Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is pretty simple. It says that we are not going to use any funds at this particular time to propose, plan, or execute any additional Base Realignment and Closure rounds, better known as BRAC, the reason being that this language was adopted in the National Defense Authorization Act by an overwhelming vote of 325-98. The House has spoken and has said now is not the time to use these funds to begin this. I want to make sure that people understand that this is also in the Senate language.

I want to make sure people understand, too, that this is a process by which we want to make sure we are understanding how decisionmaking takes place. A force structure comes before decisions on infrastructure, and as you know, the service branches are still making the decision about what the end strength should be--how many people we should have in our military. That will determine what our infrastructure should be. We are also undergoing an overseas base and housing assessment to determine what our presence should be overseas. That is ongoing. That should be completed before we even entertain any consideration about what our base structure needs to be here at home.

The cost estimates for the last Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 2005 indicated that it would cost $21 billion. Now we see it costs $35 billion. The 2005 BRAC, as we see, hasn't saved money at all at this particular point, and it won't save money until 2018, so now is not the proper time to pursue a Base Realignment and Closure.

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Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Chairman, in closing, we are at a decisive point.

As you know, right now, we are bringing equipment back from Afghanistan. We are resetting our force, and we are training them for the next missions that they are about to face. Those efforts take resources, and we cannot forget that we have to devote those resources on the list of priorities. Making sure that our men and women are properly trained and that the equipment they have is properly operating and maintained is critical to this Nation's readiness. That should be job one. That is not to say we shouldn't look at saving money elsewhere through infrastructure, but we must restore lost readiness now. That is where those funds need to go. We certainly can look at infrastructure later, but now is the time to make sure we maintain readiness.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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