[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 96 (Wednesday, July 9, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7052-S7091]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CHINESE MILITARY EXPANSION AND UNITED STATES NATIONAL SECURITY
Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, no one did more to bring peace and
prosperity in our time than our 40th President, Ronald Reagan.
President Reagan's economic and foreign policies gave us the longest
peacetime expansion in our history and, indeed, did fulfill an ambition
of this country to make the world safe again for democracy. But more
than that, Ronald Reagan called us to our highest and best; we never
spoke with more certainty or sat taller in the saddle than when Ronald
Reagan was riding point.
In his second inaugural address, Reagan spoke of the danger of
simple-minded appeasement, of accommodating countries at their lowest
and least. ``History,'' said President Reagan, ``teaches us that wars
begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.''
Having seen the death and destruction of five wars in his lifetime,
President Reagan's was a lesson learned at some expense. It was a
lesson which he refused to repeat. And from his experience was borne
the policy of peace through strength--a strategy that recognized that
wishful thinking about our adversaries is a betrayal of our past and a
squandering of our freedom.
But today, the administration seems to have forgotten this costly
lesson. It seems driven not by foreign policy so much as by foreign
politics, willing to pursue that which sounds historic rather than
adopting policies that are historically sound.
Nowhere is this administration's failed thinking more apparent than
in United States policy toward China. As I noted on the floor 2 weeks
ago, Beijing has embarked on a military buildup that may soon threaten
security interests in Asia, including our own. China already has the
world's largest military at 2.9 million and is taking steps to enhance
its force projection capabilities, including the acquisition of a blue
water navy and a 21st century air force.
China is not an enemy of the United States. I sincerely hope that
Washington and Beijing can develop a forthright and an enduring
relationship. For such a relationship to develop, however, security
issues must be addressed and fundamental questions about those issues
must be answered.
What does it mean when China engages in a dramatic military buildup
aimed at achieving superpower status? What does it mean when China
proliferates technology for weapons of mass destruction and signs a
$4.5 billion arms deal with the terrorist State of Iran? What does it
mean when China fires missiles in the Taiwan Strait and seizes small
islands in the South China Sea? For this belligerence suggests a China
bent on regional domination.
While China's official military budget is roughly $8 billion, Beijing
effectively conceals military spending through off-budget funding and
revenue. Reliable estimates place China's military spending from 4 to
10 times the official budget. Russia alone, has made over $7 billion in
arm sales to China since 1990, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
underemployed Russian nuclear engineers have been hired by China in the
last several years.
Mr. President, the People's Liberation Army of China, has 20,000
companies, business enterprises, that funnel revenue into the
military's coffers. These PLA companies are not the kind of competitors
we want to welcome to the American market. Companies with ties to the
PLA benefit from their special relationship with Beijing and have been
involved in criminal activities ranging from smuggling assault weapons
onto the streets of San Francisco to stealing defense-related
technology.
So what, then, has this explosion in military spending wrought?
First, a missile program that will soon give China the capacity to
build hundreds of highly accurate ballistic missiles. Second, short- to
medium-range ballistic
[[Page S7053]]
missiles that will provide Beijing with versatile nonnuclear weapons to
target U.S. military personnel in a variety of contingencies if they so
desire.
And, as if this were not enough, China is modernizing its long-range
nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles with mobile ICBM systems
and advance reentry technology. Due to the potential of secret
underground construction which is said to be available in China, China
could have as many as 130 of such missiles with a range of 8,000 miles.
China's missile modernization program is accompanied by the buildup of
China's Air Force.
By 2010, China could have over 100 SU-27 and SU-30 aircraft. The SU-
27 is comparable to, and may be more advanced in some areas than, the
U.S. F-15C Eagle. Russia has been the primary provider of these
aircraft and has signed a $2.2 billion coproduction agreement with
China to help Beijing develop the domestic capacity to produce these
planes.
China's ultimate goal is to acquire an all-weather Air Force within 5
years. Attack aircraft, precision-guided munitions, airborne early
warning and control systems [AWACS], and large transport aircraft are
all items on Beijing's wish list. With the help of Russian arms
suppliers, China is putting the pieces of this lethal puzzle in place.
Beijing is also working to develop a blue water navy. Their ambitions
are perhaps summed up best by the words of Admiral Liu Huaqing. ``The
Chinese Navy,'' said Admiral Liu, ``should exert effective control of
the seas within the first island chain. Offshore should not be
interpreted as coastal as we used to know it. Offshore is a concept
relative to the high seas. It means the vast sea waters within the
second island chain.''
Mr. President, it just so happens that the first island chain China
seeks to control encompasses Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and some
of the most critical shipping lanes in the world. The South China Sea
alone accommodates 25 percent of the world's maritime trade and 75
percent of Japan's oil shipments.
To achieve Admiral Liu's objective, Beijing has purchased Kilo-class
submarines and Sovremenny-class missile destroyers from Russia. In
addition, the United States Office of Naval Intelligence [ONI] cites a
National People's Congress report that China is seeking to build two
48,000-ton aircraft carriers, each with 40 combat aircraft, by the year
2005.
China's arms buildup would be less disturbing if Beijing were acting
to resist aggression by an enemy power. But China faces no grave
security threats, leaving us with troubling conclusions about Beijing's
real intent. China has historically demonstrated a willingness to
settle territorial disputes with force, and greater capacity can only
increase the likelihood of belligerence in the future.
Since WWII, a catalog of China's regional conflicts covers almost her
entire periphery. China has invaded Tibet and Vietnam, entered the
Korean war, ousted Vietnamese forces from several islands in the South
China Sea, fought India twice and Russia once over boundary disputes,
and--not to forget the most consistent aspect of China's military
adventurism--threatened Taiwan with military exercises and outright
invasion of Taiwanese islands close to China's shore.
China currently has territorial disputes with India, Russia, Japan,
Vietnam, and has vied with the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei,
and Malaysia for control of the resource-rich and strategically
important South China Sea. To defend its claim, Beijing has already
constructed five naval installations in the Paracel Islands and seven
installations in the Spratly Island group.
And what has been the Clinton administration's response to the rising
Chinese military threat? Appeasement at every turn. China proliferates
missile, nuclear, and chemical weapons technology to rogue regimes like
Iran; in fact, China is identified by the CIA as the world's worst
proliferator of weapons of mass destruction. And yet, the
administration refuses to impose consistently sanctions authorized by
U.S. law.
The China Ocean Shipping Co., better known as COSCO, is implicated in
weapons smuggling to the United States and missile transfers to
Pakistan, and the President personally assists the city of Long Beach,
CA, in leasing the local United States naval harbor to COSCO.
The China National Nuclear Corp. orchestrates most of the nuclear
technology transfers to Pakistan and Iran, and the administration
responds by approving Export-Import Bank loans to help this Chinese
company complete a nuclear reactor in China.
These examples reveal an underlying laxity also clearly seen in
President Clinton's dismantling of export controls for sensitive
technology. President Reagan's formation of the Combat Command [COCOM]
helped enforce an international embargo of sensitive technology exports
to the Soviet Union and effectively expanded America's technological
lead. Unfortunately, having confused short-term profits with long-term
security, this administration has undermined our export control
framework.
For example, advanced U.S. aircraft engines have historically been a
protected item on the munitions list of goods and services. Sales of
Munitions List items are illegal to any country without formal approval
from the State Department. In addition, sales of Munitions List items
to China were prohibited after the Tiananmen Square crackdown and could
only be permitted with a Presidential waiver.
Instead of openly issuing a waiver for the sale of aircraft engines
to China, the Clinton administration quietly took airplane engines off
the Munitions List and shifted their control from the Department of
State to the Department of Commerce. Licenses for the sale of aircraft
engines were quickly issued by then-Secretary Brown, and they continue
to this day.
In addition to aircraft technology, export controls for
supercomputers have also been relaxed. As Senator Cochran has argued so
compellingly on the floor this week, supercomputers are not extra large
versions of a Macintosh or an IBM, but advanced machines that can
simulate warfare contingencies and model sophisticated weapons.
The Bush administration defined supercomputers as machines that could
perform 195 MTOPS--million theoretical operations per second. The
Clinton administration relaxed export controls by changing this
definition to 2,000 MTOPS, a tenfold increase in the capability of
noncontrolled supercomputers within 2 years. Shortly thereafter, the
Clinton administration raised the threshold to 7,000 MTOPS for export
of supercomputers for civilian use.
In the euphoria of the post-cold war world, the Clinton
administration seems to have forgotten that civilian and military
distinctions have little use in a Communist State like China where
Government control of industry ensures that civilian technology is
applied to military ends and where thousands of so-called businesses
are literally owned by the military.
Again, as Senator Cochran has noted, United States companies have
used these relaxed regulations to sell 47 supercomputers to China.
Dozens more have been indirectly shipped to China via Europe, the
Persian Gulf, and East Asia. The Clinton administration cannot account
for where many of these computers are located or how they are being
used.
As Stephen Bryan, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, writes:
Thanks to * * * the Clinton administration, the Chinese can
now conduct tests of nuclear weapons, conventional
explosives, and chemical and biological weapons by simulating
them on supercomputers. Not only can they now make better
weapons of mass destruction, but they can do a lot of the
work secretly, thus threatening us with an additional element
of surprise.
For too long we have heard the argument that if the United States
does not sell technology to Beijing, China will simply acquire the
products from other sources. This contention is as familiar as it is
flawed. United States military and dual-use technology is often a
generation ahead of its Russian and European counterparts. How can the
United States call on other nations to stop transferring dangerous
technology when America is giving China some of the most advanced
technology in the world?
A final thought. This week the Government Affairs Committee began
investigating an ominous and startling facet of our national security--
the security of this Nation's democratic elections. Every American has
an interest
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in investigating the alleged plot of the Beijing government to
influence the election of our President and Members of this Congress.
Trying to corrupt American elections is shocking, outrageous, and
wrong. And, if true, it must be dealt with in a forthright and forceful
fashion.
In the end, it all comes down to leadership. That is what Ronald
Reagan gave us throughout the 1980's, and that is what this country is
looking for now. Leaders are willing to call this Nation--and nations
around the world--to their highest and best, not accommodate them at
their lowest and least.
Continued appeasement can only lead to further belligerence from
Beijing. We must not let China slam shut the gate of freedom. We must
show the quiet courage and common sense that have marked our foreign
policy since America's first days.
It is time for America to place restrictions on high-technology
exports to Beijing by supporting the Cochran-Durbin amendment; time to
impose consistently sanctions on China for proliferating weapons of
mass destruction; time to restrict United States market access to PLA-
front companies; and time to let Beijing know that American security
interests in East Asia will not be compromised. So, that 1 day, the
long tug of memory might look favorably upon us as we look approvingly
on those who fought for freedom in decades passed.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Amendment No. 670, As Modified
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I call up amendment 670.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Minnesota [Mr. Wellstone] proposes an
amendment numbered 670, as modified.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, just as a courtesy to my colleagues,
let me say that I am not offering a new amendment. This is an amendment
that I introduced yesterday morning. I wanted to take advantage of this
time to speak about this amendment.
This amendment would authorize the Secretary of Defense to transfer
$5 million out of the $265 billion Pentagon budget--some $2.6 billion
more than the President himself asked for--to the Secretary of
Agriculture, to be used for outreach and startup grants for the school
breakfast program.
Mr. President, this amendment involves a very small amount of money.
While it involves a small amount of money--at least given the kind of
money we are dealing with here--it actually speaks to a very large
question. I think the question has to do with what our priorities are.
I think it is a distorted priority to provide the Pentagon with $2.6
billion more than it originally asked for. For the third year in a
row--these are one of the few times I can remember in my adult life
that the Congress actually wants to provide the Pentagon with more
money than the Pentagon has actually asked for. At the same time, when
it comes to some really vitally important programs that dramatically
affect children's lives, we don't make the investment.
By way of background: In the welfare bill that passed last Congress,
$5 million was eliminated from a critically important program, which
was a program that on the one hand provided States and school districts
with the information they needed--call it an outreach program--about
how they could set up a breakfast program, and on the other hand, it
provided some badly needed funding for some of the poorer school
districts to actually, for example, purchase refrigerators in order to
have milk.
It is difficult to understand how this could have been cut,
especially given the heralded success of the school breakfast program.
Some things I guess we do not know enough about, but we do know that a
nutritious breakfast really is important in enabling a child to learn.
We also know that if a child is not able to learn, as I said yesterday,
when he or she becomes an adult they may very well not be able to earn.
This is a small amount of money that makes a huge difference.
So this amendment says that out of a $265 billion Pentagon budget,
some $2.6 billion more than the Pentagon asked for, can't we authorize
the Secretary of Defense to be able to transfer $5 million--$5
million--for school breakfasts? For what I would call catalyst money
that gets necessary information out to the States and school districts
and some needed assistance by way of refrigerators and resources to
enable them to expand the school breakfast program.
Mr. President, I want to point out by way of context that there are
still some 27,000 schools that do not have school breakfast programs
available. There are some 8 million vulnerable, low-income children,
therefore, who are not able to participate. Too many of those children
go to school without having had a nutritious breakfast.
This may seem abstract to many of us in the Senate, but it is a very
concrete and a very important issue.
This amendment has the support of FRAC, the Food Research Action
Center, which has a longstanding history of working on childhood hunger
and nutrition issues. It has the support of the Elementary School
Principals Association, the American School Food Services, and Bread
for the World.
Mr. President, I might point out that these organizations have a
tremendous amount of credibility for all of us who care about hunger
and malnutrition. These are organizations that have been down in the
trenches for years working on these issues. I don't think anybody can
quarrel with the values and ethics of Bread for the World and the work
that they have done, much of it very rooted in the religious community,
and the American School Food Services. These are food service workers.
These are the people who know what it means when they can't provide a
nutritious breakfast to low-income students.
This is a special endorsement for me because my mother was a food
service worker.
What the Elementary School Principals Association is saying by
endorsing this amendment is simply this: If a child hasn't had a
nutritious breakfast, how is that child going to be able to learn?
Mr. President, let me talk a little bit about the extent of hunger
and the scope of the problem. This is from the Food Research Action
Committee.
Approximately 4 million American children under the age of 12 go
hungry, and approximately 9.6 million are in risk of hunger. According
to estimates based on the results of the most comprehensive study ever
done on childhood hunger in the United States--this was the community
childhood hunger education project--based on the results of over 5,000
surveys of families with incomes below 185 percent of poverty, applied
to the best available national data, FRAC estimates that of the
approximately 13.6 million children under age 12 in the United States,
29 percent live in families that must cope with hunger or the risk of
hunger during some part of one or more months in the previous year.
Let me just raise a question with colleagues before we have this
vote. I just think that this goes to the heart of what we are about.
This goes to the heart of priorities.
I, as a Senator from Minnesota, tire of the symbolic politics. We
have had the conferences on early childhood development. The books and
the reports, the magazines, the TV documentaries have come out.
We know--let me repeat this--we know that in order for children to do
well, it is important that they have a nutritious breakfast. We know
that when children are hungry, they don't do well in school. We know,
as parents and grandparents, that we want to make sure that our
children and our grandchildren start school after having a nutritious
breakfast. And we also know, based on clear evidence, that sometimes we
don't know what we don't want to know--that there is a significant
amount of children who still go to bed hungry or still wake up in the
morning hungry and go to school hungry.
Why can't the U.S. Senate make this small investment in this program
which was so important in enabling States and school districts to
expand the school breakfast program?
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Mr. President, I am going to bring this amendment to the floor of the
Senate over and over and over again starting with this defense
authorization bill.
Let me just read. I am assuming that my colleagues are interested in
this information, and I am assuming that we want to address the
problem. Let me just talk a little bit about this relationship between
hunger and nutrition and learning.
Undernutrition increases the risk of illness and its
severity.
Undernutrition has a negative effect on a child's ability
to learn . . .
Iron deficiency anemia is a specific kind of undernutrition
and is one of the most prevalent undernutritional problems in
the United States especially among children. Even mild cases
lead to shortened attention span, irritability, fatigue and
decreased ability to concentrate . . .
Hunger leads to nervousness, irritability, disinterest in
the learning situation, and an inability to concentrate . . .
Hunger . . . disrupt(s) the learning process--one
developmental step is lost, and it is difficult to move on to
the next one.
A United States Department of Agriculture study of the
lunch and breakfast programs demonstrated that these programs
make nutritional improvements in children's diets.
I could go on and on, but--I see my colleague from Arizona in the
Chamber--I will try to summarize. Let me just make it clear that the
data is out there. And over and over again, in report after report
after report, we see clearly that malnourished children are not going
to do well in school, and we know that 8 million low-income children
are not able to participate because there is no School Breakfast
Program.
We had a $5 million USDA outreach program that enabled school
districts to get started, provided them with badly needed information,
provided them with refrigerators if they needed that, and we eliminated
it. And at the same time we have a Pentagon budget that is $2.6 billion
more than the Pentagon asked.
We all say we care about children. We are all referring to these
studies that say children have to do well in school, we are talking
about the importance of good nutrition, and here we have an opportunity
to make a difference.
So, Mr. President, I want to over and over again come to the floor
with amendments that speak to this question. One more time, just in
terms of looking at the endorsements for this amendment, we have
endorsements from FRAC, which is Food Research and Action Center--FRAC
has been as involved in children's nutritional issues as any
organization I know--the Elementary School Principals Association--they
are saying to us, colleagues, at least make sure that children are able
to have a nutritious breakfast. I think the elementary school
principals know something about learning and something about children
at this young age--American School Food Services and Bread for the
World.
I hope we will have strong support for this amendment.
I point out by way of conclusion that if you look at participation in
the School Breakfast Program from 1976 to 1996 --and remember, once
upon a time, I say to my colleagues, we used to think this program was
only for rural areas, for students with long bus rides, students who
were not going to be able to eat at home. Now what we find is the
reality that in many of these families there are split shifts,
different shifts, both parents working, and all too often these kids in
urban areas and suburbs come to school and they really have not had a
nutritious breakfast.
We saw a good increase in participation in the School Breakfast
Program from 1976 to 1996, but now what has happened as a result of
eliminating this small $5 million outreach program is there is
tremendous concern from USDA all the way to the different child
advocacy organizations that the participation is going to begin to
decline.
So here is an opportunity, colleagues, to invest a small amount of
money in the basic idea that each child ought to have the same
opportunity to reach his or her full potential. This is an opportunity
for all of us to come through for these vulnerable children,
understanding full well--and I know my colleague from Arizona is out
here, but I say to him and this really is my conclusion--understanding
full well that, indeed, there is a linkage to reform and to the work
that he and others are doing on trying to get the money out of
politics. There are a number of us who are absolutely convinced we have
to act on this agenda. That is to say these children and these families
are not the heavy hitters; they are not the big players; they are not
the givers; they do not have the big lobbyists; they all too often are
faceless and voiceless, and that it is profoundly wrong. I hope to get
100 votes for this amendment.
I yield the floor.
Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Santorum). The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Before I call up my amendment, I wish to respond to my
friend from Minnesota for just a moment on his amendment. I preface my
remarks by saying I know of no more passionate or compassionate Member
of this body than the Senator from Minnesota, nor do I believe that
there is anyone in this body who articulates as well as he the plight
of those who, as he pointed out, may be underrepresented here in this
body in our deliberations. I have grown and developed over the years a
great respect and even affection for the Senator from Minnesota because
of my admiration for his incredible commitment to serving those who may
not always have a voice.
But I say to the Senator from Minnesota that this amendment, like
many others, is what I call the Willie Sutton syndrome. When the famous
bank robber was once asked why he robbed banks, he said, ``Because
that's where the money is.'' And time after time I see amendments that
are worthwhile and at times, as the Senator from Minnesota just
articulated, compelling, but they come out of funds that are earmarked
for national defense. In my view, that is not an appropriate way to
spend defense money.
I would also quickly point out that this is not the first time it has
happened. There are literally billions of dollars now that we spend out
of defense appropriations and authorization that have absolutely
nothing to do with defending this Nation's vital national security
interests, again because of the Willie Sutton syndrome. Although I
admire and appreciate the amendment of the Senator from Minnesota, I
would oppose it, not because of its urgency but because of its
inappropriate placement on a defense appropriations bill. And I would
also like to work with the Senator from Minnesota when the Labor-HHS
appropriations bill comes to the floor to see if we cannot provide that
funding, which the Senator from Minnesota appropriately points out is
not a great deal of money given the large amounts of money we deal with
and also considering the importance and urgency of the issue.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent----
Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield at this moment.
Mr. McCAIN. I would be glad to yield to the Senator from Minnesota
for a comment.
I ask unanimous consent to yield to the Senator from Minnesota for 5
minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my colleague. The respect is mutual.
I just wanted to say--it was going to be a question, but I can just
make a comment instead--as a matter of history, the School Lunch
Program was created by the Congress 50 years ago, and I quote, ``As a
measure of national security to safeguard the health and well-being of
the Nation's children.'' It was a direct response to the fact that many
of the young men who were drafted in World War II were rejected due to
conditions arising from nutritional deficiencies. So there is, in fact,
a direct linkage to national defense.
It is, in fact, very much a national security issue to make sure that
children have full nutrition and that we do not end up with men and
women later on who have not been able to learn, not been able to earn
and may, in fact, not even be healthy enough to qualify to serve our
Nation.
So it is an interesting history, and I just wanted my colleague to
know that this program is very much connected to national security.
My second point is I too look forward to working with my colleague in
the future. But I hope to win on this amendment now. This is simply a
matter of saying, look, we have a budget
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that is $2.6 billion over what the Pentagon asked. There have been
plenty of studies which have pointed out excesses in the defense
budget. Can we not at least authorize the Secretary of Defense to
transfer this $5 million.
And then, finally, I say to all my colleagues that I think there is
going to come a point in time where people cannot--and I know the
Senator from Arizona is not trying to do this--but people cannot say,
well, we shouldn't vote for this now; we can't vote for this now; we
won't vote for this now; there will be a more appropriate place; there
will be a more appropriate time. And I find that when it comes to all
these issues that have to do with how can we refurbish and renew and
restore our national vow of equal opportunity for every child, the vote
always gets put off. It always gets put in parenthesis. So I absolutely
take what my friend from Arizona said in good faith. I look forward to
working with him. But I do think that on this bill, on this amendment,
this is the time to vote for such a small step for a good many very
vulnerable children in our country.
I thank my colleague for his graciousness.
Amendment No. 705
(Purpose: To authorize base closure rounds in 1999 and 2001)
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to lay aside the
pending amendments and ask that the clerk call up amendment No. 705.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk
will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Arizona [Mr. McCain], for himself, Mr.
Levin, Mr. Coats, and Mr. Robb, proposes an amendment
numbered 705.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The text of the amendment is printed in today's Record under
``Amendments Submitted.'')
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, this amendment would authorize two
additional base closure rounds in 1999 and the year 2001 consistent
with the recommendations in the Quadrennial Defense Review, known as
the QDR. The amendment authorizes a process which is identical to the
process established in 1990 for the last three BRAC rounds. The
amendment also contains language which addresses the politicization in
the last BRAC process which permitted the President to implement
privatization in place at Kelly and McClellan Air Force Bases.
I might point out that I am working with the Senator from Texas [Mr
Gramm], in trying to frame language to modify the amendment at the
appropriate time which would allow the Secretary of Defense to
privatize where it can be proven to be of benefit to the taxpayer. We
are still working on that legislation.
Mr. President, we need to authorize additional base closure rounds to
correct a current imbalance in force structure and
infrastructure. After four base closing rounds, only 21 percent of the
military installations in the continental United States have been
reduced. Our force structure, however, will have been reduced by over
36 percent by the time that quarterly defense review recommendations
are complete. Obviously, retaining excess base infrastructure is
unnecessary with a smaller military force and wastes scarce defense
resources that are essential to future military modernization.
I think it is important to frame the debate about this amendment in
the terms of the realistic approach we have to take to future defense
budgets. I do not believe there is any of us here, barring a national
security emergency, who believes we are going to see increases in
defense spending, certainly not increases in defense spending which
would justify the size of our infrastructure as it exists today. It
just is not possible, in a period, in real terms, of declining defense
budgets, to maintain this infrastructure and, at the same time,
modernize our force and provide the men and women in the military with
the necessary tools to fight and to win any future conflict with a
minimization of casualties.
I am very confident that the United States has emerged at the end of
the cold war as the world's No. 1 superpower. I don't think there is
any doubt about that. But I also think it is important to point out
that we are seeing problems within the military that some of us, with
the benefit of experience and old age, recognize as having happened
before. We are now seeing a failure to meet our recruitment goals for
our All Volunteer Force. We are now seeing a derogation of our
readiness capabilities in parts of the military establishment. We
clearly are not modernizing the force in a way that will give us the
ability to maintain our technological edge, which has made us the
world's No. 1 superpower and won the magnificent victory of the Persian
Gulf war.
So, if you accept the premise that there will be at best a leveling
of defense spending, and certainly realistically speaking a decline, at
least in terms of inflation if not worse, then there really is no
argument against closing more bases. I have heard some very interesting
arguments and we will hear on the floor some interesting arguments
against base closure. One that has some legitimacy is that, either in
reality or by perception, the last base closing round was politicized
by the President of the United States by privatizing in place two major
bases, both of them with very large electoral votes. I wish that had
not happened. It has caused an enormous amount of acrimony and division
within this body, within America, within the Senate Armed Services
Committee. And this particular reauthorization of further BRAC rounds
will not allow a privatization in place to take place. So it will be
well, I am sure, by some, to lament the politicization of the process
as took place--or the perception that it took place, depending on which
side you are on in the argument--of the last BRAC process.
But it does not change the reality. It does not change the reality
that we have a significant imbalance between operating forces and
infrastructure. In other words, we don't need the number of bases that
we have in our defense establishment in order to match up to the
fighting forces that we must maintain. If we maintain that base
structure, it will siphon more and more funds unnecessarily into a base
structure and away from the much needed funding, such as pay raises,
such as operations and maintenance, such as training funds, such as
modernization of force, such as recruitment, such as, for example,
addressing the problem we are seeing right now in aviation in the
military, an exodus of pilots from the military to go with the
airlines. One of the reasons is pilots are putting pen to paper and
figuring out that after a short period of time financially they will be
better off as airline pilots than as military pilots.
If you couple that with ever-increasing deployments and separation
from family and home, this is causing a hemorrhaging from our most
highly skilled and highly trained branches of our military.
Another argument you are going to hear is that we are spending too
much money on other functions, such as peacekeeping. All of us regret
that we have had to spend--I believe the estimates are now up to
somewhere around $7.5 billion or $8 billion on peacekeeping in Bosnia.
I regret that, too. I hope that by next June 30 the United States will
not only be out of Bosnia militarily but also financially. I will bend
every effort that I can, short of jeopardizing the lives of those young
men and women and short of provoking another conflict in the region
which may cost the United States more in the long run, but I will do
everything in my power to see that we stop spending that money on
peacekeeping.
But what in the world is the connection between the money we are
spending on peacekeeping and the base infrastructure? What is the
point? There is none, because whether we had a large or small
establishment, we would still be spending too much money on
peacekeeping.
So, I respect the arguments that will come in opposition to this
amendment. Those are the two primary arguments. But I fail to see the
relation between those arguments and what we have to do in the national
interest.
One of the interesting things that has happened since the end of the
cold war is that we see very little, if any, interest in national
security issues and national defense on the part of the American
public. I think in some ways that
[[Page S7057]]
is good news, because the American people feel content. They do not see
a threat to our security out on the horizon. And, although that
sentiment does not prevail when Americans are killed in places like
Somalia and others, generally speaking there is no urgent feeling on
the part of the American people that we need to spend, not only not
more, but even as much as we are spending on national defense.
It is also true, however, that we do have to maintain a certain
level, otherwise we will not maintain our position in the world. It is
also true in my view that, if we don't wish to be the world's No. 1
superpower, then it is a very valid question as to who, then, do we
expect to be the world's No. 1 superpower? Because other nations, I
think, would be perfectly willing to do so.
Mr. President, I have a letter to Chairman Strom Thurmond, and I
quote from it:
We strongly support further reductions in base structure
proposed by the Secretary of Defense. Any process must be
based on military utility, but sensitive to the impact such
reductions will have on the Service communities in which our
people live. We ask your assistance in addressing this
difficult issue.
Sincerely, John M. Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff; Joseph W. Ralston, Vice Chairman; Dennis
Reimer, General, United States Army, Chief of Staff; Jay L.
Johnson, Admiral, U.S. Navy, Chief of operations; Ronald R.
Fogleman, General, United States Air Force; Charles Krulak,
General, U.S. Marine Corps, Commandant of the Marine Corps.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter and a letter
I will read in a few minutes from the Secretary of Defense be printed
in the Record.
There being no objection, the letters were ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Washington, DC, June 4, 1997.
Hon. Strom Thurmond,
Chairman, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Chairman: As the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR)
appropriately notes, achieving the type of force this country
will need in the 21st century requires significant increases
in our investment accounts. Given other pressures on the
federal budget, we must make every effort to find the funds
within the Department of Defense budget.
Since the end of the Cold War, the Defense base structure
has been reduced approximately 26 percent. When the QDR
reductions are complete, the overall end strength of the
department will have been reduced by over 36 percent.
We strongly support further reductions in base structure
proposed by the Secretary of Defense. Any process must be
based on military utility, but sensitive to the impact such
reductions will have on the Service communities in which our
people live.
We ask your assistance in addressing this difficult issue.
Sincerely,
Joseph W. Ralston,
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Dennis J. Reimer,
General, U.S. Army Chief of Staff.
Ronald R. Fogleman,
General, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff.
John M. Shalikashvili,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Jay L. Johnson,
Admiral, United States Navy Chief of Naval Operations.
Charles C. Krulak,
General, U.S. Marine Corps, Commandant of the Marine Corps.
____
The Secretary of Defense,
Washington, DC, June 24, 1997.
