Senate chair calls for more base closures

Reaping savings by closing additional military bases should be one of the top defense priorities for the next administration, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Wednesday. "I will be among the the first to address [bases realignments and closures] with the next President," said Sen. John Warner, R-Va., at a Senate hearing Wednesday on military readiness. Warner said lawmakers declined Pentagon requests the past two years for base closures because the Clinton administration politicized the process. In 1996, President Clinton overruled a nonpartisan commission recommendation to close bases in voter-rich California and Texas, instead privatizing the facilities and preventing the lose of thousands of jobs. Army Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers at the hearing two additional rounds of base closures could save the Pentagon as much as $3 billion annually. The savings would go toward procuring new weapons and making long-needed repairs to older equipment and infrastructure, Shelton added. "Continuing to improve our readiness posture to desired levels while preparing for tomorrow's challenges will require additional resources. Some of the required resources may be derived from additional base realignment and closure rounds," Shelton said. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said without base closures the Pentagon must "rob" modernization and other accounts to pay for current operations. "We are spending too much money on things we do not need, and that's one of the reasons there's a shortfall," Levin said.