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The House is working on the military budget for 2018, and the Pentagon is not pleased. Not only does the plan fall short of the “historic” boost in spending promised by President Donald Trump, but the proposal doesn’t even include one of the military’s own suggestions for saving money.
There’s a reason for that: The Pentagon’s proposal — a new commission to look into base closures and realignments — is politically toxic. Nevertheless, for reasons of both fiscal prudence and national security, Congress needs to consider a new round of closings.
It makes no sense that the House Armed Services Committee and its chairman, Republican Mac Thornberry of Texas, omitted mention of a new BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) committee in the House defense authorization bill. There is little doubt that the Defense Department has too many domestic bases. A Pentagon study found that by 2019 the military will only be using less than 80 percent of its
capacity.
Closing some bases entirely and shrinking others can save real money, even by Pentagon standards: While shutting bases costs money up front, the Defense Department says the five major rounds undertaken since 1988 have saved around $12 billion a year. It estimates that it could save $10 billion over five years with another round.
A new round of BRAC could even improve on the old model, which looked mostly at just closures and downsizing, to include studies of repairing and modernizing existing bases. It could also consider proposals such as shuttering the dozens of schools on domestic bases; service members can send their children to local public schools.
The main obstacle to such changes isn’t fiscal, but political. Bases bring money into local economies, and House members, especially, dread the prospect of losing any in their districts. Long-term studies by the Defense Department, however, have found that jobs lost in these communities are eventually replaced, and the local economy gets more diverse and less dependent on the federal
government.
And even House members should realize that the organized base-closing committees are far better than what’s happening now: The Pentagon is shrinking bases in a piecemeal manner with little consideration of local economic effects.
The good news is that the Senate Armed Services Committee will be working on its military policy bill this week, and both Chairman John McCain and the ranking Democrat, Jack Reed, favor looking into another round of closings. It’s a sensible and modest idea that the House should also adopt.
—Bloomberg