Hon. John McCain,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear John: As you consider the Fiscal Year 1998 National
Defense Authorization Bill, I urge you to add a provision
that would permit the Department to conduct two additional
base closure and realignment rounds, in FY99 and FY01.
Reducing excess infrastructure was an essential element of
the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The Department has
already reduced its overseas base structure by almost 60
percent and must now bring its domestic base structure into
balance with its force structure.
With the expiration of the previous BRAC legislation, the
Department needs a process to close or realign excess
military installations. Even after four rounds of base
closures, we have eliminated only 21 percent of our U.S. base
structure while force structure will drop by 36 percent by
FY03. The QDR concluded that additional infrastructure
savings were required to close this gap and begin to reduce
the share of the defense budget devoted to infrastructure.
Base closings are an integral part of this plan. The QDR
found that the Department has enough excess base structure to
warrant two additional rounds of BRAC, similar in scale to
1993 and 1995.
The Department estimates two additional base closure rounds
would result in savings of approximately $2.7 billion
annually. These savings are critical to the Department's
modernization plans. We must modernize our force structure
over the long term, laying the groundwork now for the
platforms and technologies our forces need in the future.
Without the ability to modernize, we would face future
threats with obsolete forces. Additionally, the Department
will continue to waste resources by maintaining excess
military installations, impacting readiness.
As you may know, when I was in the Senate, a base in my
state was closed as a result of the 1991 BRAC. Therefore,
making a recommendation for further BRAC rounds is not
something I take lightly. However, the Service Chiefs all
believe that additional BRAC rounds are necessary. Further,
there have been many communities which have been successful
in their base reuse efforts. I am enclosing, for your
consideration, additional information on BRAC, the views of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff and community success stories
including a New York Times piece on how Charleston survived
the closing of the Charleston Naval Base.
I would greatly appreciate your support for an amendment to
authorize additional base closures and would be pleased to
answer any questions or to discuss this matter with you.
Sincerely,
Bill Cohen.
Enclosure
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I do not think we can lightly ignore--or
not seriously consider, I guess is a better way of saying it--this
letter from the individuals that we have asked to lead our military.
Every one of these individuals knows the pain and hardship that comes
about when a base is closed. But each of these individuals has been
charged by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to
run our military establishment. And all of those individuals feel, not
just supportive of what Secretary Cohen is saying, but obviously that
this is a very important issue if they are going to be able to carry
out their responsibilities.
Mr. President, I have a letter from the Secretary of Defense,
Secretary Bill Cohen, former Senator Bill Cohen, whom we all know quite
well. Secretary of Defense Cohen says:
Reducing excess infrastructure was an essential element of
the Quadrennial Defense Review. The Department has already
reduced its overseas base structure by almost 60 percent and
must now bring its domestic base structure into balance with
its force structure.
* * * * *
Base closings are an integral part of this plan. The QDR
found the Department has enough excess base structure to
warrant two additional rounds of BRAC, similar in scale to
1993 and 1995.
The Department estimates two additional base closure rounds
would result in savings of approximately $2.7 billion
annually. These savings are critical to the Department's
modernization plans.
Let me say that again:
These savings are critical to the Department's
modernization plans.
He goes on to say:
As you may know, when I was in the Senate, a base in my
State was closed as a result of the 1991 BRAC. Therefore,
making a recommendation for further BRAC rounds is not
something I take lightly. However, the Service Chiefs all
believe that additional BRAC rounds are necessary.
Mr. President, I think it might be appropriate to point out at this
time, in light of what I just read from Secretary Cohen's letter, that
there are bases in my State that I know will be vulnerable in light of
two additional rounds of base closing. And I know that I will have to
go back to my home State, if one of them is closed, and say: Yes, I'm
the guy who proposed the amendment for two more rounds of base
closings.
But I will also tell the people of my State that I did it because I
told them, when I sought to serve in this body, that I would act in the
national interest first. I would also add that we went through a base
closing in my State, in the case of Williams Air Force Base, and I am
happy to say, by the way, as has been the case in many bases in many
areas of the country, that the community has ended up by generating
more economic benefit than less. That certainly has not been in all
cases, but it certainly has been in many.
Mr. President, I want to point out that there are several urban
success stories: Charleston Naval Base, Charleston, SC, where currently
there are 32 agencies reusing this former naval base; Pease Air Force
Base, Portsmouth, NH, the establishment of
[[Page S7058]]
Pease International Tradeport created more than 1,161 new jobs;
Sacramento Army Depot, Sacramento, Packard Bell NEC, the country's
largest manufacturer of personal computers, has created more than 5,000
jobs at this former depot; Williams Air Force Base, now known as the
Williams Gateway Airport, quickly emerged as an international aviation
and aerospace center where more than 20 companies engage in aircraft
maintenance; Mather Air Force Base; Gentile Air Force Station,
Kettering, OH; Norton Air Force Base, San Bernardino; Fort Benjamin
Harrison, Indianapolis; Griffiss Air Force Base; Cameron Station,
Alexandria; Naval Air Station/Naval Aviation Depot Alameda, Alameda--
the list goes on and on.
Mr. President, there are a large number of success stories. That does
not diminish the fact that in some rural areas there will be
significant economic impact. There is no doubt about that. But it also
is part of the BRAC process that economic impact is a factor in the
determination of a base closing.
Mr. President, I have talked too long a time, probably, on this
issue, because the issue is well known to my colleagues. I am grateful
to my colleague from Michigan, Senator Levin, who, along with me in the
Armed Services Committee deliberations, tried to--we were cosponsors of
an amendment; had it put in the authorization bill. We were defeated on
a tie vote. I appreciate the efforts of Senator Levin very much on this
issue.
This is a nonpartisan issue. It is an issue that has to do with the
future military capabilities of this country and our ability, over
time, if called upon, to defend our vital national security interests.
It is not possible to modernize the force, maintain the level of
training and readiness and recruit the qualified men and women in an
all-volunteer force if we refuse to put back into balance the base
support structure with the fighting forces and operational forces that
are necessary to do the fighting.
My friend from Virginia, Senator Robb, former Marine Corps officer,
carries around with him from time to time a chart that is very simple.
It shows what he calls the tooth to tail--tooth being the fighting
forces, the tail being those in support--and how those two lines have
diverged steadily over the intervening years. With this BRAC closure we
may not cause that trend to reverse, but at least we can level it off.
I believe we must do so.
I know there will be a lot of debate on this amendment, and I hope we
can agree to this and move forward.
I feel so strongly about this particular issue that unless we do
include a base closing round and unless we do something about the depot
issue, if I were the President of the United States, I would be very
tempted to veto this legislation.
Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. LEVIN. Will the Senator from California yield for a unanimous
consent request?
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Yes.
Privilege of the Floor
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Greg Renden,
Senator Wellstone's intern, be allowed the privilege of the floor for
the duration of the debate on this bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from California.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I thank the Senator from Michigan, and I thank the
Chair.
Mr. President, in my 4\1/2\ years in this body, I have not seen an
effort as egregious, as badly flawed, as unfair as the base closure
process. I happen to have great respect for the Senator from Arizona
and the Senator from Michigan, but I think to adopt this amendment at
this time is really only to continue this kind of egregious pursuit. I
hope, in the course of my remarks, to at least point out some of the
areas where I find the base closure process very wanting.
The Senator from Arizona spoke of States with big electoral clout,
and I would have to plead guilty. No State has bigger electoral clout
than California. I also hasten to point out that no State has suffered
more base closures than California--29 bases cited for closure to date,
and the largest number of jobs lost all across this Nation. In net jobs
lost to date, California has lost 123,000 net jobs. The next State in
net jobs lost is Pennsylvania at 35,000. So we are more than four times
Pennsylvania's job loss. The next highest State in total number of
bases closed to California is Texas, then Pennsylvania, then New York,
then Illinois.
If I really believed that this was going to end up being an important
cost saving for the U.S. military, I would say, ``All right, Dianne,
you may represent this State, but, by and large, this is for the best
interest of the military.'' I don't believe it, and I have seen no
evidence to date to corroborate that. I believe strongly that it is
much too soon to begin another round without having some of this
information.
We don't know how much the four rounds cost. We don't know how much
the four rounds have saved. And we haven't met our commitments to local
communities impacted by these closures, despite the letter of the
distinguished Secretary of Defense to the contrary.
The CBO--even the CBO--the 1995 BRAC Commission, they both say wait.
CBO recommends waiting until at least 2001 for another round. They say:
The Congress should consider authorizing an additional
round of base closures if the Department of Defense believes
that there is a surplus of military capacity after--
And I stress the word ``after''--
all rounds of BRAC have been carried out. That consideration,
however, should follow an interval during which DOD and
independent analysts examine the actual impact of the
measures that have been taken thus far.
(Mr. HAGEL assumed the chair.)
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I would like this distinguished body to know that we
cannot get a single figure from the U.S. Navy as to what the cost
savings actually will be from the closures of the Navy bases in the
State of California. Not a single figure. They will not give us
estimates. And yet we are going to run ahead, pass another round and
begin this same procedure again. It doesn't make any sense.
Let me quote what the BRAC 1995 commission itself recommended:
. . . the Commission recommends that the Congress authorize
another Base Closure Commission for the year 2001 . . .
[giving] military services time to complete the current
closures in an orderly fashion--
Which has not happened, I might allude to--
while ensuring that the Defense Department has the
opportunity in the future to make further reductions . . .
In addition to these new BRAC rounds beginning too quickly, and
contrary to what DOD and supporters of this amendment claim, the base
reuse process has been cumbersome and has been fraught with
bureaucratic nightmares.
Secretary Cohen's letter of June 24 says that the DOD has assigned
``transition coordinators'' to each base to solve closure problems and
to speed the process. Well, let me say, as one Senator from California,
this approach has not worked well. I have had to intervene with DOD for
communities in my State numerous times to fight for a community's needs
in just this past year alone.
Let me speak for a moment about environmental costs. I think every
Member of this body knows that the costs of environmental remediation
are grossly underestimated, grossly underbudgeted. DOD claims it is
``empowering communities'' by speeding base cleanup, and I would like
to give you the results in California of what is termed ``speedy base
cleanup.''
Environmental remediation--that is just remediation--is in place at
only 29 percent of the Army BRAC sites; 14 percent of the Navy BRAC
sites; and 18 percent of the Air Force BRAC sites in my State.
Environmental remediation has not been completed at a single base
closed in any of the four rounds in the State of California.
This issue is important, because without clean property, transfers by
deed cannot occur and individuals cannot get financing. Therefore, if
they don't have the bases cleaned up, they can't be effectively and
fully put to use.
[[Page S7059]]
Let me take the four California instances that the Secretary of
Defense raises in his letter. First, Castle Air Force Base. That is in
California's Central Valley. It was closed by BRAC in 1991. To date,
there have been 262 separate sites at this base identified for cleanup;
65 of these sites have not yet even been evaluated to determine what
contaminants are in the soil or water; and none of the sites--none of
the sites--on this base, held out as a model, have remediation efforts
currently in place.
Second base: Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento was closed by BRAC
in 1988. To date, there have been 87 sites identified for cleanup; 15
have not yet been evaluated to determine what contaminants are in the
soil or the water; and only 39 of the sites, or 44 percent, have
remediation efforts in place. So 55 percent of the sites haven't even
begun to be worked on yet.
Another of these sterling examples, Norton Air Force Base in southern
California, closed by BRAC in 1988. To date, 25 sites have been
identified for cleanup; 6 have not yet been evaluated to determine what
contaminants are in the soil or water; and only 10 of the sites, or 40
percent, have remediation efforts in place.
None of the environmental cleanup has been completed at any of the
bases anywhere in California. These were bases, Mather and Norton, that
were closed nearly 10 years ago, and yet they are not close to being
clean. No transfer by deed have yet occurred at Norton and a very
limited number of these transfers by deed have occurred at Mather.
Alameda Naval Air Station and Naval Aviation Depot was closed by BRAC
in 1993. One of the real problems I had when this was closed was that
Alameda had 7,600 units of housing that were going to be vacated. The
fleet, the nuclear carriers were to be moved to Everett and San Diego.
Everett had no housing for the wings. Housing had to be built. MilCon
was not included in the cost of closing that base.
To date at Alameda, there have been 30 sites identified for cleanup.
Only one of these sites has not yet been evaluated to determine what
contaminants are in the soil or water. But none of the sites have
remediation in place. So at Alameda, they have done some
identification; they have done no remediation.
Sacramento Army Depot was closed by BRAC in 1991, and this is
probably California's most successful reuse site to date. They have 16
sites identified for cleanup. All cleanup sites have been evaluated,
and 12 sites, or 75 percent, have remediation efforts in place.
It should also be pointed out, there is no deadline for the
completion of environmental cleanup at BRAC sites. Let me, once again,
make this point clear. Communities can't reuse a base when they don't
know when it is going to be clean. The law has been liberalized to
allow long-term, interim leases to be granted for dirty property, but
these leases are limited in scope, and the potential buyer cannot
obtain financing under these circumstances, and this has further
delayed and deterred base reuse.
DOD has given communities estimates as to when their bases will be
clean, but DOD will not guarantee these completion dates, and every
year, environmental cleanup is underfunded and every year it is delayed
even more.
The Air Force estimates that Castle Air Force Base should have
environmental remediation in place by the year 2000 and that it should
be complete by 2018. So the total base cannot be transferred into
private reuse at Castle Air Force Base until the year 2018.
The Air Force estimates that Mather should have environmental
remediation in place by 1999 and that this should be complete by the
year 2027. So it will take to 2027 for the process to be completed and
the base to be transferred.
The Air Force estimates that Norton Air Force Base should have
environmental remediation in place by 1999, and that this should be
complete by 2012. So, again, one has to wait for the base to be
transferred.
DOD is also far behind on the transfer of base closure property, due
in large part to environmental contamination. In my State, and this is
the largest State, only 4 percent of the acreage--4 percent of 79,618
acres--have been transferred by deed to new owners.
So we are contemplating here a new BRAC closure round when only 4
percent of the land covered in California has been deeded to new
owners. It does not make sense. If one is thinking about the
communities and really means that reuse should work, how can you go
ahead with a new round where you have 80,000 acres of land and only 4
percent of them at this stage have been deeded to a local entity?
Only 19 percent of these acres have been transferred by long-term
lease, and a whopping 49 percent are still sitting there with no action
on any kind of transfer having taken place.
So one-half of the acreage that has been closed in California has no
plan for a transfer at this stage, and we are still contemplating a new
round.
Many of these base closure communities are working hard to make the
best of their misfortune and many are optimistic about the prospects of
base reuse. But before we pile on these additional rounds, let us look
candidly at some of the difficulties they are facing.
In Tustin, CA, the community is trying to reuse the Tustin Marine
Corps Air Station. After 14 months of negotiations for an interim lease
for one of the large blimp hangars and the loss of nine potential film
tenants, a lease was approved by the city of Tustin and the Navy's
Southwest Engineering Division. When the Pentagon subsequently rejected
this lease, the prospective tenant, Walt Disney Productions, simply got
fed up and left to lease space elsewhere.
So here you had a base with a prime potential tenant, and the
bureaucratic nightmare that has ensued caused it to be rejected, and
Disney walked off and went somewhere else. So that was the 10th one
they lost.
At Norton Air Force Base, the Worldpointe Trade Center project that
Secretary Cohen lauds in his June 24 letter will not happen due to a
lack of financing. The community has regrouped, though, and now this
project will be replaced by an industrial park that will take 5 years
to build and yield only 40 percent of the jobs hoped for with the trade
center development.
At Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento, the Air Force and Sacramento
County have finally reached agreement on the sale of 1,200 housing
units. It took four separate appraisals and 5 years of negotiations to
finally reach the price of $4.25 million--the same price as the
county's 1993 appraisal.
At George Air Force Base in southern California, it took 20 months to
get a signed economic development conveyance. It was submitted by the
community in February 1995 and finally signed in 1996.
Another EDC at Mare Island Naval Shipyard was submitted in January of
1996--of 1996--and a year and a half later is still pending. They are
still waiting for a decision.
The city of Long Beach just completed a negotiated sale with the
former Long Beach Naval Hospital. After 18 months of negotiations, the
city will have to pay the Navy $8.6 million to buy back this 30-acre
site that the city sold to the Navy in 1964 for 10 dollars. So they
sold it to the Navy for 10 dollars and now they buy it back at $8.6
million. To make matters worse, the Navy required that the city provide
the Navy with a letter of credit to secure two promissory notes to buy
back the property. This cost the city of Long Beach an additional
$50,000.
Finally, the goal of base closures was to save DOD money so that we
could modernize our force. If anybody could come in here and say, look,
the Navy has saved x dollars in California by closing bases, I would
say, OK, now we know either it was cost efficient or it was not cost
efficient and we have a sound basis on which to make another judgment.
But as I said before, the Navy will not give my office a single
figure as to what cost savings can be anticipated from closure of major
Navy bases in the State of California. Yet, we are going to go about
another round today.
The GAO and the CBO both say that DOD's estimated savings cannot be
quantified. GAO and CBO cannot quantify what the military says the
savings estimates are.
DOD has not included the total cost of environmental cleanup in its
net savings figures. By 2001, DOD claims
[[Page S7060]]
that it will have saved nearly $14 billion from BRAC. To their credit,
they did include the cost of environmental cleanup through 2001. That
was $7.3 billion. But they did not include the cost of BRAC cleanup for
these sites after 2001. In California alone this will cost another
$1.56 billion.
So, in the costs that have been provided by the military to this
body, with California alone it is $1.56 billion shy, short, lacking,
not defined, not there; and yet we would go ahead with another round
regardless of knowing what the true costs and true savings actually
are.
Let us look at how much additional cleanup funding four of five
California success stories will need past the year 2001.
Castle will require an additional $53.1 million.
Mather will require an additional $73.8 million.
Norton will require an additional $1.25 million.
Alameda Naval Air Station and Naval Aviation Depot will require an
additional $73.4 million.
None of this is counted before we make the decision. And I am just
giving you four bases here--not 29.
The true costs of BRAC should include all of these costs related to
closure, not just those funded directly by the BRAC account. Until they
do, frankly, I will not vote ever for another round. Just because these
costs are funded from other Federal accounts does not mean that they
are any less real.
So what is happening, Mr. President, is that they fund some of this
from other accounts and they do not cost them in. So that way the
military costs look less, but the Federal costs--it is all the same, it
all comes from the same taxpayer, all goes into the same budget, but it
is not counted here.
DOD's Office of Economic Adjustment grants to base closure
communities for base reuse planning, $125 million. It is not counted
here, not counted as a cost. It is a cost? Of course it is a cost.
The Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration
grants to base closure communities, $371 million. It is not counted
here as a cost.
FAA grants to establish airports at closed bases, $182 million. It is
not counted here.
It is like MilCon, except MilCon is in the defense budget. These are
not in the defense budget. They are necessary, but not counted.
Department of Labor job retraining grants, $103 million. It is not
counted in the cost of base closure.
So without at least a firm accounting of how much the first four
rounds of BRAC cost and how much was saved, I cannot and I do not
believe any Member of this body should support a new round.
We have moved too fast in closing these bases. We need to look at the
bottom line. What are these closures costing, not only the Defense
Department, but the FAA, the Department of Commerce, the Department of
Labor in retraining grants, the Office of Economic Adjustment? What are
the costs? And factor those costs in. What are the costs of MilCon for
all of the rounds? Factor those costs in as well.
Later this afternoon it is my understanding that Senator Dorgan will
be offering an amendment to propose a study to come up with just this
very information. I think to proceed with another round until the study
is done and until we have the specific information would really be a
major, major mistake.
We need to look at operations and maintenance. We need to look at
military construction, environmental cleanup costs, base reuse costs
and economic redevelopment costs also funded by the Federal Government,
unemployment compensation costs, military health care costs and force
structure costs. All of this should be looked at, I believe, by an
independent agency, figures ascertained on which responsible people can
depend, and then another decision can be made on another day about
another round.
I think this is ill-advised. It is too fast. And it will simply
complicate one flawed procedure with another flawed round.
I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who seeks recognition?
Mr. LEVIN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I strongly support the amendment which has
been offered by Senator McCain to have an additional two rounds of base
closings. I do so for many, many reasons. But let me just cite first
that we have a recommendation which is as strong a one as I have ever
seen from the uniformed military of this country, pleading with us to
reduce excess baggage, the infrastructure that they no longer need
because it is costing money which is desperately needed elsewhere.
We cannot successfully do what we need to do for the defense of this
Nation, they are telling us--and I will quote that letter in a moment--
if we continue to carry excess infrastructure which we simply no longer
needed. Now, we are going to hear lots of reasons why it is tough to do
it and lots of reasons why we should not do it. We will address those
one by one.
But when you get a letter, which we have received, signed by the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, every single member, a so-called 24-star letter,
it does not happen very often around here. But when we get a letter
from General Shalikashvili and the Vice Chairman Joe Ralston, and each
of the Chiefs signing a letter as succinct and to the point as this one
is, I think we ought to give it the most serious consideration. We
cannot just shed this and say, base closing is tough or we cannot prove
precisely how much money it saves. We have a pretty good idea, by the
way, and I will get to that in a moment. But we just cannot simply say,
base closings are tough. And they are. Let me tell you, my State knows
it. Percentagewise, it is one of the 10 hardest hit States with base
closings, and we still have facilities where people feel they are at
risk.
But this is what the letter from the Joint Chiefs says. It is
addressed to our chairman, Senator Thurmond. I am going to read it all.
It is a short letter, but it is very much to the point.
Dear Mr. Chairman.
As the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) appropriately
notes, achieving the type of force this country will need in
the 21st century requires significant increases in our
investment accounts. Given other pressures on the federal
budget, we must make every effort to find the funds within
the Department of Defense budget.
Now that is point one. We have to make every effort we can
to find the funds necessary for future investments in the
defense of this country inside the defense budget. That is a
statement based on reality. It is a statement based on the
desire of all of us to get down to a zero deficit and to
begin to pay off the national debt. It is a statement based
on the reality that the defense budget is not going to grow
faster or in a different way than what we have projected in
our 5-year defense budget, unless, of course, world
circumstances change.
Then the letter goes on:
Since the end of the Cold War, the Defense base structure
has been reduced approximately 26 percent. When the QDR
reductions are complete, the overall end strength of the
department will have been reduced by over 36 percent.
We strongly support further reductions in base structure
proposed by the Secretary of Defense. Any process must be
based on military utility, but sensitive to the impact such
reductions will have on the Service communities in which our
people live.
We ask your assistance in addressing this difficult issue.
Now, they are asking our assistance to do something which is
difficult, and it is difficult politically, and every one of us knows
that. I don't think there is any one of us who has a facility in our
State that we have not been worried about it, that we have not gone to
bat for, that we have not been an advocate for and, in some cases, have
won a battle for a base and, in other cases, lost a battle for a base.
That is one of the reasons we are here, to be advocates for our
States, and we do that proudly. I have done that for bases in my State.
I have won some and I have lost some. We have lost every Strategic Air
Command base in my State--all three, gone--and it has been painful.
They have been in rural communities. In one case, most recently, up in
the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it was the largest single employer in
the Upper Peninsula, Sawyer Air Force.
Has the environmental cleanup gone as predicted? It has not gone as
fast.
[[Page S7061]]
Have we struggled to make sure the leases are available to people who
want to lease that property? We have; we work with them every day. Is
it working out OK? It is. Is it tough? It is. Have there been
dislocations? Yes. But is there any alternative if we are going to do
our job to come up with the necessary resources to defend this country?
Is there any alternative but to shed the excess baggage which our Joint
Chiefs are asking us to shed? This is not easy for them, either. Those
are communities that they have their hearts and souls in. But what they
are telling us is we must bite this political bullet again if we are
going to save the funds necessary for modernization, for investment
accounts, for readiness, for the other things which we need to do in
our defense budget.
The Quadrennial Defense Review reached the same conclusion. The
Secretary of Defense has reached the same conclusion. So the amendment
is simple. It authorizes the same process that we used in 1991, 1993,
and 1995 for two new rounds in 1999 and 2001. We have changed this
process over the years. We have tried to make the environmental cleanup
faster. We worked on the leases to make sure that they be available to
lease land, even before it was finally cleaned up. We tried to improve
the notice requirements, the fairness requirements. We made lots of
changes over the years. But to say we are going to not continue to do
what our uniformed military says we must do to avoid wasting billions
of dollars each year because it is politically difficult or because we
cannot determine the precise amount, in an audited fashion, of the
savings, it seems to me, is inconsistent with the desire of this body
to protect the Nation's defense.
This process has the Secretary of Defense, again, making
recommendations to a commission, nominated by the President, confirmed
by the Senate. During those confirmation hearings, we got into all of
the kinds of issues and concerns which each of us has relative to base
closing. The commission, after being confirmed by the Senate, reviews
these recommendations and makes their own recommendations to the
President. The President then reviews the recommendation, either sends
those back to the commission for additional work or forwards them,
without changes, to the Congress, and then the recommendations of the
commission go into effect unless disapproved by a joint resolution of
the Congress. That is the process.
Has it been perfect? It has not. There have been many changes made in
this process over the years. This amendment is open to other changes in
terms of how do we approve the process. But to say that the process is
not perfect means we should perfect it. It does not mean that we should
ditch it when it has led to significant savings already and when it is
essential to lead to additional savings in the future.
The case for closing more military bases is simply clear, and it is
compelling. From 1989 to 1997, the Department of Defense reduced total
active duty military end strength by 32 percent, and that figure will
grow to 36 percent by 2003 as a result of the recently completed
Quadrennial Defense Review, known as the QDR. So we are going to be
reducing the active end strength, the number of people in our military,
by 36 percent. But even after the four base closure rounds that are now
completed, the reduction in domestic base structure will be 21 percent.
So we have a gap. We have excess. We have surplus. We have baggage we
must shed. We have facilities that are no longer being fully used,
facilities that are not being run in a way which makes economic sense.
These are facilities which we can no longer justify keeping.
Which are those facilities? Does anyone really believe that we on the
Senate floor could decide which facilities need to be closed? It was
the inability of the Congress to make those kinds of decisions which
brought the Base Closure Commission into effect to begin with. We
realized a few years back that we could not close bases ourselves. It
is too difficult politically. There are too many pressures on us. There
are too many tradeoffs that are possible. So we created a BRAC
commission, giving ourselves a final right to veto, but basically
saying that this is the only realistic way we are going to downsize the
unneeded structure.
Now, this year, General Shalikashvili, who is our Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs, testified before our committee as follows: ``As difficult
as it is politically, we will have to further reduce our
infrastructure. We, perhaps, have more excess infrastructure today than
we did when the BRAC process started. In the short run, we need to
close more facilities, as painful and as expensive as it is.'' That is
his quote.
One line in that quote, I hope, if nothing else, will remain with us:
``We, perhaps, have more excess infrastructure today than we did when
the BRAC process started.''
Now, both the QDR and the independent National Defense Panel--and
this is the group of citizens outside the Defense Department that have
been appointed by the President--both the QDR, the Quadrennial Defense
Review, inside the Defense Department, and the independent National
Defense Panel have concluded that further reductions in DOD
infrastructure--that is the base structure of the Department of
Defense--are essential to free up the money that we need to modernize
our forces.
On May 23, Secretary Cohen wrote to the chairman, Senator Thurmond,
and to me, asking the Congress to act this year on his request to
authorize two additional base closure rounds in 1999 and 2001. Though
we will not get the final report of the National Defense Panel until
later this year, they do have an interim report dated May 15 which
accompanies the Quadrennial Defense Review. This is what the outside
citizens panel said about base closures:
We endorse the Secretary's plan to request authority for
two additional rounds of base closure and realignment. We
strongly urge the administration to support legislation that
will start this process in 1999 and encourage Congress to
approve the request despite constituency challenges.
Several weeks ago, the Armed Services Committee received a letter, as
I indicated, which all six members of the Joint Chiefs signed. We do
not get these 24-star letters every day or every week or even every
year. I am not sure I can even remember the last 24-star letter that we
have received. But now the Chiefs, every one of them, say that the
committee should reduce base structure supported by the Secretary of
Defense.
While I have read this letter, I ask unanimous consent, Mr.
President, that a copy of the letter from the Chiefs be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Washington, DC, June 4, 1997.
Hon. Strom Thurmond,
Chairman, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Chairman. As the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR)
appropriately notes, achieving the type of force this country
will need in the 21st century requires significant increases
in our investment accounts. Given other pressures on the
federal budget, we must make every effort to find the funds
within the Department of Defense budget.
Since the end of the Cold War, the Defense base structure
has been reduced approximately 26 percent. When the QDR
reductions are complete, the overall end strength of the
department will have been reduced by over 26 percent.
We strongly support further reductions in base structure
proposed by the Secretary of Defense. Any process must be
based on military utility, but sensitive to the impact such
reductions will have on the Service communities in which our
people live.
We ask your assistance in addressing this difficult issue.
Sincerely,
Joseph W. Ralston,
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Dennis J. Reimer,
General, United States Army, Chief of Staff.
Ronald R. Fogleman,
General, United States Air Force, Chief of Staff.
John M. Shalikashvili,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Jay L. Johnson,
Admiral, United States Navy, Chief of Naval Operations.
Charles C. Krulak,
General, U.S. Marine Corps, Commandant of the Marine Corps.
Mr. LEVIN. The service chiefs have also made the case for shrinking
our base structure. In testimony before the committee, General Reimer
said:
We cut 36 percent out of the force structure and 21 percent
of the infrastructure in
[[Page S7062]]
the Army. I think we need to balance those two out or we are
going to pay a heavy price that we should not have to pay.
The testimony of the service chiefs makes this point very clear. The
issue is not base closures or no base closures. The issue is either we
shrink the base structure or we are going to have to cut modernization.
