Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, the amendment that I have before you today provides that none of the funds in this year's Defense appropriations act may be made available to propose, plan for, or execute an additional Base Realignment and Closure round, better known as BRAC.
Remember, we have a current BRAC in place that continues to cost our Nation dollars in the defense budget; and I want to remind folks, too, that this same language passed in this year's National Defense Authorization Act by a vote of 315-108 on June 14, and it says that we want to make sure that we're making the right decisions in the context of what's going on around us.
We have an existing BRAC that will not save a penny until 2018. The original cost-savings estimates on that BRAC were $21 billion. Today, the cost of that BRAC is estimated at $35 billion, and the Nation won't break even until 2018. In fact, in this year's President's budget, the estimated cost of that BRAC is $450 million.
Now, we wouldn't want to proceed with another BRAC with potential cost savings somewhere in the future while we're still paying for the additional BRAC, especially in light of the budgetary needs that are before us with our Nation's defense budget.
With the sequester going on, with those reductions, and with the uncertainty surrounding the current state of affairs with our national defense, why would we want to continue in the realm of uncertainty spending more dollars with an uncertain future about when savings would occur, when we haven't even accrued savings from the 2005 BRAC?
Again, just not the time to go about this, not the time to put in place another Base Realignment and Closure commission.
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Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman that, in light of what we have today, with the uncertainty, with the sequester, with the reduction in funds where we are saving money by furloughing Federal employees, now is not the time to spend more money in this realm of uncertainty, especially when the Secretary of Defense is undertaking a strategic choice in management review to determine what our strategy should be going forward. We certainly want to determine the strategy first before we're going to make additional expenditures on closing bases.
Also, there's a current evaluation going on with our facilities in Europe and our facilities in the Pacific. Shouldn't we finish that first before we start even considering closing bases here in the United States where, by the way, we still haven't gotten to the point of saving money from the last BRAC round, which will take at least 13 years to save money?
So if we start another one that would take another 13 years, are we in the position to spend more money to do that while we have these areas of uncertainty surrounding us, a sequester resulting in furloughs, an evaluation of the current strategy for the United States, an evaluation of base structures in other areas of the world?
I say that this is absolutely the wrong time to pursue a BRAC in any way, shape or form, to propose, plan or execute a BRAC in all those areas.
Let's create some certainty with what's happening right now with this Nation's defense, with what we're doing with planning, to make sure it's a logical, a thoughtful process where there's some certainty, not throwing more uncertainty in the process, which is what a BRAC round would do now.
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Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Chairman, again, I want to emphasize, at this time in our Nation's defense budgeting, we ought to be looking at where we can save dollars, where we can apply dollars to those areas of greatest need. And I argue those areas of greatest need are for this Nation's readiness, the training of our troops, the operation and maintenance of our equipment, making sure that we get those dollars there; and that before we pursue a BRAC, we ought to know what the areas are, where we are going to go with this Nation's strategy, what our base structure should be in other areas of the world.
After being at war for nearly 12 years, now we have a well-trained, battle-hardened, combat-tested force, and they are an all-volunteer force that's more joint than ever. We want to understand where we need to be going forward to make sure that we provide for them.
Closing these bases now, or even pursuing a Base Realignment and Closure commission, this is not the time to do that.
Mr. Chairman, again, this is the wrong time. We ought to be looking at the place in time where we have actually accrued the savings on the last BRAC, which started in 2005. Before we pursue another, we ought to make sure we know what this Nation's strategy is, militarily, before we pursue a Base Realignment and Closure commission. We ought to know what should our base structures be elsewhere in the world.
Before we pursue a Base Realignment and Closure commission here in the United States, we ought to make sure we understand where we're going with the sequester, where we're going with furloughs, where we're going with end-strength with our military before we close bases.
If we're going to be reducing end-strength by 100,000 and say, by the way, let's pursue a Base Realignment and Closure commission now, how do we know where we need to be?
That uncertainty is not where we need to be, and I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this amendment.
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