting Office report released earlier this month, which concluded that the Defense Department has accrued about $16.7 billion in net savings as a result of hundreds of base closures that occurred between 1988 and 1995.

But Taylor disputed those findings, and charged that in submitting financial information to GAO, Pentagon officials had "frankly just picked numbers out of the sky, to build a case that they saved money."

"I'm giving the people in this room an opportunity to keep bad things from happening, because BRAC doesn't make any sense," Taylor told his colleagues before they voted on his amendment.

Although most members opposed the 2005 base closure plan, they also opposed Taylor's amendment, explaining that even if the full House voted to keep all bases open in 2005, the closures would still occur because Senate and the White House are unwilling to compromise on the issue.

"At the end of the day, we're not going to win, and even if we do win, the president is going to veto it," said Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md.

Some members also warned that Taylor's amendment could unintentionally make things worse for military bases and the surrounding communities. "If we open up this can of worms again, we're going to have either no (change in the BRAC law) or a worse BRAC law," said Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind. Taylor's amendment then failed by a 3-13 vote.

Most of the new construction projects approved by the subcommittee would be geared toward force protection, Saxton said. But the legislation also would authorize $18.4 million for construction related to the new Northern Command, which would coordinate the Defense Department's various homeland security missions and is scheduled to begin operating in October.

President Bush's fiscal 2003 budget requested $25 million in construction spending for the Northern Command, but Saxton said the subcommittee reduced that figure because Pentagon officials had provided "no details about what, precisely, the administration wants to do" with the Northern Command.

Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, the panel's ranking Democrat, argued that Congress should not authorize any construction dollars for the Northern Command without a concrete understanding of how that money would be spent.

"This construction portion is but one element in the entire Northern Command idea, and that's all it is right now--an idea," Abercrombie said. "When we start putting hundreds of millions of dollars behind what is at best a vague idea ... we are undermining the sense of discipline that we try to exercise in this committee."

Abercrombie did not offer any amendments, but said he would oppose the Northern Command provisions when the full committee takes up the bill.