If we make the wrong choice and do not close any more bases, this
problem is not going to go away. If we keep excess bases open and try
to protect modernization by cutting the size of our forces instead,
that will further increase the amount of excess base structure, which
will, in turn, increase the pressure to close bases.
This problem is not going to go away. This problem will get worse if
we delay it. If we cut forces instead of closing bases, that will
inevitably lead to increased operating costs and increases days away
from home for the smaller number of personnel who will be left. This
issue is not going to go away. It will fester and get worse unless we
address it. It will not be easier to determine and make this decision a
year from now or 2 years from now than it is now.
The reason there is so much pressure coming from our defense
establishment to authorize more base closures is because the Defense
Department understands that reductions in the base structure are
essential to the modernization of our forces. Every dollar we spend to
keep bases open that we do not need--excess bases--is a dollar we
cannot spend on modernization programs that our military forces do
need.
As Secretary Cohen said in his preface to the QDR report:
In essence, our combat forces are headed toward the 21st
century, but our infrastructure is stuck in the past. We
cannot afford this waste of resources in an environment of
tough choices and fiscal constraint. We must shed weight.
This is not just a choice which the Defense Department faces. This is
not just Secretary Cohen's problem. This is our problem, and it is a
problem which will get worse unless we make this decision earlier
rather than later.
We cannot just tell the Department of Defense, ``Reform yourself.''
The Department of Defense can reform if they want to, which they do,
but they can't reform if we can't let them. It requires legislative
action. As General Fogleman, who is Chief of Staff of the Air Force,
said to our committee, ``Getting lean and mean is no easy feat. We can
be mean if we have to, but we need your help to get lean.''
Make no mistake, if we don't act this year to approve and to
authorize additional base closure rounds, there will not be any
additional base closures before the turn of the century. No bases have
been or will be closed outside of the Base Closure Commission process
contained in this amendment, and every year we delay facing this issue,
we delay achieving the potential savings that we need to modernize our
forces.
Now, the argument has been made that we can't prove exactly how much
previous base closures have saved. I agree that we don't know exactly
how much base closures have saved. We can't audit it; it is not that
precise. But I don't know of any disagreement over the fact that
closing bases has saved, and will save, substantial amounts of money.
The savings don't always come as quickly as the Department of Defense
originally forecasts, for a number of reasons. But the savings have
been there, and they are documented.
The CBO concluded in that same report, which was read before, that
``BRAC actions will result in significant long-term savings.'' Now, the
Department of Defense makes an estimate on savings. These estimates are
available for Members of the Senate. They are based on 100 or so
reports of base closings. Their estimate is that implementing the BRAC
actions in the first four rounds will result in $23 billion in one-time
implementation costs--that is the cost--and this is offset by savings
of $36.5 billion--that's the savings--for a total net savings of $13.5
billion. So that is between 1990 and 2001 when the implementation of
the first four rounds is supposed to be concluded. That is a net
savings--deducting the investment from the gross savings--of $13.5
billion. That's what Secretary Cohen has written us. That is what he
has testified to. That is the best information that is available.
Secretary Cohen estimates that each of the additional BRAC rounds
that he is asking the Congress to approve will save $1.4 billion a year
once they are fully implemented. That is comparable to the savings that
will be achieved from the 1991 and 1995 rounds.
Maybe 5 years from now we are going to find that the actual savings
from the first four rounds of base closures will be slightly smaller or
slightly larger than the $5.6 billion I have referred to. But there is
no question that there are large, ongoing savings from shrinking our
base structure. Before the first base closure round, we had
approximately 500 domestic military bases. When all of the bases from
the first four BRAC rounds are closed, we will have about 400 bases. So
80 percent of the bases will remain after all four BRAC rounds are
implemented, even though we will have seen a reduction of one-third of
our force structure.
Now, the exact amount that we are saving is impossible to prove--
these are approximations and estimates--for lots of reasons, including
the fact that these savings represent money we would have spent to pay
civilians we no longer have and to operate bases that we no longer
have. So they are, by definition, estimates; we can't audit them. But I
cannot imagine someone trying to argue that we are not going to save
large sums of money by operating 400 bases instead of 500 bases. That
is 100 fewer bases at which we have to pay for electricity, heat,
water, telephone service, maintenance, and security.
These BRAC savings, Mr. President, are an important part of the funds
that are going to finance the future modernization of the armed
services that will keep our military the most technologically advanced
and lethal fighting force in the world.
Some people have expressed concern that funds from base closures may
not go toward modernization. But this amendment includes a provision
that would require the Department to ensure that all savings that come
from future base closings go toward modernization programs.
Now, over the last few months, another issue has been raised, an
issue relative to the question of privatization in place. Some of our
colleagues complain about the implementation of the 1995 Base Closure
Commission recommendation with respect to the closing of two Air Force
depots, at Kelly and Sacramento. There are clearly very strong feelings
on this issue, and understandably so. I don't agree with those who say
that what happened, however, in 1995, whatever one's view of those
events are, somehow justifies refusing to ever close any more bases.
My own view is that we should let the market decide the most
efficient way to redistribute the workload of these two closing depots
and that the way to let the market decide that is through a fair and
open competition.
Deputy Secretary of Defense John White testified before our Readiness
Subcommittee in May that the Department's policy is no longer to
privatize the work of these two closing depots in place, but to compete
their workload between the public depots and the private sector.
Secretary Cohen wrote a letter to the majority and minority leaders
reaffirming the Department's policy of competing this work. He also
testified before our committee that, ``If you disagree with giving the
commission this kind of discretion''--he was referring to privatization
in place-- ``then you can always restrict it in the future.''
That is what the amendment does. To address the problem of
privatization in place for future BRAC rounds, this amendment includes
language that would allow the Secretary of Defense to privatize in
place the workload of a closing military installation only when it is
explicitly recommended by the Base Closure Commission as either the
correct way to close the base or as one option.
But whatever our view is of privatization in place at the two air
logistic centers that were closed by the 1995 Base Closure Commission,
that is no reason to cut off our nose to spite our face and keep excess
base structures open at a huge, unjustifiable cost in the future.
As I said a moment ago, I know personally how painful the base
closing process is. Michigan never had a very large military presence,
but we rank seventh among all States in the percentage of total BRAC
job losses. So we
[[Page S7063]]
know in our State, and we know that we have a few additional facilities
that some people think could be at risk.
If we are serious about modernizing our military forces and if we are
serious about maintaining the qualitative technological edge that we
have, then we have no choice but to reduce our infrastructure costs so
that they are in line with our foresight.
The Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs are right. We need to
close more bases if we are going to modernize our forces, and we are
not going to be able to do that unless this amendment is adopted.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
Mr. ROBERTS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized.
Mr. ROBERTS. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on
behalf of the overall defense bill and to give credit where credit is
due in regard to the distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator
Thurmond, and the distinguished ranking member from Michigan, Senator
Levin. I want to pay tribute to their leadership. I think the committee
did great work, and there was much bipartisan agreement. I think we had
a very difficult task in this regard.
I would like to draw the attention of my colleagues to a study called
``America's National Interests'' by the Commission on America's
National Interest. It was about a year ago, and I served on the
commission with some very qualified people who have a great deal of
expertise in regard to defense matters. The cochairs were Robert
Ellsworth, Andrew Goodpaster, and Rita Hauser. The study was done by
the Center for Science and International Affairs of Harvard University
and also by the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom and the Rand Corp.
Basically, they had an executive summary that pretty well said this:
No. 1, American foreign policy and American national interests don't
really represent a very high blip on the national attention radar
screen. They said America was adrift. ``In the wake of the Cold War,
the American public's interest in foreign policy has declined sharply
and political leaders have been pressed to attend to immediate domestic
concerns.'' Certainly that is true. ``After four decades of unusual
single-mindedness in containing Soviet expansion, we have seen five
years of ad hoc fits and starts.'' This was last year, remember. ``If
it continues, this drift will threaten our values, our fortunes, and
indeed our lives.''
I think the committee took an important first step in trying to end
this drift. They mentioned confusion and the lack of a national
strategy as we try to determine how much money to spend on defense,
which, after all, is the first obligation of the Federal Government.
So having said that, I want to again thank Senator Levin and Senator
Thurmond for their leadership. However, I must rise in opposition to
the amendment as argued for by Senator Levin and as proposed by Senator
McCain. I am talking about BRAC. I am talking about the effort to,
obviously, reduce the excess infrastructure that we have in regard to
our national defense system.
I want to make it very clear and I want to really emphasize that I do
not support--and I don't know of anybody in the Senate or, for that
matter, in the House of Representatives who supports--carrying excess
or unproductive capacity in our military infrastructure. After all, how
could anybody stand up here and say that they were supporting that?
Having said that, I don't think we should sign onto another BRAC
process until we are confident that the process will be done without
making it a political football or without receiving an answer to
several very fundamental questions, which I would like to go into.
No. 1, we need to certify what is meant by overcapacity. Everybody
seems to agree that there is excess capacity in the structure of the
military. I think that is obvious. Senator Levin just went over that.
But if you ask different people where exactly that excess
infrastructure exists, a variety of answers will certainly be given.
Many argue that there is a great disparity between the reduction of
military end-strength, down 36 percent--Senator McCain mentioned that.
Every proponent of the BRAC process and of this amendment will tell you
that the military end-strength is down 36 percent and reduction of
military base structure is down 21 percent. Now, there is a
relationship between these two. I know that. But there is no numerical
correlation that would define what percentage of base closure we should
strive for. That is extremely important. If there were such a numerical
correlation, closing any of our bases would help bring the percentage
in line.
I think common sense tells us that it is a lot more complex than
simple percentages. If we all agree that excess capacity exists--and I
think we do--I think that the Department of Defense, before we approve
something like this amendment, should develop a certified list defining
that excess capacity. What's wrong with that? I might add, I think we
probably have that list already prepared. Why not really delineate the
amount of excess and the priority of eliminating that excess and the
difficulty of restoring the capability if required by a military
operation? Let me repeat that. Let us try to delineate the amount of
excess and the priority of eliminating that excess and, most important,
the difficulty of restoring the capability if required by a military
operation.
Once you lose the base, once you lose that infrastructure, like
Humpty-Dumpty, it is off the wall, gone; you can't regain it. It is not
reasonable to agree to a BRAC if we don't fully understand the nature
and location and the amount of the reported excess.
I have the same letter from Secretary Cohen and the letter
illustrated on the minority side from the Joint Chiefs of Staff
expressing their support for a BRAC. Secretary Cohen, a good friend, a
former colleague, said this: ``With the expiration of the previous BRAC
legislation, the Department needs a process to close or realign excess
military installations. Even after four rounds of base closures, we
have eliminated only 21 percent''--here we go again--``of our U.S. base
structure while force structure will drop by 36 percent by fiscal year
2003.''
Let me repeat again what I think is a fallacy. Secretary Cohen's
letter--I know it is not his intent, but his letter suggests the direct
correlation, again in percentage points, between base closures of 21
percent and force structure reductions of 36 percent. There is no
direct correlation between the reduction of troops and how many bases
should be cut. There is, of course, a connection, but to suggest there
is some kind of a mathematical correlation is false. It is misleading.
Exactly how we could get into indiscriminate cutting of facilities--the
assumption of such a simple-minded statement is that all bases are
equal.
Senator Levin has just indicated that of 100 bases remaining, and
there is a need to reduce base structure by perhaps 15 percent, that
any 15 bases would do the trick. Unfortunately, this is the exact
argument--down 36 percent in troops but only 21 percent in bases--which
was made in behalf of this whole argument. It is the very reason we
need to understand which bases are in excess and which bases support
the strategy. If it is 15 percent and you cut 15 bases out of 100, if
that doesn't have anything to do with what kind of a base it is, what
kind of force is there, or what the mission of the base is, I don't
think that correlation really makes any sense.
Let's talk about the type of facilities to be considered once the DOD
develops a certified list of excess capacity, and then what specific
types of facilities to be considered for closure should be provided. If
the Department of Defense demonstrates that certain types of facilities
do not represent excess capacity, it doesn't make any sense to include
them in the process. Why would we want to do that?
The effect of this action would shorten and focus the BRAC process.
We would have successful BRAC, we would eliminate a lot of the
headaches, pain and suffering, and the politics that the proponents of
this amendment always talk about. Just as important, it would let those
communities with military facilities as neighbors know whether they
need to be concerned or not and prevent them from spending large sums
of money to help save their bases. That is what happens.
As soon as this amendment is passed--I hope it does not; the
committee did not pass it and the House of
[[Page S7064]]
Representatives did not pass it--every community next to a base in
America will hire a consultant, spending large sums of money, and will
end up in BRAC purgatory. It is not necessary. We could shorten the
process and get this job done with a better process.
Let's talk about the criteria to be used for closure recommendations.
There needs to be a full discussion of the criteria used for the BRAC
process. I have the old criteria here somewhere, but, obviously, this
isn't the criteria that is going to be used. This is the former base
realignment and closure criteria. I thought the new criteria were going
to be judged on the Bottom-Up Review and the QDR and the National
Defense Panel. The National Defense Panel hasn't made a comment on
where we are headed in terms of national defense strategy. We don't
have the criteria yet. I think we are putting the cart before the
horse.
So, at any rate, I think we need a full discussion of the criteria
used for the BRAC process to ensure the results of the process are
consistent with the strategy, as I have indicated, of the Bottom-Up
Review and the QDR. For example, it makes little sense to me to use the
same criteria of the last BRAC since we have substantially altered the
military since then and our strategy has been changed. That is why we
are going through this. A critical analysis of the criteria and their
weight in the process is required. We should not inadvertently cut meat
from our capacity if fat exists somewhere else simply because the
criteria we used is flawed.
I want to talk about cost for just a moment. It seems to me, despite
the claims of, I think, $2.7 billion that the letter indicated that we
are going to save--and I think Senators Levin, McCain, and others
listed $13.5 billion by the year 2001--I question that either in
magnitude or when those savings will be seen. The whole purpose of this
process, as proposed by the authors of this amendment, is to save the
precious defense dollars.
Let me point out that we are supposed to be talking about national
strategy here. The committee did its best, but in terms of trying to
determine how much we spend on defense in the post-cold-war period, we
said, ``OK, you can have all the strategy you want, but don't spend
more than $250 billion.''
So it is budget driven and numbers driven, and the whole key argument
in behalf of this is to save the precious defense dollars and use them
for procurement and modernization and quality of life. So you close the
bases. You save the money. And, as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the
Secretary, and the proponents of the amendment said, we are going to
improve the quality of life, modernization, and procurement.
Well, I am not sure that those savings will be there. And, second, I
will tell you where the money will go. If we could earmark this money,
maybe put it in a lockbox and give the key to Senator Thurmond--I sure
trust him as to where the money should go--I might support this. But do
you know where the money is going to go? Peacekeeping missions. For
peacekeeping missions since President Clinton took office: 1993, $2.441
billion; 1994, $1.9 billion; 1995, $2.16 billion; 1996, $3.3 billion;
1997, projected $3.27 billion. I am not sure that even accounts for
Bosnia.
We are talking about savings that are going to occur in the outyears.
And, yet, we have been using the peacekeeping fund for modernization
and readiness and quality of life? That is what has been happening. If
we could earmark these savings for all of the very good purposes that
proponents of this amendment are talking about, it might be one thing.
But we are not.
So what will happen is that we will go through this whole process
only to find out that we are putting a lot of people into what I call
BRAC purgatory only to find out that we don't have the separation by
the people who really do that right now between those bases that are
needed and not, and also the problem with cost savings only to find out
that it will be spent for peacekeeping.
I am not opposed to peacekeeping in every instance. But it seems to
me in terms of our national strategy and in America's national
interest, I am not sure that that has been simply well spent.
I would like to associate myself with the remarks of Senator
Feinstein of California, and I would like to say that I know that it is
the right thing to do in regard to base closures. Nobody in this
Senate--nobody anywhere--is for saving excess infrastructure. That is
just not a possible position, and we shouldn't do that.
I might add in closing, Mr. President, that I am one who is concerned
about some of my colleagues who with some degree of condescending
understanding look at me and say, ``Well, now, you know, we all have
politics, and we all have the pain of politics.'' I know it is going to
be hard. This is not premised on any base in Kansas. This is based on a
firm belief that this may be the right thing to do. But we are going at
it the wrong way, and it is very premature.
So for the reasons that I have listed--and I would only add that
there is no reason why we can't wait on the QDR, the review, and the
National Defense Panel, have the new criteria, certify the excess,
earmark the savings, and, yes, then go ahead with some kind of a BRAC.
There is no reason why we can't do that. But it seems to me that we are
rushing to judgment here, and I think it would be very
counterproductive. I think we should watch out for the law of
unintended affects.
I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the Senator from
Arizona and as agreed to by the Senator from Michigan and urge my
colleagues to take another look at this. Let's take a little time.
Let's do this right.
I yield the floor.
Ms. SNOWE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burns). The Senator from Maine.
Ms. SNOWE. Thank you.
Privilege of the Floor
Mr. President, first of all, I ask unanimous consent that the
privilege of the floor be granted to two of my staff members, Tom
Vecchiolla and Peggy Kline, during the pending consideration of the
Defense authorization bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, thank you.
First of all, I would like to commend the chairman of the Senate
Armed Services Committee, Senator Thurmond, and the ranking member,
Senator Levin, for their tremendous efforts in bringing the Defense
Department authorization bill to the floor. I certainly think they have
taken a great deal of initiative and leadership in putting this
legislation together. I appreciate their efforts in that regard.
I certainly want to associate myself with the remarks made by the
Senator from Kansas, Senator Roberts, on the amendment that has been
offered by our colleague from Arizona, Senator McCain. It is an
amendment that I certainly will oppose in proposing more rounds of
military base closures and realignment.
I am certain the committee rejected the call for new base closings,
and the Senate should follow suit.
As we all know, the administration has asked for two more rounds of
base closings with the intent of realizing $2.8 billion per year in
savings from these new BRAC rounds. The administration further stated
that these estimated savings are to be used to meet the well-
established requirements for $60 billion in procurement funding which
is necessary to modernize our forces to meet the challenges of the 21st
century.
I have consistently asked the question as to exactly what has
happened to the savings in the past four BRAC rounds that started in
1988. The Pentagon estimated the savings to occur from those four
rounds to be in the area of $57 billion over the next 20 years with the
annualized savings of upwards of $5.6 billion per year starting in the
year 2001. In its April 1995 report, the GAO estimated that such
savings projects their estimates at less than $17 billion over the next
20 years, past the number that had been projected by the Department of
Defense, with annual recurring savings possibly being in the area of
$1.8 billion in the year 2001.
Mr. President, GAO conducted a further analysis and issued a
following report in April 1996. In this report GAO found that the total
amount of actual savings that may be estimated from the four previous
BRAC rounds is uncertain, for a number of reasons, the primary of
which, according to the
[[Page S7065]]
GAO, is that the DOD accounting systems do not provide adequate
information or isolate their impact from that of other DOD initiatives.
Despite the fact that the DOD has complied with legislative
requirements for submitting annual costs and savings estimates, the GAO
further stated that the estimates' usefulness is limited because the
estimates are not budget quality and that the inclusion of these
estimates of reduced personnel costs by all of the services are not
uniform and, further, the GAO determined that certain community
assistance costs were excluded. In fact, in one example, GAO identified
the fact that DOD BRAC cost estimates included more than $781 million
in economic assistance to local communities as well as other costs.
In December 1996, the Congressional Budget Office, in its report,
stated that it was unable to confirm or accept DOD's estimates of cost
savings because the DOD is unable to report actual spending and savings
from BRAC action.
So now we have the Pentagon, the GAO, and the Congressional Budget
Office with differing estimates on what has actually been saved and
what is supposed to happen as a result of these four BRAC rounds since
1988. There is no consensus on the numbers. That, indeed, in my
opinion, is a significant problem, if we are to predicate future
closings on these savings and estimated savings for the future.
The fact is we are chasing an elusive infrastructure savings because
there is no straight-line corollary between the size of our forces and
the infrastructure required to meet two nearly simultaneous major
regional conflicts. The Department of Defense has even admitted to the
GAO investigators that they do not have accounting systems in place to
isolate the impact of specific initiatives such as BRAC.
So, in fact, we have no comprehensive adjustment of the reduction of
the infrastructure that has occurred as a result of the four previous
rounds of base closings and the impact on munitions as well as our
forces. In fact, when these base closing rounds were first initiated,
one of the greatest concerns that I had was that they would
underestimate the cost of savings and overestimate the savings to
accomplish the base closings.
Mr. President, the projections for national defense outlays decrease
34 percent over the period from 1990 to the year 2002. We have all seen
the downward pressure in defense spending. In fact, we have seen a
reduction of more than 40-percent in the defense budget since 1985.
Future years' defense plans call for a 40 percent increase in the
defense modernization budget within the confines of an overall defense
budget that essentially will remain flat over the next few years. But
yet, we have seen a procurement budget that has plummeted from $54
billion in 1990 to today's level of just over $42 billion.
It is interesting, because in the same time that we are seeing a
reduction in procurement, we have had four previous rounds of base
closings. You might have thought that money would have been invested in
the procurement budget, but, in fact, the contrary has happened because
again the Department of Defense underestimated the cost that is
required to close these bases and overestimated the savings.
As of May 1997, the DOD has invested $14 billion in base closings.
The total implementation costs of the four previous BRAC actions
through 2001 are estimated at $23 billion. Through fiscal year 1996,
the DOD estimates that it may have saved through cost avoidance
approximately $10 billion.
So, in simple terms, to date we have spent $14 billion to avoid costs
of $10 billion. Yet, we are promised by the DOD that the savings is in
the outyear savings--savings that even DOD's own budget analysts say
they are not equipped to track.
The promise for the outyears has been a recurring theme for the
Pentagon over the last 4 years. How many times have each of us heard
that the fix for the procurement account is in the outyears? And each
year we see the administration's request for procurement steadily
decline. In fact, in each of these 4 years since the Pentagon completed
the Bottom-Up Review an investment in the procurement accounts has
actually been postponed.
The procurement request for 1998 is $42 billion, whereas the fiscal
year 1995 program had projected reaching $54 billion by now. So we have
not seen the funding promised, and the DOD cannot show it to us in its
own budgets, and the reasons are obvious. The funding has migrated
elsewhere.
In its own Quadrennial Defense Review, the DOD said the $18 billion
meant for procurement under the 1995 plan has disappeared. The QDR
report tells us that the funding migrated to three places. First, it
went to unprogrammed operating expenses such as contingency operations
like Bosnia. The second place was unrealized savings from initiatives
like outsourcing or business process reengineering which failed to
achieve the objectives and expectations, similar to the failure to
achieve the levels of savings expected in the previous four BRAC
rounds. And the third, of course, was new program demands.
The QDR stated national defense policy of shape-respond-prepare
reinforces the fact that U.S. forces will conduct smaller scale
contingency operations for peacetime engagement. These operations
include, according to the report, intervention, limited strike, no-fly
zone enforcement, peace enforcement, peacekeeping, humanitarian
assistance, and disaster relief. The QDR further projects that U.S.
involvement in the smaller scale contingency operations will increase
over the next 20 years.
So we can expect more and more peacekeeping operations, far beyond
the traditional missions of peacekeeping operations, that are going to
require more robust military requirements. The QDR cites the obvious
problem that DOD has had with the constant migration of funds which
were planned for procurement ending up in operation and support
activities. This certainly has been the case in the last few years to
pay for operations like Bosnia and other areas where we have developed
peacekeeping operations.
Since 1991, in over 39 separate contingency operations in Southwest
Asia, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, et cetera, it is estimated that the
taxpayers will pay over $17 billion for these operations. And as I
illustrate in this chart here today, I think we can get an example of
the multiple operations that the United States has been engaged in just
in the decade of the 1990's. We know that in 1989 we spent less than
$100 million in peacekeeping operations. In the decade of the 1990's
alone we have spent the grand total of $17.2 billion and counting.
We all know the administration has underestimated the costs of our
participation in the forces in Bosnia, not to mention the length of
time. It is estimated that we will spend upward of $6.8 to $7 billion
until June 1998. My expectation is that we will have underestimated
those costs as well. But we have spent a total of $17.2 billion in
peacekeeping operations. That is an exorbitant price that we are now
paying for unbudgeted, for the most part, operations and missions
elsewhere--unanticipated and in most cases unbudgeted. The cost for
Bosnia, as I said, has been over $7.2 billion, assuming we withdraw in
June 1998. The cost for these operations have quadrupled--quadrupled--
since 1991. The fact is the Department of Defense has been heavily
taxed to meet these deployments.
We know that of the $17.2 billion that will have been spent in
contingency operations through June 1998, about $8 billion of this
amount was reimbursed to the Department of Defense by Congress through
supplementals. The Department of Defense, however, has also told us
that $2.3 of the $17.2 billion total were service absorbed costs,
funding that was taken directly out of procurement and other accounts
to pay for these operations.
Mr. President, I suspect that the remaining difference of almost $7
billion was siphoned from procurement accounts as well as the
operations and readiness accounts to pay for these contingency
operations. We have asked the Department of Defense for these figures
and they cannot provide them. As of 1997, we readily know that we were
facing over 2.5 billion dollars' worth of unfunded contingency
operations and that required, as we know, a supplemental appropriation
which we passed a couple of weeks ago. But we must ask the question,
because it has been asked but it has not been answered, how many
modernization programs got impacted as procurement
[[Page S7066]]
dollars were siphoned from the modernization programs by the DOD
comptroller to pay for these unprogrammed operations? It is obvious
that this is a persistent problem. We know that we can expect more of
the same. In fact, the QDR report that was issued by the
administration, as I said previously, expects that small scale
contingency operations will be high over the next 20 years, so that we
literally cannot anticipate the numerous unbudgeted operations in which
the United States will participate.
The State Department did a compilation in 1995 of the voluntary
contributions of the United States in 13 other countries to support
U.N. peacekeeping operations. The United States provided for 54 percent
of those costs--54 percent--11 other countries, NATO countries and
Australia, 45 percent, and Japan less than 1 percent.
So it is obvious and clearly apparent that the United States is
assuming an enormous cost and burden for these peacekeeping operations.
And as I also said earlier, these peacekeeping operations are not
within the traditional operations as we have known them in the past
where we are upholding and enforcing a cease-fire agreement that has
been reached by two or more parties. These operations have gone beyond
that to peace enforcement where we are imposing a peace on recalcitrant
parties. That requires more military expertise, weaponry, and
requirements on the part of our own military as we have seen not only
in Somalia but, of course, as we have seen in Bosnia.
The point of all of this is that what we are seeing happening in the
Defense Department's budget is that more and more of the funds are
being drawn from operations and the readiness account, indeed, from
modernization, because even the administration has not been able to
meet its own procurements modernization goal of $60 billion. The fact
is a $17 billion gap in the modernization goal because that money is
being drawn away into these operations.
I believe that the pressure to come up with more base closing rounds
is premised on the need to finance these operations; that we will see
whatever savings we can achieve from base closings will not be realized
in the modernization accounts. The fact is we have no guidance from the
administration in terms of what the administration is apt to spend on
base closings because we know there are enormous up-front costs just in
the environmental cleanup arena alone, not to mention all the other
costs associated with base closings that require up-front expenditures.
So we do not have the costs nor the real savings realized in the
future. And yet at the same time we are spending more and more of the
Defense Department's immediate funds on these peacekeeping operations
for which we have not been able to precisely project what the costs
will be in the future.
These missions have quadrupled since 1991. We can expect more of the
same. And yet we do not have a comprehensive analysis of the impact of
the four previous rounds. They have not been completed. They have not
come through yet. And so the administration is now asking for two more
rounds without even knowing what the previous rounds have exacted in
terms of the impact on our forces, our mission, as well as our
infrastructure.
We know that once a base is closed, it is lost forever; it is
irreplaceable, and yet we have had no thorough analysis done on what
the impact will be for the future. I believe that the pressure for more
base closing rounds from the administration is due to the fact that
more of these dollars are being siphoned away from modernization and
into peacekeeping operations. So we could have two more rounds, but we
do not know what the savings will be, we do not know whether or not it
is going to go into modernization, and we do not know what the impact
will be on our forces as well as our mission.
I believe we are relying on a flawed approach to achieve the savings
from infrastructure reductions that have yet to be realized, and we are
finding that the Defense Department is spending billions of dollars on
contingency operations which have little or no relevance to our vital
national interests, and yet we are willing to cut the heart out of our
military infrastructure within our sovereign borders without fully
evaluating the impact to our national defense.
The fact is I believe that we are on a collision course with less
than expected savings from base closings and an increased number of
contingency operations that will result in a further degradation of our
force readiness and it will delay much needed procurement.
I realize that we are facing limited resources within the Defense
Department's budget and within our own overall Federal budget, but we
must also be concerned for our troops and our resources, that they are
not overtaxed in support of these numerous contingency operations over
which we obviously have had little control. We have to take a more
judicious approach to the deployment of our forces in view of our
constrained resources as well as protecting our vital national
interests, not only for today but also for tomorrow.
So I ask the Senate to reject the amendment that has been offered by
the Senator from Arizona because I believe clearly that we have to
begin a thorough examination of what has already transpired before we
take any future actions that we will regret, and at the same time I
hope that it will put some pressure on this administration to begin a
thorough reexamination of the necessity of constantly deploying troops
in areas that perhaps they should not be engaged.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. ROBB addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I thank both the chairman and ranking member
of the Armed Services Committee for their handling of this bill and for
their help in bringing it to this particular position. I particularly
want to commend my friend, the ranking member, the distinguished
Senator from Michigan, for his advocacy of this particular amendment. I
am pleased to join as a cosponsor with the Senator from Michigan and
the Senator from Arizona and others. But I recognize it is a very
difficult amendment for all concerned, as the Senator from Michigan so
eloquently explained a few minutes ago on this floor. I know his
particular State was more impacted in terms of strategic air base
closures.
