Senate appropriators advance military construction, VA spending package

Senate appropriators will consider a military construction and veterans affairs spending bill Thursday that grants the Obama administration its requested funding levels for prior rounds of base closures.

The Defense Department asked lawmakers to approve $500 million to pay for ongoing restructuring authorized during the 1990 and 2005 Base Closure and Realignment Commission processes. The Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Subcommittee on Tuesday OK’d a total of $476 million for those closures -- $126.7 million for BRAC 2005 and $349.4 million for BRAC 1990. That was $106.2 million below BRAC funding levels enacted for fiscal 2012, the subcommittee said. The BRAC funds were part of the $146.6 billion in total spending the panel recommended for fiscal 2013. The bill will move to the full appropriations committee this week.

The administration requested a new round of BRAC in its fiscal 2013 budget, but has not yet specified the amount of funding it will need for the effort, which is unpopular with lawmakers. The Defense Department has warned that it does not need Congress’ blessing to move forward.

The 2005 BRAC round is estimated to cost $35 billion overall. Defense has pledged the ongoing closures and realignments from that round, including moving federal offices, will save the department $11 billion through 2025. The department is currently tasked with slashing $487 billion from its budget over 10 years.

In January, Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; and Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., warned that the proposal for a new BRAC round was dead on arrival.

“Typically, the actual savings from BRAC come long after the costs of implementation; another round would do nothing to help the Pentagon hit the targets outlined in the Budget Control Act,” the lawmakers said in a statement.

The fiscal 2013 Military-VA spending bill the subcommittee approved Tuesday also includes $54.5 billion in advanced appropriations for fiscal 2014 for veteran medical services and $7.1 billion to fund military construction projects, $568.9 million below the president’s budget request for military construction. The bill matches President Obama’s fiscal 2013 request for $1 billion in readiness centers, training facilities and related military construction for reserve forces, and his $1.6 billion request for family housing construction.

House appropriators’ version of the bill includes $71.7 billion in discretionary funding -- $200 million more than discretionary spending in the Senate’s version. The House bill passed out of a subcommittee last week and also is slated to be considered by the full House appropriations committee in the coming weeks.