[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 24 (Thursday, February 8, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1755-S1758]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ACCOMMODATING THE NEEDS OF THE MILITARY
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, what we are asking with the amendment
I have tried to put forward but which was ruled out of order is to
simply restore the $3.1 billion that was cut from the Base Closing
Commission military construction. We cut--not we, but the bill that is
on the floor that we are not able to amend--$3.1 billion out of the
Base Closing Commission military construction funding. Our amendment,
the Hutchison-Inhofe amendment, has 27 cosponsors. That is almost one-
third of the Senate, and there are many who said they would like to
sponsor the amendment but in deference to their leadership did not feel
they could, because so many States have major projects in this BRAC
military construction funding.
These are not projects that any Member of Congress put in this bill
or in the bill that passed the House and Senate. These are the
Department of Defense projects, for them to be able to meet the
congressionally mandated deadline of 2011 for finishing the BRAC
process. So they are projects that were selected in order of priority
by the Department of Defense. There is not one earmark, not one
congressional add in the military construction budget that we are
trying to restore. We are trying to restore the budget we have already
passed so the Department of Defense can meet the deadline we have set.
I think this amendment should be in order. It is my great hope that
the distinguished leader and the distinguished chairman of the
Appropriations Committee will allow it to go forward with no further
delay, because there is going to be a delay if we wait until the
supplemental. Not only will the $3 billion be outside of the scope of
the budget and add $3 billion more to the deficit, but it will, in
fact, delay the building projects for yet another 2 months, which will
be a whole half year that the Department of Defense will be strapped
for the funds to do what it needs to do to have its synchronized
movement of troops be able to accomplish what they are trying to
accomplish.
I hope we will have a reconsideration. I hope the House will work
with us. We have a whole week to do it. We have done things in 24 hours
that were harder than this, and I believe that delaying the return of
12,000 troops to facilities they deserve to have is not a good bargain.
So I am very hopeful we will eventually have true bipartisanship in the
Senate, true bipartisanship in the Appropriations Committee, which has
been the tradition in the Senate for all these years. I ask that the
majority in leadership help work with us to accommodate the needs of
the military.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from
Oklahoma is recognized for 10 minutes.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, let me inquire as to how much time is left
open from the 10 minutes of the Senator of Texas?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 5 minutes 40 seconds.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that those 5
minutes be divided between myself and Senator Chambliss.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
[[Page S1756]]
Mr. INHOFE. And that at the conclusion of the unanimous consent
request wherein the last speaker, it is my understanding, is the
Senator from Alabama, Mr. Shelby, that the Senator from Pennsylvania,
Mr. Specter, be recognized for 15 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have been watching this debate as it has
taken place. I am disappointed that procedurally we dropped the ball.
We were hoping to be able to speak all afternoon on probably the most
immediate crisis we are facing in terms of the budget; that is, the
BRAC process.
Let me share a couple of ideas as to what this is all about. A lot of
people are not all that familiar with the process we are talking about.
The BRAC process is the Base Closure Realignment Commission. It was
brought to our attention and first voted on by a Congressman from
Texas, Dick Armey. Prior to that time, it appeared that all of our
military establishments that were in the United States had been looked
at as economic bases. Consequently, it is very difficult to close down
some that are either not efficient or not needed for defending the
country.
It was the idea of Congressman Armey to put together a system to take
politics out of the base-closure system and to allow some criteria to
be put forth and have a base-closure commission make recommendations
and then take those recommendations and put them into effect. The
bottom line would be they may find, in my State of Oklahoma, that one
of our installations should be closed or should be realigned and part
of it moved somewhere else. If that is the case, we would have to vote
on the overall picture. You could not pick or choose. That way, as
nearly as you can take politics out of a procedure on this Senate
floor, I believe they successfully did that.
We had the first BRAC round back in 1988. We have had four since
then. The last one is the one we are talking about now.
I have to say that when we came to this fifth BRAC closure vote as to
whether we are going to allow the Commission to reconvene and make
determinations as to priorities, I voted against it. I led the
opposition. In fact, we only lost it by two votes. We have had a BRAC
round, after all.
I made a statement from this Senate floor, from this podium, that
whatever recommendations they came up with on this independent,
nonpartisan BRAC Commission, I would not object to, and that is exactly
what has happened.
The problem we are facing--and I can remember so well saying in the
Senate before this last round was decided upon, I said it may be that
we will save $20 billion over a period of time with another BRAC round.