My own State is more dependent on defense spending on a per capita
basis than any other State in the Union. Year after year more defense
dollars, per capita, are spent in Virginia than in any other State. So
this is not a popular or easy issue in my own State. But I have tried
to analyze the reasons why most of those who do oppose this particular
amendment are opposed. It seems to me, Members are opposing another
BRAC round for three principal reasons: No. 1, unwillingness to endure
the pain of another closure round; No. 2, concerns about the accuracy
of estimated savings; and, No. 3, concerns over the integrity of the
process.
Regarding the pain of closures, I can only say that I see the choice
as a simple one. We can either preserve jobs and facilities in our own
States or we can provide desperately needed funding to ensure that our
troops can fight and win in future wars, which, of course, is the
reason that we have a national defense capability in the first place.
By virtually every expert estimate, early in the new century we will
simply be unable to fund a force necessary to support a very prudent
and measured national military strategy.
During the cold war, our massive base infrastructure had substantial
duplication built in because of enormous uncertainties about the scale
and consequences of a strategic war with the Soviet Union. Much of that
duplication we probably could have done without, but I would certainly
concede that military construction in Members' home States or districts
has undeniable appeal politically. But we no longer have the luxury of
duplicating infrastructure just to keep the folks back home happy.
As many have noted, every dollar we keep spending on bases we don't
really need is a dollar we cannot spend on maintaining end strength,
replacing aging weapons systems, advancing our military technology to
ensure dominance of the future battlefield, and keeping quality of life
at a level that will ensure strong recruiting and retention.
[[Page S7067]]
The second rationale for opposing a new BRAC round stems from the
assertion that because we don't know exactly how much we saved from
previous BRAC rounds, that we should not go forward until we do. If we
accept this rationale, however, we would never have another round of
base closures, which I suspect would be just fine with many who cite
this reason for opposing the effort. But if our net savings from
another BRAC round are significant, although indefinite, it seems to me
we ought to move forward now. Why should we postpone doing what we know
we are going to have to do anyway, just because our estimate of savings
are imprecise, as long as we know they are significant?
The reality is that the long-term savings from the first four-base
closure rounds will exceed $5 billion a year when they are completed.
It just so happens the Secretary of Defense is still seeking
approximately that much money to meet the modernization objectives that
he set forth in the Quadrennial Defense Review. New base closure
commissions, if they are courageous enough to close the bulk of the
remaining excess bases, should add billions in additional savings. If
Members want to conduct more studies on exactly how much has been and
will be saved by BRAC rounds, that's fine, but let's not hold up this
process for a study that we know will tell us that billions will be
saved.
The third reason Members are opposing a new BRAC round is their
concern about the integrity of the BRAC process in light of the attempt
to privatize-in-place the work at Kelly and McClellan Air Force depots,
or ALC's. To avoid any future ambiguities about this matter, a
provision here clarifies that privatization in place will be allowed
only if the BRAC explicitly permits this at a military installation.
None of these reasons for opposing another base closure round, in my
judgment, is compelling. The responsible thing to do, I believe, for
our Nation's security is to cut excess infrastructure as soon as
possible. Waiting will only delay the inevitable and cost our military
billions in funds that are badly needed for maintaining force
structure, supporting training and day-to-day operations, and
adequately funding modernization.
I urge my colleagues, in this case, to make the responsible choice,
the choice that the Secretary of Defense, that all of the service
Secretaries, that all of the service chiefs and that all of the CINC's
agree is the only responsible choice, and that is to begin another
round of BRAC closures as soon as possible.
With that, I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Amendment No. 771 to Amendment No. 705
(Purpose: To require a report on the actual costs and savings
attributable to previous base closure rounds and on the need, if any,
for additional base closure rounds)
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise today to offer a second-degree
amendment to the amendment that has been offered by Senators McCain and
Levin, an amendment that was just supported by my colleague and friend
from Virginia. I do this with great respect for the views of those who
have offered the amendment on base closing. But I come to a different
conclusion than they do on this subject, and represent that conclusion
with a second-degree amendment. When I conclude my remarks, I will send
my second-degree amendment to the desk.
I would tell my colleagues I offer the amendment on my behalf, on
behalf of Senator Lott, Senator Daschle, Senator Thurmond, Senator
Domenici, Senator Conrad, Senator Feinstein, Senator Dodd, Senator
Bingaman, Senator Boxer, Senator Burns, Senator Landrieu, Senator
Roberts, and Senator Ford.
I am offering this second-degree amendment to the amendment now
pending, which would authorize two additional rounds of base closures,
one in 1999 and the other in the year 2001.
For those unfamiliar with the issue of base closures, they should
know that we have established in this country previously, on several
occasions--actually, through four rounds, but three of them really full
rounds--something called the Defense Base Realignment and Closure
Commission. And the Commission then begins to study what kind of
military installations do we have in this country, where are they, what
is their capability, and how many of them might now be surplus and
might be closed in order to save money for the future. That is what the
base closure process was about.
I have supported the base closure process on those occasions. I have
voted for it and believed it was appropriate, as we downsized the
military after the cold war, that we also then needed to get rid of the
surplus in our facilities and save the money that we can save that is
necessary for other areas, such as training and readiness and weapons
programs and other priorities. So I have supported that in the past,
believing that as you downsize force structure, you also are going to
have surplus military installations that must, in fact, be closed.
In the process of doing that, we have ordered the closures in the
rounds of 1988, 1991, 1993, and 1995. That resulted in the decisions to
close 97 military installations in this country. The military is
slightly over halfway through the process of closure of these 97
installations; slightly more than one-half of those bases have, in
fact, been closed. In fact, the second base closure round is scheduled
to finish this month, and those are the bases that the 1991 Base
Closure Commission decided to close. The 1993 and 1995 closures, the
third round and the fourth round, they will be shut down completely--
and they are in the process now--but they will be shut down completely
perhaps in the year 2001. So we have been involved in the substantial
shutdown of military facilities under the Base Closure Commission
process, have done it now for a number of years--9 years this process
has been in effect--and now the proposal in this defense authorization
amendment is to say, let's have two additional rounds of base closures.
What is the problem with that and why do I offer an amendment? Let me
describe my amendment first and then describe the problem. I say in my
amendment that the Secretary of Defense shall prepare and submit to
Congress, to the defense committees of Congress, a report on the costs
and the savings attributable to the base closure rounds before 1996,
and on the need, if any, for additional base closure rounds. The rest
of the second-degree amendment describes what we would like the
Secretary to report to us on. The amendment also would prohibit the
funding of further base closure commissions until the Congress has
received that report.
But I would like to go through a series of charts, to tell you why I
think there are significant questions that must be answered before this
Congress should authorize one additional or two additional rounds of
base closures.
The General Accounting Office, the GAO, which is the congressional
accounting watchdog agency, says that ``Congressional auditors can't
verify the estimates of base closure savings''; the Department of
Defense ``cannot provide information on actual savings'' from the
previous rounds; the DOD's savings estimates, according to the GAO, are
``inconsistent . . . unreliable . . . incomplete.'' That is the GAO.
The Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget
Office, says: ``The Congressional Budget Office was unable to confirm
or assess the Department of Defense's estimates of costs and savings
because the Defense Department is unable to report actual spending and
savings for BRAC actions''--in other words, the base closures.
The Congressional Budget Office also says:
CBO cannot evaluate the accuracy of DOD's estimates without
empirical data.
The DOD does not track . . . actual savings that have
accrued.
And on the specific subject of the McCain-Levin amendment, the
Congressional Budget Office says this about additional rounds of base
closing:
The Congress could consider authorizing an additional round
of base closures if the Department of Defense believes that
there is a surplus of military capacity after all rounds of
BRAC have been carried out.
And then it says, and this is important for my colleagues to
understand:
That consideration, however, should follow an interval
during which the Department of
[[Page S7068]]
Defense and independent analysts examine the actual impact of
the measures that have been taken thus far.
Finally, CBO says:
Such a pause [or an interval] would allow the Department of
Defense to collect the data necessary to evaluate the
effectiveness of initiatives and to determine the actual
costs incurred and the actual savings achieved.
That is not me. It is not a conservative or liberal or Democrat or
Republican; that is the General Accounting Office, the GAO, the
investigative watchdog, and the Congressional Budget Office, the
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, saying that after all of these
rounds of base closures, they can't get information about what have the
costs and the savings been.
What has been the experience? What is the impact for the American
taxpayer on all of this? How much do you save when you close them down?
And what have been the costs of closing them down?
The Congressional Budget Office says it would be a reasonable thing
to do to have an interval to really evaluate what are you doing, what
are you achieving, how much are you saving. That is why I think it
makes no sense for us in this authorization bill to proceed immediately
now, before nearly one-half of the bases that have been previously
ordered closed are closed, and say, ``Well, now, let's do two
additional rounds. We don't know what the costs and benefits are of the
previous rounds, we don't know what the savings to the taxpayers have
been, we don't know what the costs have been, but let's order two more
rounds.''
So I offer a second-degree amendment that says the Secretary of
Defense shall prepare and submit to the congressional defense
committees a report on the costs attributable to base closure rounds.
Let's get a full accounting before we move for two additional base
closure rounds.
Let me respond to some of the other statements that have been made on
this issue. Proponents of more base closures suggest more closures are
needed to match the base infrastructure to our force structure. They
say as the force structure comes down, clearly we should be able to
close some bases, and that is true. But let's look at the figures.
According to Congressman Hefley, the chairman of the House National
Security Committee's Subcommittee on Military Installation and
Facilities, if you measure by plant replacement the value of bases in
the United States and around the world, base infrastructure has fallen
by 27 percent, very close to the one-third or 33 percent reduction in
force structure. Other estimates of reduction in base structure are
either not calculating the plant replacement value or they are
calculating values of only bases in the Continental United States,
which ignores the 43 percent reduction in U.S. bases overseas.
In addition to that, the military's operational bases--that is, the
bases that host the combat units--are already closing down in
proportion to the defense drawdown. For example, when all the BRAC
rounds are done, the Air Force will have closed 22 of 74 major air
bases, 30 percent; the Navy will have closed 10 of 17 naval stations,
nearly 60 percent, and 12 of 29 naval air stations, 40 percent; the
Army will have closed 10 major combat and training facilities, about
one-third of those Army bases. So with respect to the operational
bases, there has already been an appropriate amount of base closing
done.
Proponents of the amendment to authorize two additional rounds of
base closings say we need more base closing rounds in order to be able
to afford new weapons. We will achieve savings from base closings and,
therefore, be able to afford the new weapons programs. Let's examine
just a bit what these arguments mean by asking what the savings from
base closures are or will be or have been with what sketchy information
we have.
There are various estimates of savings from the BRAC implementation
period from 1988 to the year 2001. The Congressional Budget Office in
December said they were not able to get very much information. They
estimated, with what information they had, that we would save $5.3
billion in that period, this despite four base closing rounds in
closures that began 9 years ago.
So, if this number is accurate, with sketchy information, yes, base
closures save some money but very slowly, and if future base closing
commissions decide to close bases in 2001, the savings would be
available, again, very slowly perhaps by the year 2010. And the savings
here are only estimates from sketchy information that both the GAO and
the Congressional Budget Office indicate is unreliable and incomplete.
They say the information on this is simply not available from the
Department of Defense.
The Government Accounting Office and the Congressional Budget Office
also say in closing military installations that the Department of
Defense has not taken into account the full cost of environmental
cleanup when a base is closed, the accurate proceeds from the sale of
land in closing bases, the economic transition costs, especially those
not funded by the Department's base closing program, the higher costs
of operation at bases that gain missions from the bases that are closed
and higher construction costs at the bases that gain missions.
In summary, Mr. President, my amendment is important because it would
require the Pentagon to report to Congress on what have been the actual
costs and savings in four base closing rounds over nearly a 10-year
period. Until and unless we get information about what are the costs
and benefits, I don't think we ought to legislate in the dark, and that
is what we would be doing if we were to decide now to rush off and
authorize two additional rounds of base closures without knowing the
impact of, the costs of, or the benefits of the closures in the
previous four rounds.
I am pleased to offer the amendment with some very strong support
from some very influential Members of the Senate. The majority leader,
Senator Lott, is a cosponsor; the minority leader, Senator Daschle; the
distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator
Thurmond; and many others.
I think all of us feel the same way. There may be at some future date
a need to reconcile further base capacity with troop strength. We
understand that, we have understood that through four rounds of base
closings. However, there will also be, and is now, a requirement that
we understand exactly what we are doing, what are the costs and what
are the benefits, and this would not be the time to authorize
additional rounds of base closures prior to our having the information
available on what we have done in the past.
One final point. All of us perhaps have some parochial interests, and
I would certainly understand if someone said, ``Well, but you have some
military installations in your State.'' Yes, we do, and I have
supported previous base closing rounds despite the fact that we have
military installations, and it would probably not be in my best
interest to do that, but I supported that because I understand we must
reduce capacity in these installations.
But, I also understand that every time you go through a base closing
round, there are additional costs imposed on nearly every community
that has a military installation that is not calculated anywhere on
these papers, and that is the cost of the economic investment that
doesn't happen and the stunted economic growth in a community because a
potential investor says, ``That, community, I don't want to invest
there at the moment. I want to wait a couple years to see if that
military installation, that community is going to be there for the
long-term future. If not, that region is going to have 20 percent
unemployment, and the last thing I want to do is lose my investment.''
So community after community after community has imposed on it a
stunted cost of economic development whenever we begin this process.
I am not here today to say I will never support another BRAC round,
but this is the wrong time to initiate two additional rounds. If we
look in the future at what the overcapacity might be, if there is, in
fact, an overcapacity, then we should respond to that. But I do not
want, in this circumstance, to authorize two rounds before we know the
full cost, the full value and the full benefit of previous base closure
rounds.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Ford from the
State of Kentucky be added as a cosponsor.
[[Page S7069]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, as I conclude, I send my second-degree
amendment to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Dorgan], for himself,
Mr. Lott, Mr. Daschle, Mr. Domenici, Mr. Thurmond, Mr.
Conrad, Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Bingaman, Mrs. Boxer,
Mr. Burns, Ms. Landrieu, Mr. Ford, and Mr. Roberts, proposes
an amendment numbered 771 to amendment No. 705.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading
of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
After ``SEC.'' on page 1, line 3 of the amendment, strike
all and insert:
. REPORT ON CLOSURE AND REALIGNMENT OF MILITARY BASES.
(a) Report.--The Secretary of Defense shall prepare and
submit to the congressional defense committees a report on
the cost and savings attributable to the base closure rounds
before 1996 and on the need, if any, for additional base
closure rounds.
(b) Elements.--The report under subsection (a) shall
include the following:
(1) A statement, using data consistent with budget data, of
the actual costs and savings (in the case of prior fiscal
years) and the estimated costs and savings (in the case of
future fiscal years) attributable to the closure and
realignment of military installations as a result of the base
closure rounds before 1996, set forth by Armed Force, type of
facility, and fiscal year, including--
(A) operation and maintenance costs, including costs
associated with expanded operations and support, maintenance
of property, administrative support, and allowances for
housing at installations to which functions are transferred
as a result of the closure or realignment of other
installations;
(B) military construction costs, including costs associated
with rehabilitating, expanding, and construction facilities
to receive personnel and equipment that are transferred to
installations as a result of the closure or realignment of
other installations;
(C) environmental cleanup costs, including costs associated
with assessments and restoration;
(D) economic assistance costs, including--
(i) expenditures on Department of Defense demonstration
projects relating to economic assistance;
(ii) expenditures by the Office of Economic Adjustment; and
(iii) to the extent available, expenditures by the Economic
Development Administration, the Federal Aviation
Administration, and the Department of Labor relating to
economic assistance;
(E) unemployment compensation costs, early retirement
benefits (including benefits paid under section 5597 of title
5, United States Code), and worker retraining expenses under
the Priority Placement Program, the Job Training Partnership
Act, and any other Federally-funded job training program;
(F) costs associated with military health care;
(G) savings attributable to changes in military force
structure; and
(H) savings due to lower support costs with respect to
installations that are closed or realigned.
(2) A comparison, set forth by base closure round, of the
actual costs and savings stated under paragraph (1) to the
annual estimates of costs and savings previously submitted to
Congress.
(3) A list of each military installation at which there is
authorized to be employed 300 or more civilian personnel, set
forth by Armed Force.
(4) An estimate of current excess capacity at military
installations, set forth--
(A) as a percentage of the total capacity of the
installations of the Armed Forces with respect to all
installations of the Armed Forces;
(B) as a percentage of the total capacity of the
installations of each Armed Force with respect to the
installations of such Armed Force; and
(C) as a percentage of the total capacity of a type of
installation with respect to installations of such type.
(5) The types of facilities that would be recommended for
closure or realignment in the event of an additional base
closure round, set forth by Armed Force.
(6) The criteria to be used by the Secretary in evaluating
installations for closure or realignment in such event.
(7) The methodologies to be used by the Secretary in
identifying installations for closure or realignment in such
event.
(8) An estimate of the costs and savings to be achieved as
a result of the closure or realignment of installations in
such event, set forth by Armed Force and by year.
(9) An assessment whether the costs of the closure or
realignment of installations in such event are contained in
the current Future Years Defense Plan, and, if not, whether
the Secretary will recommend modifications in future defense
spending in order to accommodate such costs.
(c) Deadline.--The Secretary shall submit the report under
subsection (a) not later than the date on which the President
submits to Congress the budget for fiscal year 2000 under
section 1105(a) of title 31, United States Code.
(d) Review.--The Congressional Budget Office and the
Comptroller General shall conduct a review of the report
prepared under subsection (a).
(e) Prohibition on Use of Funds.--No funds authorized to be
appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of
Defense by this Act or any other Act may be used for any
activities of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment
Commission established by section 2902(a) of the Defense Base
Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (part A of title XXIX of
Public Law 101-510; 10 U.S.C. 2687 note) until the later of--
(1) the date on which the Secretary submits the report
required by subsection (a); or
(2) the date on which the Congressional Budget Office and
the Comptroller General complete a review of the report under
subsection (d).
(e) Sense of Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate that--
(1) the Secretary should develop a system having the
capacity to quantify the actual costs and savings
attributable to the closure and realignment of military
installations pursuant to the base closure process; and
(2) the Secretary should develop the system in expedient
fashion, so that the system may be used to quantify costs and
savings attributable to the 1995 base closure round.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Levin-McCain
amendment and in support of the Dorgan-Daschle-Lott amendment. Before I
speak on the substance, I want to, again, take note of the tremendous
leadership we are receiving from the Armed Services Committee chairman,
the Senator from South Carolina, and the cooperation we are getting
from the Senator from Michigan as they try to move this legislation
through. They are doing an outstanding job. I know we will start a
series of votes later on this afternoon, and we continue to look
forward to completing this very important legislation before the week
is out.
Mr. President, I have followed these base closure recommendations,
so-called BRAC issues, now for many years. I was in the House when it
was first proposed by a young Congressman from Texas, Dick Armey. I was
a member of the Rules Committee, and he came to me and asked about how
to get this procedure to be considered, to get it through the Rules
Committee, to get it to the floor of the House of Representatives. I
remember specifically telling him how the procedure would work, but
assuring him from the beginning I would oppose it.
I have always been opposed to this approach. It is one more example
of Congress not being able to deal with the tough issues of what we
need in terms of facilities in this country and passing the decisions
off--the tough decisions off--to others, in this case the Commission. I
don't think that is the way it should be done, and that is not the way
it was done until recent years.
In the past, the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, would make
recommendations to Congress. Congress, through the appropriate
committees--Armed Services and the Appropriations Committee--would
consider those recommendations and, in some instances, base closures
were approved, including facilities in my own State and probably most
States in the Nation, and in others, it was rejected. But somehow over
the years, it became more and more difficult to close these bases or to
make decisions, to make changes in the bases, and so these so-called
BRAC rounds gained some currency and were pushed and, in fact, passed
through the Congress.
We have been down this old BRAC road before, three-and-a-half or four
times, if you will. I maintain it has not worked well. First of all, we
found that it is a very difficult process. There is always concern
about the fairness of how it is done. There are always some
implications or indications that some political considerations came
into play, and there always will be. But also I think it is important
that we remember what it does to the communities and to the people who
are involved.
These are just not nameless, faceless people. These are bases in
communities, communities that are disrupted by these proceedings,
communities and States spending millions of dollars trying to prove the
worth of their bases. So we know that it has had an impact on the
communities where these bases have existed.
[[Page S7070]]
We know it has created problems for the Defense Department among the
various branches. We know that it is almost totally impossible to
assess the real damages or the benefits or the savings from these
closings. We have seen this in instance after instance. For instance,
we have made decisions that certain bases would be closed and there
would be certain savings. Yet, we have found that it has been very
difficult to move toward closing those bases and getting the savings
for no other reason than we have found, in many instances, that there
are environmental problems in cleaning up those bases before they can
be turned over to the private sector or the local communities.
To this day, the recommendations of previous BRAC's have not been
completed. We have bases or facilities, depots that supposedly were
going to be closed. They are not closed. So without having had an
opportunity to really assess the damage that has been done to our
capabilities and our facilities for the military of this country,
without having an opportunity to really get these bases closed and,
therefore, the savings achieved, we have now the recommendation that we
have not one but two more of these base closure rounds.
I think that it has been a very dubious process that has caused lots
of problems, and it should not go forward again with two more rounds
until we fully understand the ramifications and the implications of
what we have already done.
So that is why I think that the Dorgan amendment is a better
approach. It doesn't say that we will never have another base closure
round, although I can't envision myself voting for one in the future
anymore than I have in the past, but it does set up a legitimate,
logical process to assess what has already happened, what has been
achieved in terms of savings as a result of those decisions, what it
has done to our capabilities militarily, before we go forward with
another round.
The amendment that has been offered by Senator Dorgan and others
allows already authorized base closures and realignments to go forward,
and that is important, I emphasize again, because what has already been
agreed to has, in fact, not been completed. This would include the 97
base closures and the 55 realignments that have already been agreed to.
Economic and fiscal ramifications of closing and realigning bases
Congress has already authorized will stretch well into the 21st
century. The Pentagon estimates on the savings cannot be supported.
GAO, for instance, recently concluded that the ``Department of Defense
cannot provide [accurate] information on actual savings.'' The
Congressional Budget Office has stated that it ``was unable to confirm
or assess DOD's estimates of cost and savings because the Department is
unable to report actual spending and savings for [these] actions.'' As
a result of all these factors, CBO observed that additional base
closures ``should follow an interval during which DOD and independent
analysts examine the actual impact of the measures that have been taken
* * * ''
The Dorgan-Daschle-Lott amendment sets up a logical process to review
what we have already done before we go forward with recommended rounds
in the future. The last Base Closure Commission concurred in the
assessment and stated that another round of base closures should not
occur until the year 2001--not 1999, as proposed in the Levin-McCain
amendment. That is an important point. The last Base Closure Commission
specifically recommended that there not be another one until the year
2001, if then, so that we could get our work done, see what happened,
and then make an informed judgment about whether to go forward with it
again in the future.
This amendment provides the Pentagon with the time to develop
accounting techniques so they can fully and accurately reflect the
costs and savings from previous and future rounds of base closures, and
it requires the Pentagon to prepare a report on the financial
ramifications of past and future base closures and to have the report
reviewed by GAO and CBO.
In short, Mr. President, this sets up a process to take a look at
what we have already done, evaluate it, make sure we understand the
cost savings or the costs that have been expended to try to achieve
what has already been agreed to before we go forward, and then and only
then after that review should we make an informed decision about
whether or not to have another round.
I am going to hand out to my colleagues when we start having votes a
list that I had prepared of facilities and activities that were
considered by the Base Closure Commissions in the years 1991 to 1994,
but not closed. There is a long list. And I just want to ask my
colleagues, whether they be from California or Connecticut or Georgia
or Minnesota or my own State or any other State, take a look at what is
on this list.
Think of what you have already been through, and think of the impact
it would have on the military if some of these facilities, which are
very fine facilities that are important for our training for the Air
Force, for the Navy, if they should be threatened once again with being
closed. Do you want that? So I will have this list, and I invite my
colleagues from all over the United States to take a look at this list.
This should not be done. We should not be closing down needed
facilities and needed bases in the United States while we are sending
our military men and women on humanitarian missions around the world.
We are looking after the needs and problems around the world. That is
fine. But what about the impact and the needs in our own communities of
our own constituencies and most importantly of the military itself?
I vigorously oppose the Levin-McCain amendment and I will go along
with the Dorgan-Daschle-Lott amendment because I think it is a better
alternative and that it sets up a logical process to evaluate whether
or not we should ever have another Base Closure Commission.
Mr. President, with that I yield the floor.
Mr. NICKLES addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Faircloth). The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I want to join with my colleague from
Mississippi in urging our colleagues to vote no on the McCain
amendment.
Mr. President, the entire process dealing with base closure is a
process that Congress entered into with the administration, a joint
process where we said we would work together, set up a commission, a
commission of experts, we call it BRAC, the Base Closing Commission,
and they would make recommendations and send those to the President.
The President would either accept it or reject it. He could not modify
it. If the President did not agree with those recommendations, he could
send it back to the Base Closing Commission and they could change it.
But he has two options: He accepts it or rejects it.
Same thing with Congress. Under the procedure that was set up--I
might mention, it worked quite well the first three rounds. The
President took the recommendations; then he would forward those on to
Congress, and then Congress accepted them. We could not amend it. We
could not say that it included a base from the Senator from Montana's
home State, the chairman of the Military Construction Subcommittee, so
we will send that specific recommendation back, or maybe a
recommendation to close a base in the home State of the Senator from
South Carolina or Mississippi, those are powerful Senators, the
chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and the majority leader
respectively.
We did not touch those. We did not set it up that way. We set it up
so an independent commission of experts, appointed and I might mention
confirmed by the Senate, would work and work very hard. One of the
toughest jobs around was for this commission to travel to all the bases
on the so-called suspect list or the possibility list. They would visit
these bases, and then they would make their recommendations.
I might mention in the process, they would probably terrify the
individual communities and all the individuals associated with those
bases. They would terrify them because they were afraid they might lose
their job, they were afraid they might be on the final base closure
list, they were afraid they might lose a job they think is a pretty
good job--in all likelihood it is a good job, and they do not want to
lose it.
So Congress had to--I don't know if it should be called collective
wisdom,
[[Page S7071]]
but we said, ``Let's put it on this group, these real experts, a lot of
retired military people, people that are going to spend the time and
really investigate and analyze which bases should be closed.'' We have
too much base infrastructure, so we had to close them. So that was the
process. And it worked quite well the first three rounds.
Then in the fourth round President Clinton changed it. We had the
same Base Closure Commission, a good commission. They made their
recommendations, sent it to the President, and said accept it or reject
it. President Clinton did neither. He said: Well, we're going to accept
all the recommendations except for two, except for ones in California
and Texas. There are a lot of electoral votes. We have an election
coming up. So he did not accept the base closure recommendation.
He tried to modify it. He said: ``Well, we won't close two bases.
We'll privatize them and keep them in existence.'' That was not what
the Base Closure Commission had said. Congress did not have that
option. We were not able to say, ``Wait a minute, we want to close all
these on the list except
for--'' We did not do that.
So the President, in my opinion, violated the law. And I think the
law is very clear. Other people debated, ``Wait a minute. Does he have
the flexibility? Does the Base Closing Commission give him the option
to privatize in place or is this something he created?'' I think it is
something he created. That was not the intent of the Base Closing
Commission.
Could he fudge? Could he interpret it that way? Well, he did. So far
he has gotten away with it. But that was not what the base closing law
called for. That was not the intent of the Base Closing Commission. And
certainly the President circumvented the will of the BRAC, and of the
base closing process. I think he destroyed a lot of good will in the
process.
A lot of people might have been willing to say, well, we might comply
with another round, but I will tell you, you cannot comply with another
round if you think the executive branch might violate that trust or
politicize this process. And that is exactly what President Clinton
did.
I might even read for my colleagues an op-ed article from the
Washington Post at that time, July 14, 1995. I will just read this part
of it.
Over the past couple of weeks [President] Clinton has been
engaged in a highly publicized effort to ensure that many of
the jobs at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento will be
privatized. That is rather disingenuous. If the privatization
is real, it will merely perpetuate the expensive overcapacity
that the base closing is supposed to reduce. If the private-
sector jobs rapidly fade away after another election or two,
the people who held them will rightly consider the whole
effort a sham.
What he had was an effort to win votes, and again violate the
process. And so should we have another couple of base closing rounds? I
do not think so. No, not as long as there is not an understanding that
we are all going to be in this boat together, the President is going to
abide by the law and Congress is going to abide by the law. The
President certainly did circumvent the law in this case.
I will read to you a quote from a speech President Clinton made in
Texas. He said:
On July 1st, you were dealt a serious blow when the
Independent Base Closing Commission said that we ought to
shut Kelly down. At my insistence and my refusal to go along
with that specific recommendation, the Air Force developed
the Privatization In Place Plan that will keep thousands of
jobs here at this depot.
That was made October 17, 1995.
President Clinton is exactly right, he refused to go along with the
specific recommendation of the Base Closing Commission. The point is,
if he wanted to disavow the Base Closing Commission decision, he could
have sent it back to the Commission. He said, ``I will agree with all
these, but not these two.'' And that would have been the process to
follow; he could have sent it back to the Base Closing Commission.
Maybe they would have reconsidered; maybe they would not have. But he
did not do that. He said: I am going to accept and amend. And the law
did not give him that right. So he violated the process, and created a
new process, and one, in my opinion, where he undermined the
credibility that we have under this law that worked in the first three
rounds and did not work in the fourth round. He politicized the
process.
Should we just have another two rounds? I do not think so. I just
cannot see that Congress would allow another round or another two
rounds and terrorize all these communities if they think, and the
individual Members of Congress think, ``Well, wait a minute. Maybe
we're not going to do this on military value. Maybe we're going to do
it on politics. Because politics entered the last round, maybe politics
will be in the next round.''
