[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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