We don't know that for sure, but there is one thing we do know; that
is, it is going to cost us a lot of money in the next 3 or 4 years,
right when we are going to need the funding for our military.
We went through the 1990s downgrading and downsizing the military. I
remember this euphoric attitude that many people had--the Cold War is
over, and we no longer need a military. Consequently, the attention was
not given to the military.
I have a chart I have not used for quite a while. This is during the
Clinton administration, from fiscal year 1993 through fiscal year 2001.
If we take the black line, that shows that if we merely kept the budget
we had for the military from fiscal year 1993 and added nothing but
inflation, the black line would represent the amount of the budget and
what it would have been at the end of that period of time. The red line
represents what the President's budget--it was President Clinton at
that time and what he was requesting. You can see the huge difference
in there, about a $412 billion difference.
Congress, in its wisdom, increased the President's budget insofar as
military spending is concerned to this line right here. Nonetheless,
over that period of time, while we did bring it up a little bit, it
still was $313 billion below what a static budget would have been from
that year, in bringing that year forward.
That is the problem we are facing in the 1990s, the late 1990s. I
remember so many times coming to the Senate and saying that we will rue
the day we downgraded the military. And we did. We went down to about
60 percent of the force strength, did away with and slowed down a lot
of our military modernization programs.
I remember watching other countries producing better equipment, so
when we send our young people out to do battle, they don't have the
kind of equipment someone else might have. A good example would be our
non-line-of-sight cannon, artillery piece. The best piece we have today
is the Paladin. That is World War II technology where you have to swab
the breach after every shot--something that is totally unacceptable.
There are five countries, including South Africa, that make a better
cannon than we have. We are going to remedy that now, and we have
future combat systems where we will start modernizing.
We also slipped behind in the Air Force. I remember when General
Jumper at that time came to the Senate, in 1998, and he said that now
the Russians are making the Su series, and he referred to the Su-35 and
he said it was better than any strike vehicle we have, our F-15s and F-
16s. Now we have an F-22 that will do a better job. This is what
happened to us in the 1990s.
Now we come to the BRAC process. We had an opportunity to save $20
billion. But to do that, we have to build installations in different
areas, divest ourselves of other installations. That is where we are
today.
As has been said by several speakers in the Senate, we are in a
position now going into a continuing resolution, that it would tie us
to the 2006 budget. If this happens, the BRAC funding that is necessary
to implement the changes to accommodate our fighting troops over there,
in their rotations coming back home--all of these things that are
taking place are things that can't be taking place now because we are
$3 billion short.
My next chart shows we are scraping just to fund the BRAC process.
The money the military needs to pursue the BRAC round in fiscal year
2007 is $5.6 billion. You can see that on the chart. That is the amount
the President requested. That is also the amount in our authorization
bill, the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act. Those on the
Senate Committee on Armed Services authorized this $5.6 billion. The
Senate appropriators thought they could shave a little bit off, so they
cut from that $.4 billion. That brings it down to $5.2 billion.
Because there is no appropriated amount, the BRAC was funded at the
fiscal year 2006 level, which is $1.6 billion--far lower than what is
required to even start the process of this latest BRAC round. Under the
continuing resolution now being considered, the funding was increased
by $1 billion, which puts us at a total of $2.5 billion less what the
military is going to have to have. That means it is a $3.1 billion
shortfall. I know it is confusing, so we put it on a chart so we can
clearly understand it. That is what is necessary to carry out those
requirements we had in the BRAC round.
We did get $1 billion. Let me tell Members where that came from. The
Democrats scraped and squeezed all the unfunded amounts that were
needed to be funded by the CR. They were able to get an extra $13
billion to fund their own priorities. We talked about those priorities,
many of them social programs, many of them programs I would support,
some programs I would oppose. To me, they were not in the league of
necessity that we have in our military construction in carrying out and
implementing BRAC.
The chart shows the amount of money, the $13 billion, and where this
money went. If you go around the chart, you see Veterans'
Administration, $4.5 billion--we supported that; defense health, $1.4
billion; State and Foreign Ops--this is HIV/AIDS, which has been talked
about in the Senate--that is $1.25 billion; law enforcement, $1.35
billion--quite frankly, I am not sure what that is referring to; pay
raise for Federal workers, $1 billion; Labor-HHS, Head Start, AIDS,
Social Security, and so forth, Pell grants, that is $2.3 billion;
Interior Department, $200 million. Finally, after everyone else is
taken care of, everyone else has been funded, there is $1 billion left
over to put toward BRAC. The need was $4.1 billion. It brings it down
to the $3.1 billion. So the need is still there. That is how we got
where we are today.