The President found a clever way of doing it. We do not have to close
any base. We will just privatize in place. We do not have to lose any
jobs. He promised in California--there were 8,700 jobs the day the base
closures were announced, and he said, we will have 8,700 jobs in the
year 2001. We will have 5,000 jobs a few years later than that. We will
promise you jobs forever. That is not privatization in place. That is
electoral politics.
And it is a real shame he introduced election politics into the base
closing process, some real violation of trust for every single Member
that had a base closed in any round--any round. If you were willing to
say, OK, we will put our bases at risk since we are all doing it
together for the good of the country, for the good of national defense,
I am willing to leave my rights alone as a Senator to participate in
this process for the good of national defense and the good of our
country because we know we have to do it, we know we have to reduce
excess base capacity, if we are not going to play politics a lot of
people said they are willing to do that. Then President Clinton plays
politics.
So, Mr. President, I strongly urge my colleagues to vote no on the
McCain amendment. We should not have additional base closing rounds in
this Senator's opinion until and unless we comply and until or unless
we make absolutely, totally, completely, sure that politics will not be
involved in any future round.
I yield the floor.
Mr. THURMOND addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from South
Carolina.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I rise to support the Dorgan-Daschle
amendment. I think that is the logical step to take at this time. I
wish to commend the majority leader, Senator Lott, the assistant
majority leader, Senator Nickles, for their excellent talks that they
made on this subject. I wish to commend all others who took that
position or the opposite position for participating in this debate.
This is a very important subject. I am very pleased that so many
Senators have taken part in this debate, which is very helpful to our
country.
Mr. President, I am not going to make a long talk. We have had a lot
of talk the other day. I expect to speak less than 5 minutes.
Mr. President, in my judgment, and that of many of my colleagues, the
Secretary of Defense has not made a sufficient case for additional base
closures. The one point that has been a common theme throughout the
debate on additional base closures rounds has been the extent of actual
overcapacity in the existing infrastructure. I am not satisfied that we
have accurate data on this matter and should not vote for any
additional rounds until we have an independent assessment of the
overcapacity.
As a second concern is that I believe that the desire for supposed
savings is becoming the sole driving force for additional base closure,
without consideration of continuing requirements. The Department has
not identified the up-front cost of doing another closure round and I
am worried that, based on experience, most of the claimed savings will
not materialize, or be used for modernization.
Mr. President, it is also important that the Congress understands on
how the Department plans to proceed with the next BRAC and whether it
will focus on facilities where excess capacity truly exists. I do not
need to remind my colleagues that we have had four rounds of base
closures, and that many of our communities have endured tremendous
turmoil and great losses because of them. These communities were under
the impression that the closures they endured would resolve the
overcapacity problem. I recall the Department's claiming that BRAC 95
[[Page S7072]]
would be ``The Mother of all BRACs.'' In facts, this was a gross
overstatement. I suggest that the Presidential campaign had a role in
limiting the scope of BRAC 95, and the communities and the Nation are
now bearing the consequences of that action.
Despite the stated good intentions of my colleagues, I oppose taking
action at this time. We must have a better understanding of the excess
capacity, what the future military requirements will be and how the
Department will pay for this expensive undertaking. Until we have that
information, I urge the Senate to vote against this amendment.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, just briefly, a few comments on the BRAC
amendment of Senator McCain, myself, Senator Robb and others.
First, on the cost question. The Defense Department has testified on
the savings. Their testimony is part of the record. The Under Secretary
for Defense, John Goodman, before the Readiness Subcommittee of the
Armed Services Committee, testified that their estimate of net cost in
savings are as follows: 98 major installations closed through BRAC,
costs through 2001, when they would be fully implemented, $23 billion;
savings through 2001, in billions, $36.5 billion. That is a $13 billion
savings during that period, and then after 2001, recurring savings,
every year, because we had the courage to pass four BRAC rounds, of
$5.6 billion.
Now, that is our modernization shortfall. That is why the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, every single one of them, plead with us, in a very
direct letter, plead with us to support the Secretary of Defense in his
request for two more BRAC rounds.
Now, there is no use coming to this floor and talking about the need
to modernize or to make sure we have the most advanced forces in the
world, the most ready forces in the world, with the highest moral in
the world, when we are not willing to take the steps that are necessary
to make those things possible. We know we are not going to get
increases in the defense budget. We know we have a 5-year budget that
we have to live within.
So the question, then, is, are we going to keep excess baggage,
infrastructure, which the Defense Department says is no longer
necessary? It is a tough choice. I could not agree more with my friends
from Oklahoma and Mississippi and others who have spoken about the
difficulty that communities go through. My communities in Michigan have
gone through it and will again if we pass this BRAC round. Three Air
Force base communities, all three SAC bases, gone. We know something
about that. We know about the pleas that we made to the BRAC commission
and the Defense Department. We know about that. We know the urgencies
of those pleas. But there is no alternative.
History has proven over and over again that if you are going to get
rid of excess infrastructure--and we know we have excess, and the
experts are telling us that--it seems to me we have no reason to
disbelieve the Joint Chiefs when they tell us we have this major
surplus of capacity. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
Shalikashvili, says we have more excess capacity now than we did when
we started the BRAC process because we have reduced the size of our
force. Are we listening? When we get these kind of pleas from the
uniformed military not to waste money on bases that they cannot afford
to maintain, are we listening to them, or are we going to take an easy
way out, which is to say give us a report.
We have a report: the Defense Department. That is the report. That
chart is the report for the Defense Department. Now, can they prove
those figures so that they can be audited? No, these are estimates of
the Defense Department. That same Congressional Budget Office which
points out that the estimates cannot be confirmed with precision, also
says this, which is not reported. I didn't hear the opponents of this
amendment quote this part of the CBO report, although I may have missed
it, in fairness to them. I didn't hear it. CBO believes that BRAC
actions will result in significant long-term savings.
Now, we can delay it. They will be longer term. We heard the
argument, ``Look how long it has taken for the environmental cleanup,''
and that is true. It will take longer if we don't close a base, to
clean up that base environmentally, than if we do. We know that, by the
way, historically. We have money to clean up bases we are closing where
we don't have money to clean up bases that are staying open. If we are
worried about the speed with which a base is cleaned up, they are
cleaned up more quickly, I say, ironically and sadly, when they are
closed than when they are kept open. That is a pretty sad comment, but
that is a fact. That is the reality.
So if we want to speed up the environmental cleanup, you don't keep a
base open to that purpose, and you surely don't delay closing bases
which need to be closed if the environmental cleanup has taken too
long. It will take longer if you delay the closing. Delaying closing of
needless infrastructure does not speed up the environmental cleanup of
that infrastructure; it delays the environmental cleanup of that
infrastructure.
Now, we are talking here about a significant sum of money in this
defense budget. I want to just repeat these estimates: $5.6 billion is
the estimate. People say, ``Well, we don't have the dollars.'' Yes, we
do. Here is the report from the Defense Department. There is the chart
from the Defense Department. These documents here are the basis of that
report. I am not so sure how many of us want to go through each one of
these to see if those figures add up to the $5.6 billion, but here they
are. The savings are real. Even the CBO, which says they can't confirm
the precision, the accuracy of these estimates, says, again, CBO
believes that BRAC actions will result in significant long-term
savings.
We just got a report from Secretary Cohen addressed to Senator
Thurmond, a letter that reads as follows: ``As the Senate moves to
final consideration of its version of the FY 98 defense authorization
bill, I urge you to support the McCain-Levin amendment authorizing BRAC
rounds in 1999 and 2001.''
Now, he is giving the estimate of the two additional rounds in terms
of the recurring savings. I am sure this is what the next sentence
means, because we had this testimony, in effect.
We estimate two additional rounds would result in savings
of approximately $2.7 billion annually.
I know from previous testimony he is referring to the recurring
savings. That is a significant hunk of change, even in the defense
budget.
And then he says something we ought to listen to.
These savings are absolutely critical to the department's
modernization plan.
He goes on:
There have been some questions regarding the savings
actually realized from previous base closures. We have taken
these questions seriously and asked the Department of Defense
Inspector General to take an independent look at this issue.
The Inspector General's preliminary results indicate that
there is no basis for concern that BRAC has not been highly
cost effective.
I am going to repeat that before I continue because that is sort of
the bottom line here.
The Inspector General's preliminary results indicate that
there is no basis for concern that BRAC has not been highly
cost effective.
And then Secretary Cohen goes on to say:
The preliminary audit examined BRAC 1993 actions, including
the largest Navy closure, Mare Island, and eight Air Force
Bases closed or realigned. For these bases, the IG found that
DOD overestimated costs by $148 million and underestimated
savings by $614 million.
The IG's report is attached to his letter. This report goes through
some of the reasons why they actually underestimated here the savings.
So, instead of, at least on this study by the IG, the bases actually
saving us less than predicted, the closing of those bases that were
studied by the IG turned out to save us more than was projected by a
significant amount, and the reasons for it, again, were set forth in
the IG's report.
There is another argument that we have heard, and that argument is
that this action has been politicized. There will be arguments back and
forth as to whether or not the privatization in place that occurred at
two facilities was consistent or not with the Base Closing Commission.
You can argue that either way. Obviously, the State that is affected
positively by the President's or the Defense Department's decision
feels it was perfectly within the
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scope of the Base Closing Commission's report. The States which were
negatively affected, in their view, by that decision argue it was not
contemplated by the Base Closing Commission.
The Base Closing Commission report, however, says that these
facilities ``consolidate the remaining workloads to other DOD depots
or''--and that is the critical word for those who argue one side of
this issue, ``or''--``or to private-sector commercial activities as
determined by the Defense Depot Maintenance Council.''
Well, the Defense Depot Maintenance Council determined those two
actions should be taken so that they could be privatized in place. I
think that, at least, is reasonably, arguably, provided for by the Base
Closing Commission report. It says ``or''--``to consolidate the
remaining workloads to other DOD depots or to private-sector commercial
activities as determined by the Defense Depot Maintenance Council,'' as
the alternative to consolidating the remaining workloads to other DOD
depots.
Two options were laid out by the Base Closing Commission. The DOD
followed one option. They privatized in place. But whichever side of
that argument one takes--and we have heard both arguments--that is no
excuse, even if one follows the view that that was politicized, that
they should not have been privatized in place. They should have gone to
other DOD facilities, and that was a political decision.
If one accepts that argument and concludes that is right, what reason
would that be not to have future rounds of base closings? What we
simply would do, as we have done in this bill, is to make sure that
there will be no privatization in place in the future without the
specific recommendation of the Base Closing Commission, which is
created in this amendment. Why would we want to cut off our nose to
spite our face, even if one believes that it was politicized? Why would
we want to say we don't want to save $2 billion in the future because
DOD or the President politicized the last round? We will cure the
problem and disallow privatization in place, unless it is explicitly
provided for by the Base Closing Commission--more explicit than the
language that I even read.
Now, our amendment does that. We are not going to cure the perceived
problem of this privatization in place action by denying future base
closings and denying savings of $2.3 billion a year, which Secretary
Cohen says is the estimated savings from the next two rounds of base
closures. We are not going to cure that problem. We are going to make
our problem worse, not better.
Now, we can address that problem, and some may want to do that with
amendments on this floor. If they wish, they are free to try to offer
amendments to reverse that decision. My own view is that we ought to
make sure that that action is competitive and is certified by the
inspector general of the Department of Defense as being a fair and open
competition as between the various alternatives that are sought here.
Let the marketplace decide--that is my view--in a fair and open
competition. But there have been some proposals that maybe there ought
to be amendments to cure what is perceived to be that political
problem. That at least addresses the problem. Denying future rounds of
base closings, which will deny us savings of billions of dollars,
doesn't cure the perceived inequity or unfairness that resulted, many
feel, from the privatization in place decision of the Defense
Department. We are not curing the problem. We are just denying
ourselves savings.
So there is not a logical connection between those two actions. Now,
I understand. If I were representing one of those three States, I know
I would feel the same way they do. At least I think I would. I can
understand that. We all represent States and feel passion for the
States we represent. We all represent our States as advocates. We
believe in them and we believe they ought to get a fair shake. When we
don't think they got a fair shake, we are on the Senate floor pleading
for our State. So I understand.
As I said, I understand the pain of base closing. We have been
through it, and we might face more. But I also understand what the
Joint Chiefs are telling us when they say we have excess, surplus
baggage, that the infrastructure exceeds the number of personnel that
we now have. ``The tail is too big for the tooth,'' as they say in the
military. We have to slim down. When General Shalikashvili, who is a
distinguished soldier, Chairman of our Joint Chiefs, says we have more
surplus capacity now than we did when the BRAC closing process began,
we should listen.
We are listening. We have offered this amendment to give us a chance
to proceed to shed the excess weight that Secretary Cohen has asked us
to shed, to save the billions that we need and cannot afford to waste
if we are going to fully protect and defend the security of this
Nation.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the senior Senator from
Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. I thank my friend from Michigan for a very lucid and, I
think, fact-filled discussion of this issue, which I believe has become
more Orwellian in nature, if I might characterize it as that.
We are now debating whether closing a base will save money or not. If
that were not the case, Mr. President, we made a terrible mistake at
the end of World War II. We should have kept all the bases open that we
built all over America during World War II and should not have closed
any of them. I am, frankly, astonished.
Now, I think there have been valid arguments made over the process.
There have been arguments made as to whether the process was
politicized in the last round of BRAC. I think that there have been
some valid points here. But, Mr. President, anyone in the world, I
think, can understand that if you have to reduce a business, a
corporation, or whatever it is, because the in-flow of money has been
reduced, then you have to close a number of facilities because you
don't have the business.
Mr. President, the military, in many ways, is a business. They are
assigned a mission. They receive money to carry out that mission, and
they build the facilities and equipment and hire the men and women to
carry out that mission. Then, as that mission is reduced and the amount
of money to support that mission is reduced, you shrink the size of the
support establishment.
It is not really very complicated. To make an argument that a base
closing does not save money over time, really, to me, defies all logic.
Yes, there have been costs associated with base closings that were not
anticipated. I will certainly agree with that. A lot of it had to do
with environmental cleanup. But the fact is, Mr. President, that those
costs would have been incurred anyway and probably would have been
higher as years went by and the pollution and the environmental
poisoning would have become greater. So to somehow say that because we
had to clean up bases that were closing does not justify the bases
being closed, that ignores the fact that sooner or later the
environmental cleanup would have had to take place.
Now, Mr. President, if you have three bases and you only need two,
then you need to keep paying the electric bill at the third base, keep
the runways paved and the housing up and the grass cut. All of those
are costs that are associated with excess inventory. So when you don't
have the requirement for that inventory because the mission has been
reduced--the funding in this case--then you reduce the support
establishment. I don't know how it could be much less complex than
that.
When we talk about CBO estimates, DOD savings estimates are
inconsistent, unreliable, and incomplete, maybe they are. Maybe they
are all those things. But you can't deny the fundamental fact that
unless you believe we are going to increase defense spending, we have
to have a better match-up between the support establishment and the
operating forces, and that because our reduction in overall funding and
our failure to implement the reductions in the support establishment is
not matched up, we therefore are losing in this ``tooth to tail''
ratio, which the Senator from Virginia, Senator Robb, has talked about
on occasion.
One of the opponents of this amendment said that Congress should be
doing this. I totally agree that Congress should be making these
decisions. It is a lack of courage on the part of Congress that we have
to turn to a
[[Page S7074]]
commission. But, Mr. President, it is perfectly clear that for 17 years
not a base was closed, even though there was a requirement, in the view
of one and all, to do so. It was because Congress didn't have the
political will to do it. That is why we resorted to the Base Closing
Commission.
Now, if I had the confidence that Congress would act in a responsible
fashion and we would close bases as necessary, then I would not support
the commission. But the record is perfectly clear that, for all those
years, we were unable to close a base because Congress was politically
paralyzed, so we had to give the responsibility and the blame to a Base
Closing Commission.
The Senator from Michigan has already referred to the letter of the
Secretary of Defense. I am told that a letter from the President is
coming over. The inspector general of DOD found that, in some cases,
they overestimated cost by $148 million, and they underestimated
savings by $614 million. The inspector general is a well-respected
individual, and her memorandum, which is contained in the cover letter
by Secretary Cohen, I think is abundantly clear.
Mr. President, I don't like to drag out this debate too long. I think
that some arguments have been made that I think are important to be
made by the opponents of this amendment. I want to make it clear that
if the Dorgan second-degree amendment is not tabled, the Senator from
Michigan and I intend to have a vote on our amendment up or down. So we
will raise that amendment again until there is a final adjudication by
this body on the McCain-Levin amendment. I hope that the Dorgan second-
degree amendment is tabled and we can have an up-or-down vote on the
other.
The Senator from Michigan pointed out and showed the stacks of
information that have been sent over to the Senate. The Senator from
Michigan and others have pointed out the abundance of information that
has been sent over by the Department of Defense and the forms and
reports as to how much money has been saved and where and under what
circumstances. Yes, we underestimated the environmental cleanup costs,
but we have underestimated the environmental cleanup costs in every
toxic waste site in America, not just on military bases. Those toxic
waste sites are not going to go away just because the base remains
open. Sooner or later, that problem is going to have to be addressed.
So I hope that we will act in agreement.
One other thing. The letter from the chiefs of the services that came
over, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--many of the
allegations I have heard quite often are that members of the military
are empire builders, they never want to give up a base or a weapons
system, and they never met a weapon system they didn't love. These
individuals are calling for these tough decisions to be made because
they know what will happen if we don't close these bases. It will not
free up the money, which is absolutely vital, in their view, to
modernizing the force and retaining the men and women we need in the
All Volunteer Force, to provide sufficient funds for training and
operations in order to keep our military the best in the world, because
you can't siphon off all this money into support functions and expect
us then to have enough money left over to carry out the operations that
are necessary.
So, Mr. President, at the appropriate time, I will move to table the
Dorgan second-degree amendment. I hope we can dispense with this issue
as soon as possible.
I yield the floor.
Mr. HATCH addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Utah is recognized.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I want to take a few moments today to talk
about this process. I have to say that having gone through the three
BRAC processes we have had in the past, having traveled from city to
city to make the cases that we made, having fought very hard to try and
make sure the process was honest and decent, having lived through it,
where the defense depot in Ogden was shut down--we felt, for very poor
reasons. The only reason was that it was more interior, it seems to me,
than the bases on the various coasts. But it seems to me that that was
one of its great advantages. It would be much more difficult to attack
if we got into difficulty.
But we lived with that. We lived with the shutdown of the Tooele Army
Base, which literally had the greatest heavy-duty vehicle repair
facility in the world, just completed at a cost of almost $200 million
to the taxpayers. And they shut down. Now they wish they had not
because they now don't have the facilities or quite the same capability
to take care of Army heavy-duty vehicles. It was a stupid thing to do.
But that is what they did, in spite of the fact that Utahans have the
chemical weapons destruction facility there. And we put up with all of
the hazardous problems of storing chemical weapons in Utah and even
transporting them around with various aspects in and out of Utah and
with the chemical weapons demilling that we do there.
Utahans have always been very patriotic. They have supported the
military as much, if not more so, than any other State in the Union,
and I think the attitude is still that way in spite of some of these
glaring inequities that have occurred. We lived with those. We can
accept them.
I agree with the distinguished Senator from Arizona. We should shut
down bases that do not deserve to compete, or really aren't
competitive, or really are dealing with old, worn-out, less modernized
facilities and also equipment, and work done on various less modernized
pieces of equipment. But what we are getting very upset about lately is
that we went all through this BRAC process, and we worked our tails off
trying to make a case for the Hill Air Force Base and Ogden Air
Logistics Command. We did. It came out No. 1 without question. It was
the best Air Logistics Command in all of the Air Force--in all of the
military. The work force was one of the best in the history of the
country. And we won. So did Tinker Air Force Base. So did Warner
Robins.
Mr. President, they won because they were more competitive. These
three bases won because they could do a better job. They won because
they literally made sense as far as keeping our Air Force modernized
and working well with the best equipment possible. Three work forces
appeared to be the best, and certainly Hill was No. 1. Since that has
happened, Hill has gone down to about a 54 or 55 percent utilization of
capacity.
I have to say this. With that low utilization of capacity, which
should be up around 85 percent had the transition work been given to
Hill, and which we hope will be given to Hill, if we could get it up
over 70 percent of capacity, as high as 85 percent of capacity, Hill
Air Force Base would be so competitive that nobody could compete with
them in the world today. But at 54 or 55 percent, it means that the
costs are much higher than literally they would be if we were utilizing
the capacity in a fair and decent manner.
I have to say that we have had many Air Force people tell us they
don't want to ever see Hill hurt because it is the best Air Logistics
Command in the armed services today. But their hands are somewhat tied
by the administration that is playing politics with the BRAC process.
The administration has indicated because there are two Presidential
States involved that even though the full BRAC process said that
McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento had to be shut down and that
Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio had to be shut down, the
administration has indicated they don't want them shut down. As a
matter of fact, they are now talking about privatization in place. It
is nice to talk about that if all things were equal--if literally good
business principles were practiced; if literally there was not any
stacking of the deck in either case; if literally the regulations that
would be written would be fair. Maybe there could be an argument for
that.
But the only argument that should be made for privatization in place
is after the consolidation of the three Air Logistic Commands that won
the competition. Once they are consolidated, then I have no problem
with trying to place some privatization and have private companies bid
on some of the work.
Keep in mind that one reason why we don't go straight to
privatization is because during time of war, we want to be able, above
all things, to be functional, and we don't want to have to
[[Page S7075]]
worry about whether prices are going to be jacked up by private
companies, or whether or not we have the capacity to take care of the
needs of our fighting men and women overseas, or for any other number
of reasons.
Mr. President, the President's politicization of the BRAC95 process
has become a common theme on this floor. I admire the willingness of so
many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to explicitly state
that privatization-in-place was not intended by BRAC, and that this
deliberate evasion of the BRAC recommendations can only portend defeat
for those seeking future BRAC rounds.
utah does not deserve to lose three bracs in a row
My State, Utah, does not deserve to lose in three successive BRAC
rounds. We lost 5,000 jobs from the closure of two installations, the
Tooele Army Depot in BRAC91 and the Defense Depot at Ogden in BRAC93.
But Hill Air Force Base, and the Ogden Air Logistics Center, is a
different case.
Hill is the best of the best among maintenance depots, rated as a
tier I installation. That means the highest military value. By
contrast, Kelly and McClellan were rated tier III--meaning the lowest
military value. To privatize at the worst depots is to demean the
merits of the Air Force and BRAC decisions to preserve the best, and
the best is the work force at Hill.
I can make the case that BRAC91 was wrong. The Army put $250 million
into the finest consolidated maintenance depot for wheeled combat
vehicles in the world. A couple of years later, it shut it down and
moved the work to the Red River Army Depot at Texarkana. Then what do
you think happened? Red River was designated for closure! But it gets
worse--DOD virtually abandoned Tooele until the Tooele County
Commission, to its everlasting credit, aggressively beat the bushes for
users, successfully bringing Detroit Diesel onto the former base.
The point is that Utahns can and do turn bad situations into
successes. We can deal with adversity, but we do not have to deal with
the type of unfairness and outrageous discrimination that is being
dealt to my State by the President.
Let me remind my colleagues that Hill met the best of the BRAC95
parameters, which included military value and return on investment.
Utah is a terrific investment for the Air Force and the Nation:
DOD is mindful of Utah's value for the same reasons that domestic and
foreign businesses flock to the State. And they certainly don't come
because of our political clout alone--after all, we have only five
electoral votes.
Utah's attraction lies with its people, its business climate, its
youthful and well-educated work force.
The State has the highest educational level in the United States,
according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Money Magazine and Business Week, among other sources, repeatedly
cite it as the best place to do business, the best place to live, and
the so-called Software Valley of the World.
And its workforce is the youngest in the country and teeming with
skilled college graduates who work. Ask any business in Utah about the
Utah work ethic; in fact, ask the BRAC commissioners! Ask the Air
Force!
In a few words: Utahns are the real return on investment, and it is
why the Air Force and BRAC have heavily endorsed the retention of Hill.
Utah's military value is unmatched. The BRAC commissioners didn't
miss a thing in assessing Hill's military value. It hosts the gateway
to the Nation's largest exercise site, the Utah Test & Training Range,
covering 2,675 square miles. This is the only range in the world on
which every active Air Force aircraft can exercise--keep that point in
mind. If Hill is not properly used, or if the President's privatization
deception causes an underutilized Hill to suffer in a future BRAC
round, I will tell you now that this range will not longer be available
to DOD. It is just that simple. People in Utah are going to turn
against them.
Even though we have been the most patriotic State, or equal to any
other patriotic State in the Union.
I will not allow the citizens of my State to become a DOD trash can--
dumping bombs on our fragile terrain, using our remote regions for
developing chemical defenses or demilitarizing dangerous chemical
munitions, for example. We tolerate as day-to-day sacrifices certain
activities that we see other States revolting against.
We want Hill's military value appreciated and developed precisely the
way that BRAC intended, and that means consolidating core workload at
Hill. We want this work at the best depot. Like most other Americans,
we do not want privatization of the workload at the site of the worst
depot. We want the ICBM depot at Hill to flourish, the F-16
logistics management program, and the C-130 depot programs to be
expanded as intended. We deserve--because we have earned--the F-22 and
Joint Strike Fighter depot programs over the next decade.
Hill does not work well at the current 50-percent capacity usage
level, nor at the 66-percent level which it would have in the outyears
if privatization in place occurs. We work best when we are at full
capacity, and that is why BRAC directed a consolidation package that
would put Hill at 86-percent utilization in the year 2001. It was done,
to repeat myself, because Hill is the best of the best.
hill reflects the utah ``can-do'' spirit
Mr. President, Utah is a State populated initially by pioneers who
lived and overcame adversity--even in the face of outrageous unfairness
and persecution. Today, the Old Mormon Trail is alive with men and
women of all ages, and of all faiths, who are re-re-creating that
spirit as they trek toward Utah.
We overcame the unfairness of Tooele Army Depot loss, as I mentioned.
Despite our remote location, we are a literate, sophisticated State
with 17 percent of the Utah adult speaking a foreign language, most
fluently.
Our small State with just over 1 million persons in the work force,
has over 1,800 information technology and computer software companies.
Our unemployment rate is 3.5 percent, while our job creation rate is
twice that of the United States at 7.3 percent.
And, we are the fifth fastest growing State.
Mr. President, I could go on--but my point has been made, I believe.
It is that, like many other Members of both the House and Senate, we
demand fairness. When we appoint an independent commission, we expect
its recommendations to be honored by a Chief Executive who is President
of all the people, not just those with the greatest number of potential
votes.
privatization in place
Mr. President, the Base Realignment Commission--BRAC--issue that
affects us most deeply is the evasion of the BRAC recommendation to
consolidate workload at a public depot or at a commercial private
sector facility. This BRAC recommendation has been distorted by the
Clinton administration to allow what has now become known as
privatization in place.
In the next few minutes, I will present eight reasons why
privatization in place will not work. It is not economically feasible,
and it is inherently unfair to the public depot competitor:
First, it will worsen already deteriorated efficiency in the depot
system;
Second, GAO has identified current wasteful depot practices that beg
reform, something that privatization in place can't provide;
Third, past depot reforms have not succeeded;
Fourth, the problem of excess capacity is not solved;
Fifth, it will not produce promised cost savings;
Sixth, the best depots are being sacrificed on a shaky political
alter;
Seventh, the case for privatization in place has yet to be made; and
Eighth, the privatization-in-place competition lacks the elements of
fairness expected in Government solicitations.
privatization-in-place will compound identified depot inefficiencies
Mr. President, the Depot Caucus is an informal group of Members of
Congress with strong interests in averting the problems of depot waste
and inefficiency. Our goal is to ensure the availability of high-
readiness equipment to our Armed Forces.
Depot operations are part of service logistics, which is probably the
most difficult of all military specialties.
[[Page S7076]]
Even some of history's top military strategists, Napoleon and von
Clausewitz, to name two of the greatest, failed to insert military
logistics into their battle plans and strategies. Yet, military
logistics has long been one of the great strengths of our military
services. It has also been an undeniable cause of our success on the
battlefield.
My point here is that we cannot afford the inefficiencies and waste
that privatization in place will bring to an already cumbersome depot
system in DOD.
gao has found depot operations wasteful and inefficient
GAO has identified $2.5 billion of losses over 4 years directly
related to an Air Force depot system that is already encumbered with 40
percent excess capacity. In its May 1997 report on defense depot
operations, the GAO said ``DOD consistently experienced losses [in
depot operations] * * *, and has had to request additional funding to
support their operations.''
Why do I raise this specific point? Because depot operations are
expected to at least break even. That has always been one of the Air
Force depot system's ever-elusive goals. But, instead, the system will
sustain operating losses for fiscal year 1997, which the Air Force
estimates at $1.7 billion. This exceeds even the GAO forecasted losses.
Let me add that operating losses is an auditor's term of art. GAO's
mandate is to audit organizational and operational procedures to
evaluate efficiency and effectiveness, predictors of program quality.
depot financial management reforms have helped only marginally
This is not to say that DOD hasn't been working the problem; it's
just not getting any better. Let me give you an example.
In 1995, DOD streamlined the financial management of its depot
operations by devolving control over depot financing from the office of
the Secretary of Defense to the military services. This reform shifted
accountability for the Defense Business Operating Fund [DBOF], placing
it at the service level. I share GAO's demand for better
accountability. But the problems plaguing DBOF just followed the so-
called reforms.
