Abstract
In May 2005, the Pentagon Released its base realignment and closure recommendations, laying bare what it saw as essential steps in the ongoing transformation of the U.S. military. The ensuing scrum between local communities, members of Congress, and Defense Department officials to keep certain installations off the chopping block exemplified how politically difficult it has become to trim military spending.
Since 1988, the Pentagon has proposed closing or reorganizing hundreds of military bases. Proponents see this periodic exercise as necessary belt-tightening that adapts the military to post-Cold War realities. The Pentagon's 2005 base realignment and closure (BRAC) recommendations were a good example of this. Though analysts expected the “mother of all base closings,” Defense's recommendations focused on consolidating smaller facilities and realigning existing missions. Of the many small installations targeted for closure, nearly three-quarters were National Guard and Reserve facilities. Closing these facilities would satisfy the Pentagon's desire to better integrate their units into the active force and increase “jointness”–the ability of the services to operate as a team in response to emerging threats around the globe.
“The earlier we can get [jointness] into the system, the better off we, as a country, will be … and the more capable our forces will be,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a May 16 BRAC hearing.
The Pentagon's list also reflected the shifting emphasis of U.S. national security interests away from Europe and the Soviet Union, and toward the Pacific region and the “global war on terrorism.” It slated for closure Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, home to roughly half of the nation's fleet of B-1B strategic bombers (the bombers were to be relocated), as well as the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine, where the navy maintains nuclear submarines. The Pentagon also recommended the closure or realignment of air bases along the northern U.S. border in Alaska, North Dakota, and Maine; the primary role of these bases during the Cold War had been to defend the United States from a Soviet attack. In total, the Pentagon recommended closing 33 major bases and reorganizing 29 others.
Cost was a major factor in the BRAC recommendations. During the last two decades, the armed forces have shrunk by roughly 600,000 uniformed personnel, but the Pentagon has closed bases at a slower pace, resulting in a 23 percent basing capacity surplus. The Pentagon estimated that eliminating this surplus would generate more than $49 billion in savings over 20 years, with an eventual annual savings of $5.5 billion. The four previous rounds of base closures cumulatively generate annual savings of $7.3 billion.
Save our shipyard: Supporters of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard came out in droves at a July 2005 BRAC hearing.
But closing military bases in the United States is a tremendously contentious political issue, primarily because of the economic impact that losing a base can have on surrounding communities. Members of Congress of both parties accept the need for base closures, yet they fight tooth and nail to protect bases located in their districts and states, in part because they know their jobs are on the line. In 1994, former Maine Democratic Cong. Tom Andrews ran for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Democrat George Mitchell. During the campaign, his opponents hammered him ceaselessly for accepting the 1991 decision to close Loring Air Force Base in northern Maine. He paid a heavy political price for his decision and lost the race. Other politicians have learned that lesson well.
To insulate base closings from political wrangling, Congress enacted legislation in 1990 that restructured the base closure process. After Defense releases its proposed list of closures and modifications–called realignments–a BRAC Commission composed of people selected by the president and by congressional leadership reviews the list and accepts or modifies it. The commission then sends the list to the president, who forwards it to Congress. Congress is limited to either accepting or rejecting all of the Pentagon's BRAC proposals, though members have found other ways to influence proceedings.
In 2001, Congress put off the Pentagon's request for a fifth round of BRAC closings until 2005 and has repeatedly attempted to further delay or cancel the process. Yet in each case, the threat of a presidential veto doomed any legislation that interrupted the BRAC process. In March, Mississippi Republican Sen. Trent Lott announced that he was placing a “freeze” on the confirmation of the president's nominee for BRAC Commission chairman, former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Principi, and indicated his intent to block the nominations of the other eight commission designees. President George W. Bush went around Lott by using his authority to make temporary recess appointments during Congress's April recess to permit the BRAC process to continue. (Presidents have been known to find ways to intervene as well. President Bill Clinton, in the run-up to his 1996 reelection campaign, effectively overturned the closure of two bases in the politically important states of California and Texas by developing a plan that kept existing jobs at those bases while transferring the facilities from Pentagon to private control.)
Once established, the BRAC Commission began visiting bases on the Pentagon's list and holding informational hearings to evaluate the recommendations. At the hearings, members of Congress and community leaders argued in favor of their bases, often hiring economists, statisticians, and retired military to review the data backing the Pentagon's proposals.
South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune was in a particularly tight position. Thune had defeated Democratic leader Tom Daschle, in part, by arguing that his connections to President Bush would better enable him to protect Ellsworth Air Force Base. He testified before the commission and spoke to individual commissioners. He also signaled his unhappiness to the White House by opposing the president's appointment of John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He and Cong. Stephanie Herseth, a South Dakota Democrat, went so far as to introduce legislation to delay implementation of the Pentagon's BRAC recommendations until one year after a series of criteria were met, including the return of most U.S. troops from Iraq.
New England politicians were equally vociferous. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, labeled the recommendation to close Portsmouth Naval Shipyard a “strategic mistake.” In addition to Portsmouth, the Pentagon had recommended closing the Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Connecticut, and local representatives fought long and hard against that decision.
In the end, all of the lobbying paid off. In early September, the BRAC Commission forwarded the president its revised list of recommendations. The commission had rejected a number of the Pentagon's most controversial proposals, including closing Ellsworth, questioning the Pentagon's projected cost savings for the bomber base. It also reversed Pentagon plans to close the Portsmouth and New London naval facilities, citing their continued importance in supporting the military's mission. It suggested that the Pentagon overstated its total estimated savings by $30 billion.
The president accepted the commission's recommendations and sent them to Congress for an up or down vote. It appears as if enough of Congress emerged satisfied from the BRAC political wrangling that it is expected to accept the package before the end of 2006. Yet a quick survey of the bases that survived the process serves as an object lesson on how hard it is to trim even a small portion of the Pentagon's $500 billion budget.