What this Senate needs to do is to evaluate and establish priorities
as to
[[Page S1757]]
what is really significant. What do we need to add? We are at war. It
is inconceivable to me, when we come along with a BRAC process that
applies housing and other needs for our troops who are rotating back
and forth, that we are not able to do that.
One of the concerns I have that I have not talked about in the Senate
is the problems we have in the communities. One of the reasons my State
of Oklahoma has always, throughout all BRAC processes, all five of
them, benefited--and I am bragging a little bit here, and I know other
States do a good job--Oklahoma has always done an excellent job on
community support. In our five major military installations, we have
the communities building hospitals, doing child health care, helping
with roads, donating land. For that reason, we have always done a very
good job of that in my State. A lot of people were concerned when the
BRAC processes took place; that is something which has actually been a
benefit to my State. However, in this case, there isn't a State that
isn't involved either in pluses or minuses, but overall it is a way to
take care of those kids when they come back, when they rotate through.
We have two things that are happening right now. We are trying to
rotate our troops who were in battle, and the second thing is, we are
trying to establish a program where, instead of sending some of our
people overseas for 3 and 4 years with their families, to bring them
back and let them rotate.
With that, I am going to yield the floor. It is my intention to come
back. I have quite a few more things to talk about.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from
Georgia is recognized for 12\1/2\ minutes.
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, let me say to my friend from Oklahoma,
as well as to my colleague from Texas, we appreciate their leadership
on this issue, restoring this funding for the transition as required
under BRAC. The Senator from Oklahoma and I both went through some very
difficult times under BRAC. Now, to not be able to carry out the
direction of the Commissioners with the difficult decisions that were
made is simply not right. Without his leadership, we would not be where
we are today.
Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. CHAMBLISS. I yield.
Mr. INHOFE. The point I was trying to make in terms of community
support, many communities in Georgia and Oklahoma have made commitments
predicated on this next BRAC round coming forward. I ask the question,
Aren't you a little concerned how to face the communities if we renege
on what the Government's portion is?
Mr. CHAMBLISS. The Senator is exactly right. I will address that in
my comments in a few minutes. It is not fair to the taxpayers in
general but specifically those communities that are affected, as
communities in Oklahoma and Georgia are, that we now come back and say:
I know you have made these plans and you were preparing to receive
additional infrastructure, but now it will not happen because the folks
in the Senate have decided they want to spend that money on social
programs as opposed to spending it on our military.
I do rise today to support my colleagues in restoring funds for the
Department of Defense fiscal year 2007 BRAC requirements in the
continuing resolution. The fiscal year 2007 President's budget
requested $16.7 billion for MILCON, which included $5.7 for fiscal year
2005 base realignment and closure actions required to meet a statutory
deadline of September 15, 2011, to complete all realignments and
closures.
The fiscal year 2007 Defense authorization bill authorized MILCON
appropriations of $17.4 billion after accounting for $278 million in
prior year rescissions proposed by appropriators in both Chambers. The
final authorized amount was $17.1 billion--$400 million above the
President's budget for fiscal year 2007.
The Senate passed a fiscal year 2007 MILCON appropriations bill at
$434 million below the fiscal year 2007 President's budget by cutting
the BRAC request and accounting for additional rescissions. The House
version of the fiscal year 2007 MILCON appropriations bill is $803
million below the President's budget, and it cut BRAC and $500 million
in projects requested in the President's budget. No conference
allocation was provided and a conference agreement was never reached.
A continuing resolution was enacted through February 15, 2007, at
levels equaling the fiscal year 2006 appropriations, but currently does
not allow for military construction new starts in fiscal year 2007. In
addition, the fiscal year 2006 BRAC appropriation is $4 billion below
the request for fiscal year 2007. Therefore, over 90 percent of the
authorized fiscal year 2007 MILCON projects will not be able to be
constructed.
The new CR language proposed by House and Senate appropriators on
January 30 would provide fiscal year 2007 MILCON funds at levels
requested in the fiscal year 2007 President's budget, but would
underfund BRAC in fiscal year 2007 by $3 billion, seriously
jeopardizing the ability of the Department of Defense to carry out all
BRAC actions by 2011.
Senator Inhofe offered a bill in early January that I cosponsored
along with several other Members of the Senate that would appropriate
funds for all MILCON projects authorized in the fiscal year 2007
Defense authorization bill.