First, the Air Force, not unlike the Navy, advance billed its
customers, which are the military units sending equipment to the depots
and which pay for the services of the depots. The advance billing came
to $2.9 billion, which was to ensure that sufficient cash balances were
available to pay for the goods, services, and other stock items
required by the depots to service the assets. Still, the Air Force will
operate this year at the $1.7 billion deficit that I mentioned earlier.
The second point regarding this reform is that there is simply too
little demand for depot service. It's a classic supply-demand problem
that every undergraduate encounters in textbooks. I suggest to my
colleagues that if they owned a chain of auto repair facilities--let's
say 5--and there was significant excess capacity, the logical thing
would be to close two garages and consolidate the work in the remaining
three. Unlike a lot of what the Air Force does, this is not rocket
science.
But, I can't place too much blame on the Air Force. They have four
big problems, the last of which is beyond their control:
First, they're faced with 40 percent overcapacity;
Second, they have a resulting $1.7 billion deficit this year;
Third, there are gross inefficiencies and distortions that always
accrue to business planning when you have to advance bill your
customers; and
Fourth, they now have some members of their board of directors,
including Congress, telling them to throw caution to the wind and
sustain these inefficiencies anyway!
Many Members of this body have run businesses. Is there anyone here
who could keep afloat under these conditions?
My last point on current inefficiencies is that these problems were
not unknown before we compiled the Defense depot provisions in the bill
before us today.
You'll recall that during the BRAC process we used a sophisticated
analytical modeling technique called COBRA [Cost of Base Realignment
Activities]. The parameters and formulas applied by the COBRA model
long ago uncovered the same problems. Academicians say that a model's
strength is related to its ability to predict and explain. The accuracy
with which BRAC uncovered, explained, and predicted the problems that
we are discussing today suggests COBRA's efficacy. Perhaps some other
agencies of government ought to try it.
the problem of excess capacity
Mr. President, the GAO testified before the Senate Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee hearing last month. In his testimony before
that panel, the Assistant Comptroller General made the following
observation on excess capacity. DOD's 40 percent excess capacity, he
said, ``is a significant contribution toward inefficiency and high cost
of DOD's maintenance program and in generating significant losses in
the depot maintenance activity group of the services' working capital
funds.'' This was in further reference to the annual $1.7 billion
annual Air Force depot system loss referred to earlier.
Still more importantly, the GAO testimony continued--and I want to
emphasize the following remarks:
The Air Force's plans for implementing BRAC recommendations
will do little to reduce excess capacity and will likely
result in increased depot maintenance prices.
Here, of course, the GAO witness was referring to Air Force proposals
to implement privatization in place to avoid the BRAC recommendation
for the consolidation of workload to depots or other commercial private
activities. In the case of San Antonio and Sacramento, this expressly
excludes privatization in place as an alternative to closure.
Mr. President, as a customer of the depot system, you don't have real
market choice if you cannot utilize alternatives to suppliers who lock
you into higher prices. My point is that depots are forced to be
inefficient, both as competitors as well as business operators, where
we deny them the opportunity to rid themselves of excess capacity to
bring down costs.
The problem of waste gets worse. GAO found a $689 million loss from
continued excess capacity related to the DOD privatization in place
plan. If you multiply this amount over 6 years, which is the statutory
period for the phase-out of BRAC closures, the loss to the taxpayers is
a staggering $4.1 billion. Imagine what it would be if an 8-year
contract, as proposed in the McClellan competition, were to be awarded!
Again, I plead with my colleagues who have been in business to stop
and think about this--could you keep your customers if you just kept
raising prices, while requiring them to disperse badly needed operating
funds to pay for services in advance?
It may be great theater, but it's a lousy business practice. And it
is even worse as public policy. We are gouging the taxpayers to
subsidize such outrageous waste. We need to put a stop to it by
preventing privatization in place.
privatization in place does not produce cost savings
Mr. President, GAO has also criticized the overly optimistic
assumptions about cost savings that were anticipated from privatization
in place where it had been authorized. I repeat: where authorized, to
distinguish from the plain language of the BRAC recommendation
regarding Sacramento and San Antonio, which stated ``consolidation . .
. to commercial private sector activities,'' which in no way allows the
inference of privatization in place. Privatization in place was not
intended. This is a point clearly made by the ranking minority member
of the Readiness Subcommittee and junior Senator from Virginia on this
floor last Thursday evening.
But, let me turn to a case study where privatization in place was
directly recommended by BRAC. Let's look at the results. I refer to the
BRAC 1993 decision regarding the Air Force Aerospace Guidance and
Metrological Center located at Newark AFB, Ohio. GAO performed an audit
of facility operations under privatization in place and found that the
Air Force itself estimated costs to be $9 to $32 million higher than
those before the operation went private. In fact, I was told by the Air
Force over the weekend that there remain nearly 150 government
employees at the site.
[[Page S7077]]
Despite this history, the solicitation for privatization at McClellan
is actually forecasting a 25 percent cost savings! Every sensible
government accountant that I've spoken to claims this figure is at best
vastly inflated.
the president is sacrificing the best depots on a shaky political alter
Politicization of the BRAC process is risky both economically and
militarily. The consequences are already quite clear:
Both the House an Senate will deny the President future BRAC rounds.
Who among us can support continuation of a process that has become
blatantly political? Who is willing to roll the dice with the
livelihoods of workers in their States, let alone the lives of our
servicemen and women?
We are denying DOD critically needed modernization moneys that were
to come from the BRAC savings.
Worse, still, we are courting the serious deterioration of combat
efficiency and safety if our armed services do not get technologies--
technologies which are already in the hands of our adversaries, some of
them Third World countries.
There is not the least likelihood that demand will rise to meet the
sustained levels of excess capacity perpetuated by the President's
actions. For example, modern weapon systems have reduced programmed
depot maintenance. The F-16, for one, has no routine depot-maintenance
requirements. And that aircraft is to be replaced by the Joint Strike
Fighter, which has even a longer mean-time-between-failures
requirement--MTBF means the average that a system can operate without
major replacement or overhaul. The F-22, which will replace the F-15,
also has no programmed depot maintenance.
But the problems of excess capacity get worse. GAO has calculated
that the 5 depots left in place will have 57 million direct work hours
to perform 32 million direct work hours of labor, and, the requirement
will fall by over 37 percent to 20 million direct work hours by 1999.
This means that the depot system will have over 2\1/2\ times the amount
of labor it needs.
Mr. President, the President's politicization of BRAC is costing our
defense structure the best of the best.
The BRAC decision could not have been more clear. Hill AFB was a Tier
I depot, meaning that it had the highest military value. San Antonio
and Sacramento, by contrast, were Tier III--or installations which had
the lowest military value. The ratings were made by the Air Force and
used extensively in the BRAC rounds. Yet, the Air Force is now being
brow-beaten by its political masters in the Clinton administration into
renouncing its own objective rankings.
At the same time, these Tier III installations are being extended the
same rewards that were fairly won by the hard work of the Utah,
Georgia, and Oklahoma bases. Mr. President, what does this say for
merit? Or, will the Senate merely go on record with the message that
lots of electoral votes carry the day?
What statement are we making to motivate government employees to
provide their best effort? How much political distortion and corruption
of good performance are we willing to tolerate?
Let me put a more positive face on some of these problems. Let's
consider the value to the taxpayer of pursuing the BRAC
recommendations, that is, keeping the best, while eliminating the
poorer performers. According to GAO, the elimination of the San Antonio
and Sacramento depots, as proposed by BRAC, would produce the following
gains:
Excess capacity, by 1999, would fall from 65 percent to 27 percent.
On the other hand, if the bases are not closed, San Antonio will have
89 percent of its maximum capacity idled, while Sacramento will be at
90 percent;
Average hourly rates would be reduced by $6 per hour; and
That $182 million would be saved annually from these types of
economies of scale and efficiencies.
Regrettably, I have to say that the President's attitude toward the
noncoastal Western States, and especially my own State of Utah, cannot
escape our attention. It should be foremost in the thoughts of every
Senator from this region.
The President has repeatedly interfered with, tried to disrupt, and
tried to knock off course the most economically vibrant regional
economy in the Nation.
Need another example? Among other punitive land use regulations, he
has usurped without prior consultation 1.7 million acres of land in my
State, arbitrarily removing them from economic development and other
generally beneficial uses. I refer here to the grand Staircase-
Escalante National Monument.
It troubles me substantially that the President, even though he is in
his second term, is simply not acting as the President of all the
people and all the States. He is acting as the President for the large,
electorally rich States. If this were not true, the decision to
implement the BRAC recommendation would be a no-brainer.
The privatization in place competition is inherently unfair
Mr. President, I have done a thorough assessment of the proposal for
privatization in place at McClellan. I find two major flaws that
starkly stack the deck against the public depot and favor private
bidders.
First, the public depot bidders are forced to bear an unfair share of
the costs of transitioning the Sacramento depot from active Air Force
status.
The DOD Cost of Competition Handbook stipulates that both public and
private bidders must cite the transition costs in their bids. However,
the private bidder doesn't include the costs of early retirement,
separation, or relocation for workers at Sacramento who lose their
jobs. But the public depot shows it as an accounting charge because
it's paid by the taxpayer.
This becomes a form of double accounting. In fact, BRAC intended, and
Congress provided the moneys, to fund personnel transition costs
regardless of who wins. Yet, the impression is left that this is a cost
that will be integrated into the depot's cost to its customers.
Second, the private bidders get substantial financial and performance
advantages from the use of the excess capacity intended to be closed by
BRAC.
The local redevelopment authority can determine its own cost of
leasing the facility to the private bidder. What an incentive. There is
nothing to keep the leasing agreement from covering just about
anything, such as depreciation writeoffs, improvements, and even
equipment and facility maintenance. All of this allows the private
bidder to be artificially low.
Yet another inequity denies the public depot from beginning military
construction related to the workload transfer until the contract is
awarded. This means the work must be performed at the Sacramento
location for an indeterminate period of time, adding to the public
bidder's cost. And, of course, reducing the fairness of the
competition.
The McClellan bid consists of a 5-year contract with three 1-year
options, for a possible total award of 8 years. The options are
performance based. This means that the LRA is certain to expend moneys
on facilities maintenance in order to allow the private contractor to
achieve better productivity, and through that level of performance,
ensure the option awards. The public depot, on the other hand, must
invest in facilities modernization and reflect this investment in its
cost.
the case for privatization in place just can't be made
Mr. President, on the basis of all available evidence, we should
conclude that privatization in place cannot fairly or reasonably
produce cost savings. More likely, it will contribute to waste and
inefficiency. In support of this proposition, I want to make the
following closing arguments:
First, depots are already among the most critical or so-called high-
risk areas of the Federal Government.
High risk is a special designation used by GAO to alert Congress to
areas that are highly vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, and
mismanagement.
Second, GAO has already forecast that, by the end of fiscal year
1999, San Antonio will have 89 percent of its maximum productive
capacity as excess, while Sacramento's excess capacity will be at 90
percent. Both of these levels are more than twice the current 40
percent excess capacity that we are arguing about today. In other
words, the problem is going to be doubly bad by the end of the next
fiscal year if we don't solve it now by ending privatization in place.
[[Page S7078]]
Again, these problems are caused in great part by diminished workload
requirements related to force downsizing. Yet, as I said earlier, it is
the savings generated by reducing infrastructure that are fueling our
ability to modernize our equipment, something that almost every Member
of this body knows is necessary.
Third, GAO told the Appropriations Committee panel that: ``the Air
Force has the most serious excess capacity problem.'' The combined
losses could reach about $500 million if the Sacramento and San Antonio
facilities are kept in the inventory.
Let me remind my colleagues of the value of the BRAC findings that I
mentioned earlier. I need to repeat this: in making its determinations
regarding both these depots, BRAC leaned heavily on the Air Force's own
designation of the Sacramento and San Antonio ALC's as so-called Tier
III installations. This means, as most of us involved in the BRAC
process will recall, that the installations had the lowest military
value. I challenge anyone to argue that there is some redemptive value
that could follow from the revival of installations that the Air Force
itself realized should be closed.
I might add, Mr. President, that Utah has been on the low end of the
BRAC process in other areas. My State has lost two installations. I
must admit that I fought hard to prevent those losses. I do not deny
the trauma that the closure of such a large military facility causes
States and communities. And, I admit that if the situation were
reversed, I might be making the same weak arguments my colleagues from
California and Texas are making today. I am well aware of what is at
stake for my colleagues from Texas and California.
But, this does not excuse the Clinton administration from its
responsibilities either to the defense of our country, to the ensuring
the safest possible equipment for our servicemen and women, or to the
taxpayers who are footing the bills. The President needs to take the
broad view. And, by rejecting the BRAC recommendations--and
compromising the entire BRAC process for unsupportable political
reasons--he clearly has not.
We should not tolerate diversions from, or the politicization of, the
BRAC recommendations. The very nature of downsizing means that there
will be losers and survivors. We must make every effort to protect the
integrity that the process itself demands.
But, more importantly, one of our essential duties under the
Constitution is to provide for the common defense. Congress and the
President have the ultimate responsibility for the support of our Armed
Forces. It is a duty we cannot delegate. I simply ask each of my
colleagues these questions:
Do we fulfill that duty when we knowingly allow diversions that
produce gross inefficiencies in the operation of military services from
the recommendations of an independent commission?
And do we honor our obligations by denying funds produced by these
recommendations for the provision of technologically superior equipment
and training for our fighting men and women?
We need to affirm our duties and obligations. Only then will we take
a major step toward giving our citizens and our fighting men and women
the type of defense the country expects.
Mr. President, let me just say, in conclusion, that I want this
process to work. It is very difficult for me to support a future BRAC
process if this is going to be politicized the way we see it being
politicized right now. After all, the pain, suffering, inconvenience,
and difficulties in traveling around the country and meeting time after
time with the military, with the various administrations, and so forth,
to have to put up with what is going on right now is just unacceptable.
Frankly, I can't support a future BRAC process if that is the best we
can do with this one, which I thought was fair and which came out with
very tough decisions. They weren't easy. I feel sorry for anybody who
has lost anything. But we have lost plenty, too.
All I can say is, if we lose this, then I am never going to get over
it. I don't think the people of Utah are going to get over it, and I
think, frankly, the country will be poorer for it, and I think our
national security interests will be poorer for it.
I yield the floor.
Mr. THURMOND addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from South
Carolina.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator
Sessions and Senator Inhofe be added as cosponsors to amendment 420
offered by Senator Cochran.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Privilege of the Floor
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jeanine
Esperne of Senator Kyl's staff be granted privileges of the floor
during consideration of S. 936.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 5:30
p.m. today, there be 15 minutes of debate equally divided between
Senator Wellstone and Senator Thurmond, or his designee, and 15 minutes
of debate between Senator Gorton and Senator Inouye; and, immediately
following that debate, the Senate proceed to vote on or in relation to
the Wellstone amendment 670, to be followed by a vote on or in relation
to the Gorton amendment 424, to be followed by a vote on or in relation
to the Dodd amendment 765; and, finally there be 2 minutes for debate
equally divided before the second and third vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that no
other amendments be in order to the above-listed amendments.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry. Is the Dorgan
amendment with reference to base closures pending?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.
Mr. DOMENICI. I would like to speak for a few moments on the subject.
I will not take long.
Mr. President, I rise in support of the Dorgan-Domenici amendment to
require the Department of Defense to submit a report to Congress
detailing the costs and savings of previously authorized base closure
rounds and on the need, if any, for further base closure rounds prior
to the Congress authorizing the Department to move forward with
additional closures. This amendment stands for a simple proposition. It
says that as Members of Congress we will take our oversight
responsibilities seriously when major decisions that affect the lives
of all Americans are on the table. It says that we will take a long
hard look at where we have been before we chart a course for where we
are going. We owe the people we represent a commitment to carefully
analyze what the last four rounds of base closure dating back to 1989
have accomplished before we decide to give the authority to the
Department of Defense to conduct two more base closure rounds. This
amendment does not say that additional base closure rounds are not
necessary, or that they will not be needed in the future. This
amendment simply requires that the Congress be able to have essential
factual data about the costs and savings associated with previous
rounds before we authorize legislation that would give the Department
of Defense the authority to conduct new rounds. This amendment is
reasonable, it is fair, and it offers a common sense approach to the
serious modernization problems we face.
Mr. President, I want to make clear before I begin that I understand
the argument of those who say that BRAC savings are an important part
of the funds that will finance the future modernization of our Armed
Forces and keep our military the most technologically advanced and
lethal fighting force in the world. I understand that the Quadrennial
Defense Review and the National Defense Panel established by the
Congress concluded that further reductions in the DOD base structure
are essential to free up money we need to modernize our forces. I am
aware that in a recent letter, all members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
urged the Congress to ``strongly support further reductions in base
structure proposed by the Secretary of Defense.'' Nevertheless, Mr.
President, the question is not whether the savings are needed, the
[[Page S7079]]
question is will the necessary savings for force modernization be
present if we conduct two more rounds of closure? In that regard, no
one can guarantee that the savings will be present after two more
rounds. No one can guarantee the projected savings from previous rounds
will be what they are currently estimated. The QDR did not guarantee
the savings will be present, the National Defense Review Panel has not
assured the Congress that the savings will be present, and the Joint
Chiefs of Staff has not assured the Congress that the savings will be
present if we close more bases.
There have been four rounds of base closure--1988, 1991, 1993, 1995.
They have resulted in decisions to close 97 of 495 major bases in the
United States. Between 1990 and 2001 the DOD estimates that BRAC
actions will produce a total of $13.5 billion in net savings. After
2001, when all of the previous BRAC actions must be completed, steady
State savings are estimated by the DOD to be $5.6 billion per year. CBO
estimates that it will cost $23.4 billion to close all 97 bases. These
costs are mostly due to environmental cleanup at closing bases, 30
percent, additional operations and maintenance at receiving bases, 35
percent, and additional construction and renovations and receiving
bases, 30 percent.
CBO projects at total of $57 billion in savings by the year 2020. CBO
estimates that DOD will save about $28.7 billion during the BRAC
implementation process, 1988-2001, which means a net savings of only
$5.3 billion during those years. Half of the $57 billion in savings are
projected to come from lower operations and maintenance costs; a
quarter from less spending on personnel, including civilians whose jobs
are eliminated; the remainder comes from projected land sales.
Mr. President, the main question we must ask ourselves is how
reliable is this cost savings information? The answer, unfortunately,
is that no one really knows. Not the Department of Defense, not the
Congress, not the President.
We in New Mexico have had a fair amount of experience with the base
closure process and one fact that we have learned is that what the
Department of Defense estimates in savings cannot, and should not be
taken for granted. We need to examine carefully whether the savings
promised have some basis in reality. The responsible choice is to see
where we have been before we set a course of where we are going.
For example, during the 1995 BRAC process the Secretary of Defense
recommended that Kirtland Air Force Base undergo a major realignment.
Before we took a long hard look at their numbers for costs and savings,
the Department of the Air Force estimated that it would spend $277.5
million to realign the base while projecting a $464.5 million in
savings over 20 years.
Mr. President, what would you say if I told you that not only did we
find that the Air Force's costs and savings were wholly inaccurate, but
that after careful analysis by my staff, knowledgeable members of the
community, and others in the congressional Delegation, the Secretary of
Defense for the first time in the history of the BRAC process wrote to
the BRAC Commission and told them that ``* * * the recommendation for
the realignment of Kirtland Air Force Base no longer represents a
financially or operationally sound scenario.''
Specifically, we found that if the Air Force major realignment of
Kirtland Air Force Base passed that the Department of Energy would have
to assume $64 million in conversion costs and that it would cost an
additional $30.6 million per year to maintain the safety, security, and
viability of the critical base operations that remained.
Mr. President, the New Mexico experience with BRAC may be unique, but
it serves to make the essential point that we are making with this
amendment. The driving factor behind base closure decisions should
continue to be the overall cost to the taxpayer. In our case, the
original half-billion cost savings turned out to be a half-billion new
cost to the taxpayer. The message of the New Mexico experience is that
we need to carefully examine the Department's projected costs and
savings in order to thoughtfully determine whether it is a wise
decision to give the Department of Defense the legislative authority
they need to conduct additional base closure rounds. The Dorgan-
Domenici amendment will give the Congress the necessary data to make
this decision in a thoughtful and precise manner.
Mr. President, the Senators from New Mexico and North Dakota are not
the only people who think that the Department of Defense's current
costs and savings projections may not be reliable. The Congressional
Budget Office says it ``cannot evaluate the accuracy of DOD's estimates
without empirical data.'' In even stronger words the CBO states that
the ``Department is unable to report actual spending and savings for
BRAC actions.'' CBO recommends that, ``Congress could consider asking
DOD to establish an information system that would track the actual
costs and savings of closing military bases. The system could apply to
BRAC IV bases because DOD is just beginning to shut down those bases
and virtually all the work remains to be done.''
In addition to the CBO's analysis, the Government Accounting Office
had this to say, ``DOD cannot provide accurate information on actual
savings because (1) information on base support costs was not retained
for some closing bases and (2) the services' accounting systems cannot
isolate the effect on support costs at gaining bases.''
Mr. President, the task we have before us is clear. My advice to
Senators is to make the responsible choice and let us take a careful
look before we leap into two new rounds of base closure. There will be
enough time for the Department of Defense to close additional bases if
the costs and savings of the first four rounds prove to be accurate.
Even those who argue for additional base closure rounds today will not
tell you that the future of our military's capability rests on deciding
at this moment in time to give the DOD the authority to conduct
additional rounds of base closure. By making the responsible choice
today and voting for the Dorgan-Domenici amendment Senators will show
that they are concerned about the modernization of our forces by
requiring the data that shows the savings required to finance that
modernization will be present at the end of the closure process.
Mr. President, I believe that the Dorgan-Domenici amendment will
provide the information necessary for the Congress to make decision of
whether to authorize additional rounds of base closure sound, well
reasoned, and based on fact. I ask my colleagues for their support, and
I yield the floor.
Mr. BROWNBACK addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
Mr. BROWNBACK. I would like to speak briefly in favor of the Dorgan-
Lott second-degree amendment and associate myself with that amendment.
I do think it is important before we go forward with additional BRAC's
that we know and can certify the amount of money that has been saved by
prior BRAC rounds. I do not think we have taken that into
consideration. There is a lot that is also associated with closure
costs.
But more to the point on this particular issue, it seems to me that
we have been through this BRAC process here now for several rounds, and
some of that may have been very healthy to do, but that we ought to
stop and appraise just what was good about that, and, more importantly,
I think we need to go through a BRAC on domestic discretionary
spending. Let us look at some of the programs that are discretionary
programs, not entitlement programs but discretionary programs, say,
within the Department of Commerce or, say, within the Department of
Energy. Let us go through a BRAC there. Let us take a look at those and
have a vote up or down. We ought to be focusing our effort there where
we know we have some wasteful programs. We know there is money that is
being wasted and spent not for a good reason or cause.
We have gone through that on some of the military bases as far as
looking at some bases that may not be necessary to have, but would it
not be so much wiser now to focus on some of these discretionary
programs? They are in the media virtually every day--the Advanced
Technology Program being a corporate welfare program, for one instance.
We have other programs that have been identified. We have a fleet of
ships under the Commerce Department that we have been saying for
[[Page S7080]]
a long time ought to be privatized rather than being run there. That is
a wasteful spending program. I have a list of those that I think we
ought to go through far before we start up some other BRAC round in the
military when we do not even know what sort of cost or what sort of
savings we have had associated within it.
So, Mr. President, I just think we have a lot better things that we
could be doing with our time and focus on rather than going back
through a BRAC round. I do think it is constructive, through the
Dorgan-Lott approach, to get a sense of where we are costwise, get a
sense of what cost we have with closing a military base, get a strategy
going here which guarantees that further base closures will not
jeopardize national security. We need to look at all those things
before we go forward with another BRAC round.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. THURMOND addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. THURMOND. The floor is available. Any Senator who now wishes to
express himself on the other side of this issue has the opportunity. We
are going to be voting here in just a little bit.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I rise to strongly oppose efforts to
authorize additional rounds of base closings. I believe that it is bad
policy to close more bases without accurately knowing the ramifications
of previous cuts.
Congress has already approved four rounds of base closings, the
latest round occurring in 1995. My State of California has suffered
unfairly during this process, losing 27 major installations. Job losses
from these closings are estimated to exceed 250,000, and the total
economic loss will top $8 billion.
Although the California economy is experiencing an economic upturn,
unemployment in my State continues to run two percentage points above
the national average. It is clear that communities in California are
disproportionately being hurt by the BRAC process.
It is unfair to ask my State to bear the brunt of yet another round
of base closings. It is even more egregious to ask Californians to go
through another round of closings when they are still suffering from
previous rounds. Past BRAC rounds will continue to weigh heavily on my
State because many bases from the 1995 closure round will not close
until 1999 or after. Furthermore, some of these closures have not
proven to be cost-efficient, and that is one reason why we are not
seeing the savings that had been previously promised.
I believe that we should not even consider future base closings until
we have had the time to properly analyze the ramifications of the
previous four rounds. We need to have solid data about the long-term
costs and benefits of base closures. More importantly, we need to make
sure that we understand the effect these closures have had on the real
people whose lives drastically change when a base in their community is
closed.
That is why we should pass the Dorgan Amendment, of which I am a
cosponsor. This amendment would require the Department of Defense to
issue a report on the long-term costs and savings incurred from the
previous rounds of base closings before future BRAC's could go forward.
I simply can not see how we can entertain the idea of additional rounds
of base closures without first having the benefit of solid data and
hard numbers from previous BRAC's.
Mr. President, Californians are amazingly resilient. They have
overcome devastating floods, disastrous earthquakes and terrorizing
floods. Our state has gone through a lot. But I promise that California
will not suffer further economic damage from another round of base
closings until I have exhausted every tool available to me as a
Senator. I urge my colleagues to oppose a new round of base closures.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to say just a
couple of more words about the amendment that is now pending. It is a
second-degree amendment offered to the first-degree amendment that had
been previously offered by Senator McCain and Senator Levin.
I indicated when I started out I have great respect for both of them.
We reach a different conclusion and come to a different judgment on
this question, and I do want to say in response to some of the
discussion that has been held in this Chamber that this is not a
question about whether closing bases saves money. I accept the notion
that closing military installations saves money.
That is why I have been involved in supporting four previous base
closing rounds. It clearly will save money. We do not know how much. I
do not think anyone here knows how much. The Congressional Budget
Office has reviewed it, the Government Accounting Office has reviewed
it, and they are trying to understand how much money is saved and what
are the costs. Are we saving a little bit of money and having very
substantial costs? Are we saving a lot of money? We do not know. There
has not been a decent accounting.
I am not standing here quibbling about whether closing additional
bases will save money. It likely will save money. The question is
should we in this authorization bill launch two additional rounds of
base closures when the GAO and the Congressional Budget Office
indicate--especially CBO indicates --it would be wise for us to have an
interval at this point during which we fully understand what we have
done in the previous four rounds by which we have said let us close 100
military installations only about 50 of which are now closed.
Let us finish the job we have done in the previous four rounds before
we decide whether and when we initiate two additional rounds of base
closing. We might discover that the basis for the previous closures and
the conditions under which those closures were ordered and the
experience of those closures might persuade us to do something
different, maybe closing other installations in a different way. I do
not know. But we ought to have the benefit of that experience and that
knowledge before we proceed.
That is the issue. I know the Senate Democratic leader is in the
Chamber and wishes to speak on this subject, and I shall not go
further. I may have something to say later. But this is an interesting
and, I think, a useful discussion for us to have, and I appreciate the
cosponsorship of both the majority leader and the minority leader to my
second-degree amendment.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I commend the distinguished Senator from
North Dakota for his extraordinary work on this particular amendment
and appreciate very much his advocacy and the effort he has made
throughout the day to make the case. He and others have spoken
eloquently and very persuasively. There is little else I can add.
Nevertheless, I do want to touch on a number of issues largely for the
purpose of emphasis. I think it is very critical that we have an
opportunity to talk through this matter as carefully as we can.
Let me also give great credit to our distinguished ranking member. I
have had the good fortune to work with him on so many issues, and it is
extraordinarily rare that I find myself in disagreement with him on
anything. So for me to be in this position, in fact standing at his
desk, is a very uncomfortable situation, to say the least.
Mr. LEVIN. If the Democratic leader will reciprocate just for a
moment and yield, I am also standing at his desk, so we are even.
Mr. DASCHLE. I thank Senator Thurmond, the distinguished chairman,
who is standing at another desk, for his leadership and the effort he
has made in moving this bill.
Past Congresses have approved four rounds of base closures --1988,
1991, 1993 and 1995. We have already agreed to close 97 out of the 495
military bases and realign an additional 55 bases. I have joined with
many others in voting yes every step of the way. Yes on authorizing
four rounds of base closures. Yes on closing 97 bases. And yes on
aligning 55 others. So, let no one doubt this Senator's willingness to
cast a difficult vote in support of our national defense. I have done
so in the past and am prepared to do so in the future.
However, voting to close more bases at this time makes no sense--for
our military, for our budget and, perhaps most importantly, for local
communities. This is the position not only of the Senators from the
Dakotas and
[[Page S7081]]
Senators from across the country, it is also the position, as the
distinguished Senator from North Dakota noted, of the Congressional
Budget Office, of the General Accounting Office, and even the Base
Closure Commission.
I will get back to that in just a minute. The principal argument
advanced by supporters of this particular amendment is a fiscal one.
The Pentagon needs to achieve savings to stay within its $1.4 trillion
budget.
Setting aside the issue for the amount of whether the Pentagon really
needs $1.4 trillion--and given the current international circumstances
and the sacrifices we are asking of important domestic problems--we
need to look at the proponents' claims about future significant
savings.
According to Pentagon's figures, we did not break even on base
closures until 1996, nearly a decade after we began the current phase
of base closings. In other words, the Pentagon's figures indicate we
did not save one dime during the first eight years of base closures;
instead we spent billions and billions of additional dollars. It is
only after nearly a decade of economic dislocation and hardship that
the Pentagon's own analysis begins to demonstrate any net savings.
In fact it takes up to 6 years to close a base once Congress has
authorized its closure, and of the 97 bases Congress voted to close
since 1988, we have actually closed just over half this number. Since
the last round of base closures was passed in 1995, it will take the
Pentagon until the year 2001 just to complete action on the bases we
have already voted to close.
So, Mr. President, the question is, since we have not even closed
about one-half the bases that were scheduled for closure, why is it
that we are now making the effort to move to close still more before we
have completed our work on the last ones?
CBO and the General Accounting Office do not trust Pentagon figures.
In fact, CBO's analysis shows that the Pentagon has consistently
overestimated the savings that will accrue from a given round of base
closures. In the first round, the Pentagon estimated that we would
achieve $844 million in savings for the period 1990 to 1995.
Subsequently, it turned out that instead of saving money, the round
actually lost $517 million. For the second round of base closures, the
Pentagon initially estimated that we would save $2.916 billion from
1992 to 1997. What happened? We did not save $2.9 billion. We will be
fortunate to save about one-third of that amount, roughly $972 million.
For the third round, the Pentagon estimated that we would lose $715
million for the period 1994 to 1999. It now estimates we will not lose
quite as much, about $553 million. Clearly less than a stellar record
for the Pentagon's forecasters.
So the estimates according to the Department of Defense itself, which
has generated this kind of skepticism from the General Accounting
Office and the Congressional Budget Office, is that we are not doing as
well as we had originally anticipated; we are not making the savings in
base closings that we expected.
The sharp fall in Pentagon savings estimates are really represented
by this graph. The Pentagon's forecast for savings from the first round
of base closure was reduced by 161 percent for the period 1990 to 1995.
In the second of base closures, the Pentagon savings estimate has been
revised downward by 67 percent. And in the third round, the Pentagon
has already acknowledged that it miscalculated by about 23 percent.
This chart proves as clearly, I think, as anyone can that on the
basis of savings there is real reason to question whether or not we
have achieved the stated goals of the Base Closure Commission--
161 percent off the mark in the first one, 67 percent off the mark in
the second one and 23 percent off the mark in the third one.
GAO and CBO, two independent congressional advisory organizations,
have each conducted thorough examinations of the costs and savings
inherent in the base closure process. And they concur in their
findings: They can reach no conclusions on savings from base closures,
given the Pentagon's current accounting system. As expressed by GAO in
a recent report, ``[the Defense Department] cannot provide accurate
information on actual savings''. As stated by CBO in a December 1996
report, ``CBO was unable to confirm or assess DOD's estimates of cost
and savings because the [Defense] Department is unable to report actual
spending and savings for [base closure] actions.''
What we do know so far is that there has been a gross overestimation
of what will have achieved in savings to date. So, before we decide to
go to yet another round, the question presents itself, is this the
right time? Not knowing how much we are going to achieve, not knowing
whether or not we are going to save or actually spend more money, is
this the time to commit to yet another base closing round?
As I said, there are a lot of different policy questions involved
here. One is savings. Another is the tremendous ripple effect through
the local economies that will be felt well into the next century with
yet another base closing round. We are going to be living with severe
dislocations and economic loss, we know that. We are also going to be
living with short-term degradation in military capability as individual
military units pick up their operations and move from one base to the
other.
And we really have not looked at alternative approaches to achieve
savings within the $1.4 trillion defense budget. And there are
alternative cost saving approaches. For example, the bill before us
contains an additional $5 billion additional commitment for weapons
systems that were either not requested by the Pentagon or not requested
in the quantities proposed in this bill. Let me say this again. This
bill contains over $5 billion for weapons systems that the Pentagon
judged unnecessary for national security. By my calculation if we were
to attempt to save this same $5 billion through base closures alone, it
would take until nearly the end of the first decade of the 21st
century. In other words, by paring back weapons systems that even the
Pentagon did not request, we could save today what would take roughly a
decade to accomplish through base closures--even if we accept the
Pentagon's rosy and highly questionable assumptions regarding potential
savings.
So, instead of focusing exclusively on surplus bases, perhaps we need
to be discussing other ways with which to achieve any necessary
savings. Looking at surplus weapons systems may be one way to do it. I
am prepared to look at any and all options. However, before we commit
to an approach that may not generate savings and that may not give us
the framework within which a very thoughtful consideration of
infrastructure can take place, we should do what this second-degree
amendment sets forth.
The second-degree amendment is based on two major assumptions. First,
Congress should allow already authorized base closures to go forward
before we cause still more dislocation and hardship. Second, Congress
should be fully informed about the implications of past and future
closings before we commit ourselves to still more closings.
Therefore, rather than launch another round immediately, the second-
degree provides the Pentagon with time to develop accounting techniques
so that they and we can fully and accurately understand the costs and
savings from previous and future rounds of base closures. This
amendment requires the Pentagon to prepare a report on these financial
changes and to have that report reviewed by the GAO and CBO. Finally,
our amendment requires the Pentagon to do all of this in a timely
manner.
Just as important is what this amendment does not do. The amendment
does not preclude future base closures that may reveal themselves to be
justified once we fully understand the ramifications. If there are to
be future base closures, we simply want to be able to ensure that we
understand where we are today in terms of infrastructure changes we
have already approved and to be able to accurately assess the long-term
impact of any proposed future changes. That is the concept that I think
the CBO itself has articulated.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, consideration of
additional base closures ``should follow an interval during which DOD
and independent analysts examine the actual impact of the measures that
have been taken thus far. Such a pause [they add] would allow the
Department of Defense to
[[Page S7082]]
collect data necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of initiatives and
to determine the actual costs incurred and savings achieved. Additional
time would also allow more informed assessment of the local impacts of
the bases already closed.''
Finally Mr. President, after hearing the views of GAO and CBO, I ask
the Senate to consider the perspective of the last Base Closure
Commission. Largely as a result of the continued turbulence and the
lack of hard information, the Commission itself recommended that
Congress not authorize another round of closures until the year 2001.
Only our amendment is consistent with the findings of the Base Closure
Commission.
So based upon the analysis presented to us by CBO, by the GAO, by the
Base Closure Commission, I think to move yet another round at this time
is just premature.
My record on base closures is clear. I have supported then when I
thought they were needed and would produce the desired outcome--a
leaner, more effective military that minimizes disruptions to our
communities. GAO and CBO indicate that the Pentagon cannot tell us
today what we have saved from past rounds, let alone yet-to-be
determined future rounds. The only statement that can be made with any
confidence is that our communities will suffer dislocations and
disruptions well into the 21st century from actions that we have
already taken.
The case for inflicting additional suffering on them is far from
compelling, especially when there are many other ways to achieve the
necessary efficiencies within our defense budget. What we need to do is
to find them. GAO, CBO, and the Base Closure Commission all acknowledge
as much.
Let's work together to see that happens. Only one base closure
amendment protects the interests of our military and our communities,
that is the second-degree amendment pending. I urge its support.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter we
just received from the Secretary of Defense about the savings which
have resulted from BRAC 1993 actions, a letter dated July 9, 1997, be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
The Secretary of Defense,
Washington, DC, July 9, 1997.
Hon. Strom Thurmond,
Chairman, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Chairman: As the Senate moves to final
consideration of its version of the FY 98 Defense
Authorization Bill, I urge you to support the McCain-Levin
amendment authorizing BRAC rounds in 1999 and 2001. We
estimate two additional rounds would result in savings of
approximately $2.7 billion annually. These savings are
absolutely critical to the Department's modernization plans.
There have been some questions regarding the savings
actually realized from previous base closures. We have taken
these questions seriously and asked the Department of Defense
Inspector General (DoDIG) to take an independent look at this
issue. The IG's preliminary results indicate that there is no
basis for concern that BRAC has not been highly cost
effective. The preliminary audit examined BRAC 93 actions,
including the largest Navy closure (Mare Island) and eight
Air Force bases closed or realigned. For these bases, the IG
found that DoD overestimated costs by $148 million and
underestimated savings by $614 million. I have attached a
copy of the IG's preliminary report for your review.
I would greatly appreciate your support for two additional
BRAC rounds and hope you find this information useful in your
consideration of the McCain-Levin amendment.
Enclosure.
Bill Cohen.
____
Inspector General,
Department of Defense,
Arlington, VA, June 23, 1997.
Memorandum for Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense
(Acquisition and Technology)
Subject: Review of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Costs
and Savings
This is to provide the interim results of the audit being
conducted by this office in response to the Under Secretary
of Defense for Acquisition and Technology memorandum of
February 7, 1997. The audit objectives are to compare the
BRAC costs and savings estimates in previous budgets with
actual experience and to identify lessons learned regarding
management controls for estimating and tracking BRAC costs
and savings.
The lack of records makes retroactive reconstruction of
actual costs and savings from pre-1993 BRAC impossible at
this point. Likewise, it is too soon to assess BRAC 95 costs
and savings. We have focused our review, therefore, on the
BRAC 93 round. The audit universe for BRAC 93 is comprised of
cost estimates totalling $7.3 billion and savings estimates
of $7.5 billion through FY 1999. The bulk of both the BRAC 93
budgeted costs and savings, $5.2 billion and $4.6 billion
respectively, was related to Navy installations. During the
first portion of the audit, we reviewed the experience at the
largest BRAC 93 site, Mare Island Naval Shipyard, and all
eight Air Force BRAC 93 sites. In addition, we started
identifying construction project cancellations at all Navy
sites. The nine fully audited installations had BRAC cost
estimates of $1.1 billion and savings estimates of $1.8
billion.
The initial audit results indicate that the Navy and Air
Force erred on the side of conservative estimating, over-
estimating costs at the sites reviewed by up to $148 million
and underestimating savings by $614 million. The reasons for
the variances included:
Some cost estimates were related to block obligations for
one-time implementation costs, which were never adjusted to
reflect actual disbursements. Researching these largely
invalid obligations could free up significant funding for
current BRAC requirements.
Canceled military construction projects valued at $8
million at Mare Island were not counted in savings estimates.
An additional $58 million of canceled construction projects
at other Navy BRAC 93 sites was not counted because
incomplete projects funded in prior year programs were not
counted, even if they were curtailed.
The Navy assumed that 40 percent of the indirect civilian
labor costs at Mare Island would transfer to other shipyards,
but the audit indicated minimal related increases in other
shipyards indirect costs.
Reductions for base operation support costs at Mare Island
were underestimated after the first year of closure.
Documentation did not exist to explain differences between
the Air Force biennial budget and reductions reflected in the
Air Force Future Years Defense Plan.
The results of the audit to date, while not fully staffed
nor statistically projectable across either BRAC 93 or all
BRAC rounds, appear to corroborate the DoD position that
concerns that BRAC has not been highly cost effective are
unfounded. As a result of consultation with the Deputy Under
Secretary of Defense (Industrial Affairs and Installations),
we plan to continue auditing the BRAC 93 costs and savings.
In our audit report this fall, we will provide
recommendations for management controls on estimating and
tracking costs and savings for any future BRAC rounds.
We hope that this update is helpful. If there are
questions, please feel free to contact me or Mr. Robert J.
Lieberman, Assistant Inspector General for Auditing, at (703)
604-8901.
Eleanor Hill,
Inspector General.
Mr. LEVIN. As I indicated before, Mr. President, since we are talking
about estimated savings, the IG that was requested by the Department of
Defense to make these estimates found that the costs were overestimated
by $148 million and savings underestimated by $614 million, which means
in this study by the DOD IG, there were significantly greater savings
than had been predicted by the BRAC commission. That, of course, is
somewhat different--very different--in terms of the evidence of that
presented by the distinguished Democratic leader. We are not sure
whether the leader's numbers came from the original Department of
Defense estimates before they went to BRAC, and that is something we
will check out, because in all but one case, the commission produced
savings significantly less than had been requested by the Department of
Defense.
Finally, relative to the argument that the cost of previous base
closures have been underestimated, one of the reasons the original
Department of Defense estimates were high was that they estimated the
savings from the sale of land. We changed the rules in the middle on
that one. The revenue never materialized because we changed the rules,
very consciously, to provide that most base property would be given
away when the base was closed rather than sold. We did that to make
economic redevelopment more feasible. That has benefited all of our
States just about where these closings have taken place. So that is
another possible
[[Page S7083]]
explanation for the difference in these numbers.
I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. If the Senator will withhold.
Amendment No. 670, As Modified
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, on the amendment
offered by the Senator from Minnesota, there will now be 15 minutes of
debate equally divided between the Senator from Minnesota and the
Senator from South Carolina. Who yields time?
Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this amendment, which is an amendment
that I have offered with Senator Harkin, from Iowa, is very simple and
straightforward. It authorizes, so it is not subject to a point of
order, it just authorizes the Secretary of Defense to transfer to the
Secretary of Agriculture $5 million over the next 5 years, $25 million
altogether. That is $5 million out of a $265 billion Pentagon budget, a
budget that is some $2.6 billion more than the Pentagon itself has
requested.
So out of that $2.6 billion more than the Pentagon has requested,
this is an amendment that says take $5 million and transfer it to the
Secretary of Agriculture; that is to say, authorize the Secretary of
Defense to transfer this to the Secretary of Agriculture.
This $5 million program per year was eliminated. We should never have
done that. This is to correct an egregious mistake that we made. This
has everything in the world to do with malnutrition and hunger among
children. This $5 million has been used effectively nationwide--a small
amount of money--as a catalyst, as an outreach program, to enable
States and school districts to set up and expand the School Breakfast
Program. As a matter of fact, I think one of the reasons it was
eliminated was that it had been so successful, in fact, in enabling
school districts to expand the School Breakfast Program, the argument
then being we would have to invest more resources in the School
Breakfast Program.
I read from a letter received from the Food Research & Action Center
that points out that only ``seven of ten, 71.4 percent, of the schools
that offer school lunch participate in the School Breakfast Program.
This represents only 65,000 of the almost 92,000 schools that''
participate. ``Additionally, just 39.6 percent of low-income children
participating in the National School Lunch Program also participate in
the School Breakfast Program. While more than 14 million low-income
children participate in the National School Lunch Program, only 5.6
million participate in the School Breakfast Program.''
Is it too much to ask, as we keep talking about our children being
our most precious resource, given the fact that all these children are
God's children, is it too much to ask for $5 million to be put back
into this program that has been so successful? That is what this
amendment is all about.
Mr. President, there are 8 million children who don't participate,
and if these children had a chance to get a good breakfast and these
children, therefore, were not hungry, they would be in a much better
position to learn. When children are hungry and children do not have a
good breakfast and can't start out the day, they are not going to be
able to learn, and when they are not able to learn, as adults, they are
not able to earn. This amendment should be adopted with 100 votes.
I reserve the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. THURMOND addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I oppose the amendment offered by
Senator Wellstone in regard to the School Breakfast Program.
I remind my colleagues that the President proposed the repeal of
these startup grants during last year's welfare debate. In addition,
the Democratic substitute welfare reform bill contained a provision to
repeal these grants. Obviously, people across the political spectrum
believe this grant program to be unnecessary.
I also remind my colleagues that this requirement was not identified
in the budget request, and presently, about four in every five low-
income children already attend a school with a school breakfast
program. The breakfast program has expanded to the extent that it is
not clear additional funds are necessary or would have the effect of
bringing more schools into the program.
The last point I want to make is that transferring funds from the
Department of Defense, even making the authority discretionary, is bad
precedent. We shouldn't make this a precedent. We, in the Congress,
should make these decisions and not delegate them to the Secretary of
Defense.
Mr. President, we have a budget agreement. We should not void this
agreement and our responsibilities to make these decisions. I urge my
colleagues to defeat this amendment.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, might I ask how much time I have?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota has 4 minutes, 18
seconds.
Mr. WELLSTONE. I am waiting for my colleague, Senator Harkin. I ask
unanimous consent to add Senator Harkin as an original cosponsor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent that a variety of letters of
endorsement be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the letters were ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Food Research &
Action Center,
Washington, DC, July 9, 1997.
Senator Paul Wellstone,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Wellstone: We are writing to enthusiastically
support your amendment to the DOD Reauthorization Bill which
would authorize the transfer of funds from DOD to the school
breakfast and summer food start up and expansion programs.
Both the school breakfast and summer food programs remain
under-utilized and many public and private sponsors require
special initial funding to get programs off the ground.
Funding is necessary to inform potential sponsors of the
availability of these programs and how to qualify.
Only approximately seven of ten (71.4%) of the schools that
offer school lunch participate in the School Breakfast
Program. This represents only 65,000 of the almost 92,000
schools that offer school lunch also offer school breakfast.
Additionally, just 39.6% of the low-income children
participating in the National School Lunch Program also
participate in the School Breakfast Program. While more than
14 million low-income children participate in the National
School Lunch Program, only 5.6 million participate in the
School Breakfast program. Participation rates for the Summer
Food Program are even lower.
Your amendment and your efforts on behalf of low-income
children will not only serve the immediate need to get food
into children's bellies, but will also serve the long-term
goal of feeding their brains, and getting them ready to
learn!
Sincerely,
Edward Cooney,
Deputy Director.
Ellen Teller,
Senior Attorney for Government Affairs.
____
Bread for the World,
Silver Spring, MD, July 9, 1997.
Dear Senator Wellstone: Bread for the World, a grassroots
Christian citizens' movement against hunger, heartily
supports your efforts to strengthen the School Breakfast
Program. We hereby endorse your amendment to require the
Secretary of Defense to transfer $5 million to the Secretary
of Agriculture to provide funds for outreach and startup for
the School Breakfast Program.
We agree with you that a hungry child can not learn the way
they should and we know that in the end, this hurts not only
the child, but our society as a whole. A nation as blessed as
ours should not allow children to go hungry.
Thank you for your continued commitment to hungry children.
Sincerely,
Lynette Engelhardt,
Domestic Policy Analyst.
____
AFSCME,
Washington, DC, July 9, 1997.
Hon. Paul Wellstone,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Wellstone: On behalf of the 1.3 million
members of the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees (AFSCME), we strongly support your
amendment to transfer $5 million from the Department of
Defense to the School Breakfast Program to fund the outreach
and startup grant program.
The School Breakfast Program has proven successful in
improving the health and educational achievement of children
who have been able to participate. Unfortunately, about
27,000 schools do not offer the School Breakfast Program
because they lack the
[[Page S7084]]
capital funds needed to meet the startup costs. This deprives
eight million low-income children of the opportunity to eat a
nutritious and healthy meal in school. In prior years, the $5
million grant program was critical in enabling schools to
establish a breakfast program.
We support your amendment to continue the outreach and
startup School Breakfast grant program with $5 million for
fiscal year 1998 by transferring the funds from the
Department of Defense's budget.
Sincerely,
Charles M. Loveless,
Director of Legislation.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, the Wellstone amendment would require
the Secretary of Defense to transfer $5 million to the Secretary of
Agriculture for school breakfasts
The purpose of the nondefense program that Senator Wellstone wants to
support with defense funds may be laudatory; however, the amendment is
ill-considered and very problematic.
First the amendment would, in principle, violate the bipartisan
budget agreement that Congress has completed with the President and
that we are working hard to enforce: the amendment would reduce the
amount of defense spending the agreement specifies and would increase
nondefense discretionary spending above the levels of the agreement.
Second, the amendment would violate the intent of firewalls that
Congress has adopted over the years--and as recently as the 1998 budget
resolution that we just passed last month. As all Senators know, these
firewalls are designed to prevent transfers between defense
discretionary spending and nondefense discretionary spending, and they
establish a 60-vote point of order against such transfers. However, the
amendment has been modified to go to great lengths to circumvent a
Budget Act point of order and has confused the issue of whether it
actually constitutes a Budget Act violation.
Third, the amendment imposes an unfair obligation on the
Appropriations Committee. If the amendment is passed, the
Appropriations Committee is given the Hobson's choice of having to
repeal the Wellstone amendment or to seek a directed scoring of the
transferred money so that it would count as nondefense discretionary
spending--as it should. This would, in turn, require the relevant
appropriations subcommittees to find offsets for this additional
nondefense discretionary spending. If the Appropriations Committee
reports a Defense appropriation bill consistent with the letter and
intent of the Wellstone amendment, it will immediately be subject to a
60-vote point of order.
For all of these reasons, the Wellstone amendment is bad legislation,
and I urge all Senators to reject it, whether or not they favor the
program that would benefit from this amendment.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this should be an easy vote for
Senators: $5 million out of over $2 billion more than the Pentagon
asked for to have an outreach program and enable local school districts
to buy refrigerators so they can have a school breakfast program so
that we can make sure that all of our children go to school and are
able to learn.
It is that simple. I mean, where are our priorities? We can't even
come up with $5 million? This is not a mandate. This just simply
authorizes the Secretary of Defense to transfer this. This is a way
that we as a Senate can, in fact, commit a little bit more by way of
resources to make sure that there is an adequate nutritious breakfast
for more children who go to school in America. How in the world can you
vote against it?
I reserve the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, how much time do I have left?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Two minutes, thirty-nine seconds.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Might I ask whether or not the other side intends to
respond at all? If not, I will finish up. I am trying to wait for
Senator Harkin, but I will go ahead and conclude. Might I ask whether
the other side has yielded back its time?
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, no.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina wishes to keep
his time reserved.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, a report from Tufts University Center
on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition on the link between nutrition and
cognitive development in children states that even before results are
detectable, inadequate food intake limits the ability of children to
learn, affecting their social interactions, intuitiveness, and overall
cognitive functions.
Come on, we have to stop having all of these conferences on early
childhood development and talking about children, and now we know that
we have some 8 million children who don't get a chance to participate
in this program, we know there are many children who are malnourished,
and we know for $5 million a year out of this budget, which is $265
billion, $2.6 billion more than the Pentagon asked for, we can't even
make this kind of small commitment to children in America? That is what
this vote is about.
I reserve the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time is reserved. Who yields
time?
Mr. THURMOND. I yield such time as he may require to Senator
Coverdell.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia is recognized for the
5 minutes, 40 seconds remaining of the time of the Senator from South
Carolina.
Mr. COVERDELL. I thank the Senator from South Carolina and compliment
him on his fine work as chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
Amendment No. 771
Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be added as
a cosponsor of the Dorgan-Lott-Daschle second-degree amendment to the
McCain amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, the McCain amendment purports to create
another series of base realignment closure commissions. I am opposed to
that and have so stated and have so advised the Secretary of Defense. I
do not believe there should be another Base Realignment Closure
Commission until the administration can certify to the Congress that
all the work of the previous Base Realignment Closure Commissions has
occurred and properly.
Many of us, particularly in the States affected by Air Force depots,
believe the President and the administration undermined BRAC and
undermined the confidence in the people and the Congress with regard to
its integrity, because essentially the President overrode the 1995 BRAC
recommendations, in our judgment, particularly as they relate to Kelly
Air Force Base in Texas and McClellan Air Force Base in California.
That is in dispute. I certainly acknowledge the comments and
characterizations that have been made by the good Senators from Texas
and California.
But this issue must be resolved and it must restore the confidence of
the Congress and it must reassert an integrity into the process for the
people who undergo this horrendous process, that the legislation has to
apply to the President, the administration and the Department of
Defense, not just to the people in Congress.
I rise in opposition to the McCain amendment and in support of the
second-degree amendment offered by Senators Dorgan, Lott and Daschle.
I yield any remaining time back to the managing Senator.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. THURMOND addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Amendment No. 670, As Modified
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I move to table Wellstone amendment 670.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has not been yielded back on both
sides.
Mr. THURMOND. I yield back any time I have.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina yields back
the remainder of his time. The Senator from Minnesota has 52 seconds.
Mr. HARKIN. How much time, Mr. President?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Fifty-two seconds.
Mr. HARKIN. How much?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Fifty-two.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Wellstone
amendment. This School Breakfast Program has been one of the best in
this country. Already we have kids getting school
[[Page S7085]]
lunches, but they don't get the school breakfast.
I say that if you ever want to see a clean plate, you go to a school
breakfast program. These kids come in, they are hungry, there is not a
drop of food left when they put those trays back into the hopper. The
school lunch may be a little different.
If you really want to have an impact on early childhood education and
getting these kids to learn, this is the place to put the money. It was
wrong to take it out of welfare reform. I tried at that time to put the
money in, and we could not do it. It was wrong for this to be taken out
in the welfare reform to save that kind of money. It does not save
money. It ruins lives because we are not providing the money for the
outreach program for the school breakfast startups and for the summer
feeding program.
This is a small amount of money. I think out of this whole defense
thing we could at least authorize the Secretary of Defense to transfer
a measly $5 million to get this job done.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is now yielded back. Time has expired
on this amendment.
Amendment No. 424
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question now occurs on amendment No. 424
offered by the Senator from Washington [Mr. Gorton]. Debate on this
amendment is limited to 15 minutes equally divided between Senator
Gorton and Senator Inouye.
Who yields time?
Mrs. MURRAY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. President, I come to the floor this evening to speak on amendment
No. 424 to the defense authorization legislation that was proposed
yesterday by my colleague, Senator Gorton. I am a cosponsor of this
amendment to require the Navy to reopen the selection process for the
donation of the USS Missouri.
From the beginning, I have followed closely the Navy's handling of
the Missouri, working with Senator Gorton, Congressman Norm Dicks, the
Washington congressional delegation, and my constituents. The ``Mighty
Mo'' is a relic of immense importance and historical significance. It
was on the decks of this great battleship that World War II came to a
welcome end.
The Missouri is particularly valued by the residents of my home State
where she has been berthed for most of the last 40 years in Bremerton.
She is a source of great pride to the veterans in my State, many of
whom served in World War II, including in the Pacific theater and
aboard the Missouri.
I have reviewed yesterday's debate over the amendment, and I want to
take this opportunity to make several additional remarks for the
Record.
I first want to commend both Senator Gorton and Senator Inouye. The
debate was indicative of the immense interest in the Missouri and all
of the States that competed for the honor of displaying this important
piece of our history.
While I cannot speak for the other applicants, I know of the care,
the time, and the commitment demonstrated by the Bremerton, WA,
community in preparing its proposal to the Navy. Bremerton, Kitsap
County and Washington State have developed a kinship with the ``Mighty
Mo.'' It is because of this kinship with the battleship, and our 40-
year record of paying tribute to the Missouri each and every day, that
I continue to believe that Bremerton is the ideal home for the
Missouri.
Last August, the Secretary of the Navy announced the decision to
award the Missouri to Honolulu, HI. Following the Navy's decision,
significant questions were raised regarding the Navy's process in
awarding the battleship. It is those questions, including a General
Accounting Office report, that brings me here today to seek the
Senate's support for our amendment to reopen the Missouri donee
selection process.
I want to reiterate what our amendment seeks to accomplish. We simply
seek only the Senate's support to instruct the Navy to conduct a new
donee selection process. We do not seek to influence or prejudge that
selection process. We only want a fair competition administered by the
Navy in a manner worthy of this great battleship.
I recognize that the Navy is under no obligation to conduct a
competition for important relics like the Missouri, but the fact is the
Navy did conduct a competition for the Missouri. Having conducted this
competition, I think it is only fair to the competing communities to
expect the Navy to conduct itself in an aboveboard and a forthright
manner.
Clearly, significant mistakes were made by the Navy in the Missouri
competition. The GAO report clearly identifies the Navy's numerous
shortcomings in this competition. Proponents and opponents can and do
differ over whether the Navy's handling of the competition influenced
the outcome. But I find it very difficult to conclude that all
communities were treated fairly by the Navy. And that is what we are
asking for today. It really is just a simple matter of fairness for all
of the competing communities.
I urge my colleagues to support the Gorton-Murray-Feinstein
amendment.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. INOUYE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, the matter before us goes much deeper than
the gallant lady, the U.S.S. Missouri. It involves the process of
competition in the U.S. Government. Every day there is some
competition. There is a competition between two great manufacturing
plants to see whether this plant should build a tank or that plant.
There are competitions going on as to what company should build the
joint strike fighter or the C-17 or the B-2. Should it be Boeing?
Should it be McDonnell Douglas?
These competitions are part of the life of the U.S. Government. And
if we look upon this measure before us as a simple Missouri amendment,
then we have not seen the deeper picture; we will be setting a very,
very dangerous precedent, Mr. President.
This competition was won fairly and impartially. If the Congress of
the United States is to take a step to overturn this decision, then
what will happen to all the other competitions that we have been faced
with? Whenever there is a contest on who would build that submarine--
should it be Norfolk or should it be Connecticut?--if Connecticut wins,
should Norfolk come to the Congress and appeal the case, or vice versa?
Mr. President, let me just read once again from the letter from the
Secretary of the Navy. The Secretary says--and this is from a letter
dated June 10; and it is part of the Record at this moment:
I have reviewed the General Accounting Office report . .
. and I find that it contains nothing that would warrant
reopening the process. The General Accounting Office stated
that the Navy ``impartially applied'' the donation selection
process, and that all applicants received the same
information at the same time . . . I remain confident that
my selection of Pearl Harbor was in the best interest of the
Navy and our Nation, based on the impartial review of the
relative merits of the four acceptable applications. . . .
The General Accounting Office also noted, however, that none
of the applicants requested clarification on any aspect of
these two criteria [that the proponents speak of].
No one complained about the process when it was ongoing. The
complaints come at the end of the process.
It may interest you, Mr. President, to know that the State of
Missouri--and this ship is named after the State of Missouri--by
resolution that was passed unanimously by the Missouri Senate, the
general assembly, the House of Representatives concurring:
. . . memorialize the Congress of the United States, the
President of the United States, the Chief of Naval
Operations, and the Secretary of the Navy to take any
appropriate action necessary to permanently locate the U.S.S.
Missouri at Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawaii, next to the
U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, for the purpose of serving as a
Naval Memorial and Museum. . . .