The administration issued a Statement of Administration Policy on
January 30, strongly opposing the reductions that are in the continuing
resolution we are considering. The Secretary of Defense and the service
chiefs and Secretaries have met with many of us to provide an
assessment of the impact on military programs as well as military
readiness. By cutting $3.1 billion in the fiscal year 2007 BRAC
request, the proposed continuing resolution does not allow the
Department to carry out the investments and the timing required to
complete all BRAC initiatives by 2011. That is a statutory requirement
established to assist communities affected by BRAC by mandating an
accelerated transition to aid in economic recovery.
Deferring funds will result in higher contract costs as construction
will be delayed and ultimately compressed in a tighter execution
timeframe, forcing a greater demand for limited resources. Resolving
this issue has the support of key members of the Senate Appropriations
Committee, as well as many military and local community advocacy
groups.
I understand the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee
intends to attempt to restore BRAC funding in the supplemental
appropriations bill. But what kind of solution is this? Supplemental
funds have been requested by the President for military operations in
Iraq as well as Afghanistan. The funds requested in the supplemental
are critically needed to purchase equipment for force protection and
IED defeat initiatives. These funds would be used to train and equip
Iraqi security forces. The funds will be used for military
intelligence, coalition support, and other regional operations in the
global war on terror.
Since when do base realignments and closures qualify as an emergency
directly supporting the global war on terror? How do we explain to the
American taxpayer that BRAC should be considered along with body armor,
additional military end strength, and vehicles being used in Iraq and
Afghanistan?
Furthermore, we are having this discussion because my colleagues who
developed the resolution share with all of us the common goal to reduce
overall Government expenditures. In that spirit, what critical
warfighting requirement do we cut in the supplemental to pay for the
BRAC increase that is proposed? What do we deny to our frontline
fighting troops? While I heard the idea of funding BRAC in the
supplemental, I have not heard one idea on how we pay for it.
Do they instead advocate for an increase in the supplemental? Why not
just add funds to the resolution we have in front of us, as this is
proper? Could it be they want to hide the additional funds they have
inserted for domestic programs by pushing BRAC to an inappropriate
method of funding? Is this how we propose to manage military
appropriations for the future? By using budget gimmicks and shell games
which will have devastating results for the military and for local
communities? We must address full fiscal year 2007 funding for BRAC in
this continuing resolution.
[[Page S1758]]
Including funds for BRAC in the CR is critical to modernizing and
increasing the readiness of our Armed Forces.
The current CR provides $2.7 billion for Base Realignment and Closure
programs, which is $3.1 billion below the President's request, as I
previously stated. These reductions are inconsistent with congressional
emphasis on force and readiness. Such a severe reduction to BRAC
funding will force the Department to rephase BRAC implementation plans.
This will have a negative ripple effect on the movement of troops and
missions throughout our global defense posture restructuring.
This planned approach could delay force rotations to Iraq and
Afghanistan, as well as the Army's overall readiness posture, which
relies on completing the Modular Force conversions on time. This move
will impact readiness. And soldiers at Fort Campbell, Fort Drum, and
Fort Stewart will not have adequate places to train, work, or sleep.
This move will devastate the Department's ability to complete BRAC
actions within statutory deadlines. It will stymie efforts to construct
facilities and move equipment and people to receiver locations, thereby
impeding our ability to realize savings and organizational
efficiencies. Over 82 percent of the fiscal year 2007 BRAC request is
for construction that is required before these moves can occur. The
current continuing resolution cuts funding for family housing by $300
million below the President's request. This will directly and adversely
affect the quality of life of our servicemembers by perpetuating the
continued use of inadequate facilities where they work, train, and
live.
Regarding my home State of Georgia, the following projects will be in
jeopardy--and these are going to have very serious consequences to the
ability to train and give quality of life to the soldiers, which they
deserve--a child development center at Fort Benning; two trainee
barracks complexes at Fort Benning; training brigade complex at Fort
Benning; fire and movement range at Fort Benning; modified record fire
range at Fort Benning; brigade headquarters building at Fort Benning;
stationary gunnery range at Fort Benning; Marine Corps Reserve center
at Robins Air Force base; Marine Corps Reserve center in Rome, GA;
three facilities to prepare Moody Air Force Base to receive A-10
aircraft; and relocation of a vehicle maintenance complex at Robins Air
Force Base.
None of these improvements can be made for our fighting men and women
without this funding. It is imperative we do so in this CR.
Mr. President, I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Nebraska). There is 1 minute 55
seconds.
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