There is another organization, Mr. President. It is the Iowa Class
Preservation Association. The U.S.S. Missouri is an Iowa class
battleship. I will not read the whole letter, but I ask unanimous
consent that it be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
[[Page S7086]]
Iowa Class Preservation Association
To: Mr. Jerry Kremkow, USS Missouri Memorial Association,
2610 Kilihau St., Honolulu, HI.
Dear Mr. Kremkow, The Iowa Class Preservation Association
is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to acquiring
the museum rights to one of the Iowa Class Battleships
currently in storage.
All four ships were recently released by the US Navy and of
these only the USS Missouri, which looks like she's heading
to Pearl Harbor, seems safe from the scrap yard. Our
organization plans on acquiring and establishing one of the
three other ships as a museum in the city of San Diego, CA.
We believe that the combination of port facilities, tourism
base and the lack of capital ship museums on the west coast
would make San Diego an ideal location for a ship exhibit.
Our major concern is that the East Coast already has
several battleship and aircraft carrier museums and has
reached it saturation point. There is no way all three
battleships will be able to survive on the East Coast.
Therefore unless we can bring one of the three to the West
Coast, it is highly likely that at least one of these fine
ships will be scrapped.
As stated the purpose of our group is to save one of the
ships that is in danger of being lost due to lack of support.
As long as your organization is diligently seeking to acquire
the USS Missouri we will support you and not seek to obtain
the Missouri. We personally feel that a berth near the USS
Arizona Memorial would be an appropriate place for such an
historic ship. We look forward to working with your
organization in saving two of the magnificent battleships.
Sincerely,
Robert Daniels,
President.
Steven Rupp,
Vice President.
Mr. INOUYE. It says that:
The Iowa Class Preservation Association . . . is
dedicated to acquiring the museum rights to one of the Iowa
Class Battleships currently in storage.
* * * * *
We personally feel that a berth near the USS Arizona
Memorial would be an appropriate place for [the Missouri].
Here we have a letter from the Navy League of the United States. And
I ask unanimous consent that this letter, as well as another, be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the letters were ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Navy League of the United States,
Arlington, VA, March 31, 1995.
Hon. John H. Dalton,
Secretary of the Navy,
Washington, DC.
Dear Secretary Dalton: I am writing on behalf of The USS
Missouri (BB63) Memorial Association and its efforts to have
the Battleship enshrined at Pearl Harbor.
As you are probably aware, the Navy League of the United
States is quite strong in the Pacific Area and particularly
in Honolulu which has the largest Navy League Council in the
world. This project has the complete support of the Pacific
Area Navy League, which has supplied much of manpower and
motivation to move this effort along for the past two years.
Our Hawaii Navy League councils, led by the Honolulu
Council have a proven record of ``getting the job done'' with
projects such as The Pearl Harbor Memorial, The Bowfin
Memorial, commissioning of USS Lake Erie and provisions of
MARS equipment for vessels deploying out of or thru Pearl
Harbor. We feel that this tribute to peace and victory
belongs along side of the revered USS Arizona Memorial in
Pearl Harbor. We urge you to look favorably on this project
and award USS Missouri to the Memorial Association for its
purposes.
Yours very truly,
J. Walsh Hanley.
____
Navy League of the United States,
Jefferson City, MO, July 9, 1997.
Dear Senator: In Executive Session this afternoon the Board
of Directors of the Mid-Missouri Council of the Navy League
of the United States voted in favor of the transfer of the
battleship U.S.S. Missouri to Pearl Harbor. We feel this is
the most appropriate location for the Missouri.
We are opposed to the Gorton Amendment and urge you to vote
against it.
Sincerely,
Herman Smith,
President.
Mr. INOUYE. In part it states:
This project has the complete support of the Pacific Area
Navy League, which has supplied much of [the] manpower and
motivation to move this effort along for the past two years.
Mr. President, I have a letter from the American Legion of the
Department of Missouri, Inc. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed
in the Record.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
The American Legion,
Department of Missouri, Inc.,
Jefferson City, MO, July 9, 1997.
Hon. Daniel K. Inouye,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Inouye: I am writing on behalf of The American
Legion State of Missouri to express our stronger possible
disagreement with the proposed Gorton Amendment (S. Admt.
424) to the Defense Authorization Bill (S. 936).
If adopted, this amendment will stop the transfer of the
battleship Missouri to Pearl Harbor and force the Secretary
of the Navy to reopen the competition. The American Legion
State of Missouri in convention voted unanimously to transfer
the battleship to Pearl Harbor. The 1996 General Assembly
State of Missouri unanimously passed a concurrent resolution
supporting the transfer to Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor was chosen by the Secretary of the Navy after
rigorous evaluation as the site most suitable for
memorializing the Missouri. The process was fair and honest,
and the results should be carried out. We agree with this
decision.
USS Missouri belongs in Pearl Harbor, within sight of USS
Arizona, where future generations can come and understand
American's involvement in World War II, from beginning to
end.
I urge you and the honorable members of the United States
Senate to vote against the Gorton Amendment.
Sincerely,
James S. (Jim) Whitfield,
Chairman, Legislative Assistance Committee.
Mr. INOUYE. This letter makes it very clear that:
[The] USS Missouri belongs in Pearl Harbor, within site of
the USS Arizona, where future generations can come and
understand America's involvement in World War II, from
beginning to end.
Mr. President, the GAO report has been cited. The GAO report makes it
very clear that Pearl Harbor won the competition without question. And,
more importantly, Hawaii did not lose the competition even if it is
based solely on financial and technical issues.
Mr. President, I realize that no one relishes the thought of losing.
We all want to win. But the human affairs of this Nation would tell us
that at times one wins and another loses. And if we are to set a
precedent that whenever someone loses that he will come to Congress to
appeal his case, the process that we have established for the past
decades to determine decisions that are very necessary to our Defense
Department, if such be subject to appeal at each turn by the Congress,
we will get nowhere.
I just hope that those of us here will recognize from this report and
from all other reports that this competition was won fairly and
impartially and that it is in the public interest and the interests of
the Navy and our Nation that this ship be based in Pearl Harbor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Who yields time?
There are approximately 3 minutes and 30 seconds remaining for the
proponents of the amendment.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Amendment No. 670, as Modified
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I had previously moved to table the
Wellstone amendment. It seems there is some misunderstanding, but I so
move to table the Wellstone amendment and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). The question is on agreeing to
the motion to table the Wellstone amendment numbered 670, as modified.
The yeas and nays have been ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Indiana [Mr. Coats] is
necessarily absent.
Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Maryland [Ms. Mikulski] is
necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 65, nays 33, as follows:
[[Page S7087]]
[Rollcall Vote No. 162 Leg.]
YEAS--65
Abraham
Allard
Ashcroft
Bennett
Biden
Bingaman
Bond
Breaux
Brownback
Bryan
Burns
Campbell
Chafee
Cleland
Cochran
Collins
Coverdell
Craig
D'Amato
DeWine
Dodd
Domenici
Enzi
Faircloth
Frist
Gorton
Graham
Gramm
Grams
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Hatch
Helms
Hollings
Hutchinson
Hutchison
Inhofe
Inouye
Kempthorne
Kerrey
Kyl
Landrieu
Lieberman
Lott
Lugar
Mack
McCain
McConnell
Murkowski
Nickles
Robb
Roberts
Roth
Santorum
Sessions
Shelby
Smith (NH)
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Stevens
Thomas
Thompson
Thurmond
Warner
NAYS--33
Akaka
Baucus
Boxer
Bumpers
Byrd
Conrad
Daschle
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Ford
Glenn
Harkin
Jeffords
Johnson
Kennedy
Kerry
Kohl
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Moseley-Braun
Moynihan
Murray
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sarbanes
Specter
Torricelli
Wellstone
Wyden
NOT VOTING--2
Coats
Mikulski
The motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 670), as modified,
was agreed to.
Mr. THURMOND. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. KERRY. I move to lay that on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. THURMOND. Madam President, I ask for order in the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will be in order.
Amendment No. 424
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will now be 2
minutes of debate, equally divided, on the Gorton amendment No. 424.
Who yields time?
Mr. GORTON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 4
minutes equally divided.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GORTON. Madam President, I ask the Chair to bring the Senate to
order, please.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will be in order. The Senator from
Washington is entitled to be heard.
Mr. REID addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is still not in order. The
Presiding Officer would appreciate it if the Senate would be in order.
The Presiding Officer hopes not to break the gavel.
The Senator from Nevada is recognized.
Mr. REID. Madam President, I have two congressional fellows, and I
ask unanimous consent that they be allowed floor privileges during the
pendency of this action.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. KEMPTHORNE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho is recognized.
Mr. KEMPTHORNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that King
Gillespie of my staff be allowed floor privileges.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington is recognized.
Mr. GORTON. Madam President, a few years ago, when the battleship
Missouri was decommissioned for the second time, after more than 30
years, the Navy began a process to determine where it could become a
permanent historic monument. The Navy carried on that process over an
extended period of time under the rules that had been applicable to all
previous donations.
Two weeks before it made its final decision, the Navy informed the
applicants of two additional and quite separate considerations. It did
not tell any of the applicants the weight those considerations would be
given. It did not inform them of the fact that they could submit
additional items. They were really quite separate from the first set of
considerations. At the end of that first round, Bremerton and Honolulu
were essentially tied. At end of the second and unfair round, the Navy
awarded the Missouri to Honolulu.
The General Accounting Office--our General Accounting Office--has
reported these changes, has reported that this was the wrong thing to
do, and has reported that the Navy should change its processes in the
future.
My amendment does not seek to change the location of the Missouri. It
just asks the Navy to start the process over again, to treat all
applicants fairly, to set the rules in advance, and not to change the
rules just before the game is over without telling people what the
weight of the new rules will be.
I ask for your votes on it as a matter of simple fairness to all of
the applicants--both in California and Washington and in Hawaii--in a
process which is very important to each one of these communities and
which the Navy, very regrettably, has carried on in a totally unfair
fashion to this point.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. BUMPERS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, this proposal is very important both to
the opponents and proponents. I am still unable to hear because of the
noise in the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. THURMOND addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Privilege of the Floor
Mr. THURMOND. Madam President, I ask that Janice Nielsen, a
legislative fellow working in Senator Craig's office, be granted the
privilege of the floor during the duration of the debate on S. 936, the
defense authorization bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. INOUYE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii is recognized.
Mr. INOUYE. Madam President, the GAO report makes it very clear that
the competition was impartial and fair and that, when all the numbers
were counted, Pearl Harbor was the winner because, as the Secretary of
the Navy has indicated, it will serve our Nation's interests and the
interests of the U.S. Navy to have the Missouri memorialized and made
into a monument next to the Arizona so that all Americans from this day
on will be able to see in one place the beginning and the end of World
War II.
But, more importantly, Madam President, this amendment does not
involve just the Missouri. It involves the process of competition. If
the Congress is to be called upon at each time whenever someone loses,
where do we end? Whenever there is a competition for the building of a
submarine, should the losing State come forward to the Congress and ask
for reconsideration? If they lose a carrier, should the losing State
come here and ask the colleagues here for reconsideration? We have
competition going on at every moment of the day.
Madam President, let us not set a bad precedent. I think the time has
come for decision. The merits are clear. The State of Missouri is in
favor of their ship being berthed in Hawaii. The American Legion is in
favor of that. The Navy League of the Pacific is in favor of that. I
think the Nation would prefer to have the U.S.S. Missouri have its
final resting place in Pearl Harbor where it belongs.
Thank you, very much.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
The question occurs on amendment No. 424 offered by the Senator from
Washington [Mr. Gorton].
Mr. THURMOND addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina is recognized.
Mr. THURMOND. Madam President, I ask unanimous-consent that the
remaining rollcall votes in this series be limited to 10 minutes each.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. COATS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
Mr. COATS. Madam President, I was unavoidably delayed by the weather
coming in and just missed that last vote. I wonder if it would be all
right with my colleagues if I ask unanimous consent to be recorded in
favor of the tabling on the last vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Parliamentarian informs the Presiding
Officer that unfortunately that unanimous-consent request is not
permissible under the Senate rules.
[[Page S7088]]
Mr. COATS. That is acceptable to me, if the Record will indicate that
I made the request.
Mr. BYRD addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia is recognized.
Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I hope that the Record will show nothing
with reference to the Parliamentarian. The rule clearly states that
once the Chair has announced the results of a vote no Senator may be
allowed to vote. Moreover, the Chair cannot even entertain such a
request under the rule.
Mr. COATS. Madam President, I withdraw that request. I wouldn't want
to do anything to offend the rules. I have been flying in from Nairobi,
Africa, for the last 32 hours on British Airways, which has been on
strike, and had to change. And I can't tell you what I have gone
through in the last 32 hours to try to get here for these votes. But I
wouldn't want to offend the rules.
So I will leave it at that.
I withdraw my request.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment
No. 424 offered by the Senator from Washington [Mr. Gorton]. On this
question, the yeas and nays have been ordered, and the clerk will call
the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Maryland [Ms. Mikulski] is
necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
who desire to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 46, nays 53, as follows:
{Rollcall Vote No. 163 Leg.}
YEAS--46
Abraham
Allard
Ashcroft
Boxer
Burns
Campbell
Chafee
Coats
Collins
Coverdell
Craig
D'Amato
DeWine
Domenici
Enzi
Faircloth
Feinstein
Frist
Gorton
Gramm
Grams
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Helms
Hutchison
Inhofe
Jeffords
Kempthorne
Kyl
Lott
Lugar
Mack
McConnell
Murray
Nickles
Roth
Santorum
Sessions
Shelby
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Specter
Thomas
Thompson
Wellstone
NAYS--53
Akaka
Baucus
Bennett
Biden
Bingaman
Bond
Breaux
Brownback
Bryan
Bumpers
Byrd
Cleland
Cochran
Conrad
Daschle
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Ford
Glenn
Graham
Harkin
Hatch
Hollings
Hutchinson
Inouye
Johnson
Kennedy
Kerrey
Kerry
Kohl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
McCain
Moseley-Braun
Moynihan
Murkowski
Reed
Reid
Robb
Roberts
Rockefeller
Sarbanes
Smith (NH)
Stevens
Thurmond
Torricelli
Warner
Wyden
NOT VOTING--1
Mikulski
The amendment (No. 424) was rejected.
Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. FORD. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Amendment No. 765
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will be in order so that we can
proceed to the next vote.
Under the previous order, there will now be 2 minutes of debate
equally divided on the Dodd amendment No. 765.
Who yields time?
Mr. DODD addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut is recognized.
Mr. DODD. Madam President, I understand from the distinguished
chairman of the committee there is no objection to this amendment. My
colleague from Arizona, Senator McCain, and I offered this amendment.
We are asking for a recorded vote here because in so many instances
over the past 5 years when we have had votes on Mexico, every one of
them has been over a negative issue. This resolution merely commends
the people of Mexico and the Government of Mexico for the very fine
election that they had last Sunday. I thought it would be worthwhile
for this body to say to Mexico how much we appreciate and admire their
process last week and hope it portends great news for the coming years.
With that, Madam President, I yield back the remainder of my time.
Mr. THURMOND. Madam President, I yield back my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back. The question now is
on agreeing to amendment No. 765 proposed by the Senator from
Connecticut [Mr. Dodd]. The yeas and nays have been ordered. The clerk
will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Jeffords]
is necessarily absent.
Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Maryland [Ms. Mikulski] is
necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
who desire to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 98, nays 0, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 164 Leg.]
YEAS--98
Abraham
Akaka
Allard
Ashcroft
Baucus
Bennett
Biden
Bingaman
Bond
Boxer
Breaux
Brownback
Bryan
Bumpers
Burns
Byrd
Campbell
Chafee
Cleland
Coats
Cochran
Collins
Conrad
Coverdell
Craig
D'Amato
Daschle
DeWine
Dodd
Domenici
Dorgan
Durbin
Enzi
Faircloth
Feingold
Feinstein
Ford
Frist
Glenn
Gorton
Graham
Gramm
Grams
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Harkin
Hatch
Helms
Hollings
Hutchinson
Hutchison
Inhofe
Inouye
Johnson
Kempthorne
Kennedy
Kerrey
Kerry
Kohl
Kyl
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lott
Lugar
Mack
McCain
McConnell
Moseley-Braun
Moynihan
Murkowski
Murray
Nickles
Reed
Reid
Robb
Roberts
Rockefeller
Roth
Santorum
Sarbanes
Sessions
Shelby
Smith (NH)
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Specter
Stevens
Thomas
Thompson
Thurmond
Torricelli
Warner
Wellstone
Wyden
NOT VOTING--2
Jeffords
Mikulski
The amendment (No. 765) was agreed to.
Mr. THURMOND. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. BREAUX. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Modification to Amendment No. 705
Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I send a modification to my amendment
No. 705 to the desk and ask unanimous consent it be made a part of
amendment 705.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is
so ordered.
The modification follows:
On page 4, after the period on line 12, add at the end of
subparagraph (2) under (c) Privatization in Place: ``Nothing
in this provision would prevent a private contractor, using
facilities on a closed military base, from competing for
defense contracts or from receiving or being awarded a
contract if the bid is deemed to save money under established
procurement procedures, provided that the competition offers
a substantially equal opportunity for public sector entities
and private sector entities to compete on fair terms without
regard to the location where the contract will be
performed;''
Amendment No. 771 to Amendment No. 705, as Modified
Mr. THURMOND. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that there now
be 10 minutes equally divided, prior to a vote on the Dorgan second-
degree amendment to the McCain amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is
so ordered.
The Senate will be in order.
Mr. THURMOND. Madam President, I yield my 10 minutes to Senator
McCain.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona is recognized.
Mr. McCAIN. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Texas.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized for 2
minutes. The Senate will be in order.
Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, could we have order? We are limited to
the time we have, and I think it is important everybody be heard.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will be in order.
The Senator from Texas.
Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, we have cut defense since 1985 by 34
percent. We have closed 18 percent of the military bases. We have more
nurses in Europe than we have combat infantry officers in Europe. We
have a huge
[[Page S7089]]
overhang of bureaucracy, a huge overhang of bases that we have to shear
down to the size that is required for the force that we are now willing
to fund in the House and Senate. In short, with this huge overhang of
bureaucracy and bases, we have a tiger but increasingly the tooth is
too small and the tail is too long.
Nobody wants base closings. We have closed five bases in my State.
But we all know it is something that needs to happen. So I intend to
support the amendment of the Senator from Arizona. I intend to oppose
the Dorgan amendment, which for all practical purposes kills the
underlying amendment.
I think basically we have to recognize defense has been cut by 34
percent. We have closed only 18 percent of the military bases. If we
are going to preserve modernization, if we are going to keep the pay
and benefits to maintain the finest people in uniform we have ever had,
we are going to have to close more military bases.
So, I hate it, as I am sure many of our colleagues do, but there is
no alternative, given the amount of money that the House and Senate are
willing to appropriate. I urge my colleagues to defeat the Dorgan
amendment and to support the McCain amendment.
I yield the remainder of my time to Senator McCain.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Could we clarify the unanimous consent agreement we are
operating under? I understand there is 10 minutes equally divided
between the proponents and opponents of the Dorgan amendment, is that
correct?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. The Senator from Texas has just used information that is
not accurate. He is referring only, when he talks about 18 percent, to
the bases in this country. We have also closed bases overseas. When you
add that to it, the total bases closed represent about 27 percent of
the infrastructure.
But the point of my second-degree amendment is to say this: Let us at
this point not authorize two additional rounds of base closures until
we figure out what we have done, what the consequences of what we have
done are in the last four rounds. We do not have all the facts about
what the last four rounds have given us in terms of costs and benefits.
Let me not speak for myself. Let me have the Congressional Budget
Office do it, and the GAO has done something similar. It says:
The Congress could consider authorizing an additional round
of base closures if the Department of Defense believes that
there is a surplus of military capacity after all rounds of
BRAC have been carried out.
That is what CBO says. Then CBO says:
That consideration, however, should follow an interval
during which the DOD and independent analysts examine the
actual impact of the measures that have been taken thus far.
Why does CBO say that we ought to wait and take a measure of what we
have done? Because they cannot get the facts. No one knows what are the
costs and what are the savings. What CBO is saying is let's figure out
what we have done. We have ordered the closure of nearly 100 military
installations and only about half of them have been fully closed. At
this point, let us finish that closure, assess the costs and the
benefits, and then proceed, if necessary, to authorize additional base
closures.
I reserve the remainder of my time.
Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield a minute-and-a-half to me?
Mr. DORGAN. I will be happy to yield a minute-and-a-half to the
Senator from Alaska.
Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I join the majority leader in
supporting the Dorgan amendment. I do so because, in our recent trips
overseas, we have found a new military base, a U.S. military base in
Kuwait; we have a new one at Prince Sultan in Saudi Arabia; we have
been expanding a new one at Aviano, in Italy. The Hungarians believe we
are going to continue to maintain their base once they join NATO.
It will take no Base Closure Commission for the administration to
start closing bases overseas. I would rather see them stop building new
bases overseas. But, certainly we need a report like this to try and
get some idea about what is going on.
Last, I would say this, almost 40 percent of our military personnel
today who are combat personnel are overseas. I do not believe we should
have a Base Closure Commission to decide how many bases to close here
at home until they return. It is not time to have a new base closure
commission.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. I wonder if the Senator from Arizona will yield me 1
minute?
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, 60 percent of the bases overseas have been
closed, and that is a fact. I don't know where the Senator from Alaska
has been traveling, but I suggest he go to Germany where we have
basically dismantled our huge defense establishment, which was
necessary and no longer is. There are stacks and stacks of information
that can be provided about the costs that have been reduced as a result
of the base closings that have taken place.
Finally, we are now in an Orwellian argument that not closing bases
somehow saves money. It is the strangest argument I have been through
on the floor of the Senate. We have to reduce these.
I do not intend to move to table the Dorgan amendment. I expect the
Dorgan amendment will win. But I will tell my colleagues right now,
this will be a sad day.
This will be a sad day in the history of the Senate, because we will
not have fulfilled our obligations to the men and women in the military
because we continue to siphon off money to pay for bases that we don't
need instead of paying for the troops and the equipment that they need
to fight and win.
Mr. LEVIN. Will the Senator yield 1 minute to me?
Mr. McCAIN. I yield to the Senator from Rhode Island, former
Secretary of the Navy, and then the remaining time to the Senator from
Michigan.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brownback). The Senator from Rhode Island
is recognized. Mr. President, I support the Levin-McCain amendment,
which will allow the Defense Department to reduce its excess
infrastructure and use resulting savings for needed equipment
modernization.
After four rounds of base closings (1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995), the
U.S. military has eliminated 21 percent of its base structure. Overall
force structure, people and weapons starting in 1988 and ending 5 years
from now on the other hand, is being reduced by 36 percent. This gap
between the level of our forces and our infrastructure should not
continue to exist indefinitely. If we do not continue the process of
reducing excess capacity, the Defense Department will not have the
funds to modernize its increasingly outdated weaponry and continue to
maintain adequate readiness.
Today, we have heard arguments that the savings promised by earlier
base closure rounds either have not materialized or have not been fully
accounted for. Mr. President, I do not believe that we have to document
exactly how much has been saved to the last nickel from previous BRAC's
in order to continue this necessary process.
The fact of the matter is that previous base closures have resulted
in substantial savings, currently estimated to be a total of $13.5
billion. The final amount of these savings may not be known for years.
Perhaps these savings have not been as great as originally thought, but
they have been there. You simply cannot reduce 21 percent of your
infrastructure and not come up with some significant cost savings.
Secretary of Defense Cohen--who endured some very painful base closings
in his State as a Senator--has estimated that two additional rounds
would result in savings of approximately $2.7 billion annually.
Mr. President, all six members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--who
account for some 24 stars--have written Congress to urge two additional
base closures. The previous BRAC itself also recommended additional
reductions. The Joint Chiefs recognize that our troops ought to be
armed with the very best equipment when called to battle. It was this
technological edge that proved so valuable in the gulf war.
[[Page S7090]]
But these weapons have a cost, and continuing to expend valuable
resources on unneeded infrastructure will hinder modernization and
detract from readiness. I urge support for the Levin-McCain amendment
and opposition to the Dorgan amendment.
Mr. President, I certainly hope the prediction of the Senator from
Arizona is not accurate, that the Dorgan amendment will prevail. I
think it is not a good amendment. We have to reduce the base structure
in the country as we bring down the forces. I support the efforts of
Senator McCain vigorously and hope he will prevail.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan has 1 minute.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I support the McCain amendment and very
much oppose the Dorgan amendment. I hope we will listen to General
Shalikashvili. This is what he said when he testified:
As difficult as it is politically, we will have to further
reduce our infrastructure. We have more excess infrastructure
today than we did when the BRAC process started. We need to
close more facilities, as painful and as expensive as it is.
We should listen to the head of our uniformed military. The Secretary
of Defense has told us we cannot afford this waste of resources in an
environment of tough choices and fiscal constraint. We must shed
weight. The savings are on this chart. They have been estimated by the
Department of Defense. We have a letter from all of the Joint Chiefs
pleading with us, it is called a 24-star letter, all the Joint Chiefs,
and the chairman and the vice chairman pleading with us to shed excess
weight.
I hope we will not adopt the Dorgan amendment. If we adopt it, it
will destroy the possibility that this year--this year--as we propose
in the McCain amendment, we will again do what we must do, as painful
as it is. And those of us who come from States which have had bases
closed and which face additional base closings, as I do in my State,
understand that pain.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired. The Senator
from North Dakota controls 2 minutes.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I yield a minute to the Senator from
Oklahoma.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized for 1
minute.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of
the Dorgan-Lott substitute and against the McCain amendment. Even if
this substitute is not adopted, I urge them to vote against the McCain
amendment, and the reason is, for the first time in the four base
closing rounds, this administration played politics. They said, ``Well,
we're going to accept all of them except for two.'' That has never
happened. It didn't happen in the first round, it didn't happen in the
second round, and it didn't happen in the third round. It happened in
the fourth round.
I don't think we should give them additional rounds until we have a
clear understanding that we are not going to play politics. We are
going to close bases on the merits and not on electoral votes.
I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the Dorgan-Lott substitute.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota controls 1
minute 12 seconds.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, first of all, I have voted for every
previous round of base closings and intend to vote again when
additional bases are needed to be closed, but if this is, in fact,
about saving money, then let us at least pay some heed to the
Congressional Budget Office.
The Congressional Budget Office says that additional base closing
rounds ought to follow an interval during which the Department of
Defense and independent analysts examine the actual impact of what has
been done so far. If this is, in fact, about saving money, let's take
the advice of the Congressional Budget Office and figure out what we
have done before we decide to do more, what has the cost and the
benefit been of what we have done.
The majority leader, the minority leader, Senator Thurmond, Senator
Stevens, and so many others have cosponsored this second-degree
amendment, which is very simple. The second-degree amendment asks the
Secretary of Defense to prepare and submit to Congress a report on the
costs and savings on the closure rounds that have already been
occurring and to give us information that we don't now have before we
proceed to talk about additional rounds of base closures.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my colleague,
the Senator from Virginia, who has been standing to make a statement,
be granted 30 seconds.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is
so ordered. The Senator from Virginia is recognized for 30 seconds.
Mr. ROBB. I thank my colleague from Arizona. We have given a great
deal of attention to the fact that the tooth-to-tail ratio is
completely out of whack. It used to be 50-50 10 years ago. It is close
to 70-30 now. The tail being the support of everything else. If we want
to support force structure, if we want to be capable of carrying out
our commitments, we have to cut infrastructure. The savings start as
soon as we begin to cut infrastructure. We can argue about how many
dollars later on.
With that, Mr. President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
Mr. THURMOND addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. THURMOND. Adopt the Dorgan-Lott second-degree amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. A rollcall has not been requested on this
amendment.
Mr. McCAIN. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to amendment No.
771, offered by the Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Dorgan] to amendment
No. 705, as modified. The yeas and nays have been ordered. The clerk
will call the roll.
Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Maryland [Ms. Mikulski] is
necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 66, nays 33, as follows:
The result was announced--yeas 66, nays 33, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 165 Leg.]
YEAS--66
Abraham
Akaka
Allard
Ashcroft
Baucus
Bennett
Bingaman
Bond
Boxer
Breaux
Brownback
Bumpers
Burns
Campbell
Cleland
Cochran
Collins
Conrad
Coverdell
Craig
D'Amato
Daschle
DeWine
Dodd
Domenici
Dorgan
Durbin
Faircloth
Feinstein
Ford
Frist
Graham
Grams
Gregg
Hagel
Hatch
Helms
Hollings
Hutchinson
Hutchison
Inhofe
Jeffords
Johnson
Kempthorne
Landrieu
Lautenberg
Lott
Mack
McConnell
Moseley-Braun
Moynihan
Murkowski
Murray
Nickles
Roberts
Santorum
Sarbanes
Sessions
Shelby
Smith (NH)
Snowe
Specter
Stevens
Thompson
Thurmond
Torricelli
NAYS--33
Biden
Bryan
Byrd
Chafee
Coats
Enzi
Feingold
Glenn
Gorton
Gramm
Grassley
Harkin
Inouye
Kennedy
Kerrey
Kerry
Kohl
Kyl
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lugar
McCain
Reed
Reid
Robb
Rockefeller
Roth
Smith (OR)
Thomas
Warner
Wellstone
Wyden
NOT VOTING--1
Mikulski
The amendment (No. 771) was agreed to.
Mr. THURMOND. I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. FORD. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Amendment No. 705, As Modified, As Amended
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the McCain amendment No.
705, as modified, as amended.
Mr. LEVIN. Have the yeas and nays been ordered?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to vitiate the yeas and
nays on amendment No. 705?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The question now occurs on agreeing to McCain amendment No. 705, as
modified, as amended.
The amendment (No. 705), as modified, as amended, was agreed to.
[[Page S7091]]
____________________