Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
September 24, 2001 -- Page: S9725

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise to speak on behalf of the Bunning amendment because I don't think we are ready to make the decisions about which bases we are going to need. We didn't know before September 11 exactly what our troop strength was going to be in the future because we didn't have the reviews in place yet from the new administration.

Today we know even less about the troop strength, and we certainly need to know how many we are going to have in our component organizations--the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines--before we make the decision on which bases we will need for the future.

Also we need to know how we are going to do our training. What is the best place to do the training? I have visited bases overseas where we have training facilities, but we have limited airspace in some of those. We have limited missile range in some of those places.

Is it better to do the training there or is it better perhaps to do it at a U.S. base where we have better facilities and more control over the airspace and the ground space? I don't know the answer to those questions. I know we should have the answer before we make a decision on whether we start closing bases.

I have seen us do two things in previous base closings. I have seen us close bases that we then needed in the future. The Air Force has said that we should have kept some of the training bases in the United States opened, but they were already closed. It was too late to do anything about it.

Secondly, I have not seen us estimate anywhere close to the true cost of closing a base. If I could get real numbers that showed that closing a base really saves money, I would consider having another round of base closings. But until we know what the environmental cleanup is, what the hazards are in each of these bases and what it is going to cost for that cleanup to put it in order for the base to either be sold or given back to the community, depending on what the arrangement is, there is no way I would support a base-closing commission.

I think we are spending more closing these bases than we have keeping them open. I am the ranking member of the Military Construction Subcommittee. We have $150 million in that bill that is going to come to the floor in the next few weeks, $150 million for environmental cleanup that was not anticipated in base closings.

That is not the way we ought to do business. I don't think we ought to say that environmental cleanup is going to be $15 million and then all of a sudden have a bill for $150 million and say that is an efficient use of our assets. We have not done our homework yet.

I am not saying I am never going to be for a base closing. I will be for a base closing, if I see what our troop strength is projected to be for the next 25 years or even 10 years, if I see that training is going to be done either in America or overseas, but we have studied where that training ought to be. In fact, I would support a study that would prepare us for a base-closing round. But I will not support another round of base closings until we have done our homework, until we have a study, until we know how this new war that we have just determined we must wage for the freedom of our country is going to be waged and how long it is going to take and where the bases might be needed. We probably will have more overseas bases. But are they going to be in the same places that they are now? Maybe not. Maybe we will have to build new bases in other sites.

So I don't think we ought to be talking about closing things until we know what we are going to need in the future. I am not against base closings; I am just against doing it too soon, because I think we are throwing good money after bad if we don't have our ducks in a row and know exactly what our needs will be from the military construction standpoint.

On the Military Construction Subcommittee, I did not like having to spend money on environmental cleanup, when I would have liked to have spent that money building better housing for our people, building more facilities to do the job that we know we must do. Yet we are still cleaning up bases that were closed 10 years ago. I don't think that is the way we ought to operate. We ought to operate with good business sense. We ought to decide what our troop strength is going to be, where we can best do the training, what our needs are going to be with this new war that we now know we must fight--and we know it is going to be tough. We are going to support the President and give him the resources he needs to make sure we win because freedom is at stake.

The idea that we would have a premature round of base closings is a bad idea whose time has not come. So I appreciate the work of everyone here. I know we have legitimate disagreements on this issue. But I am going to support the Bunning amendment. I hope we can set it aside for this year.

I have an amendment, which I have already offered, which I hope we can consider. It does have a study that would ask just the questions I have asked tonight. If we can answer those questions, then we can have base closings based on what we are going to need in the future, based on facts, based on studies, and knowing exactly what we are going to do before we take these steps. Most of all, we will know what the costs are going to be and how much could be saved and how much must be spent for those savings.

Mr. President, I appreciate the work of the distinguished chairman and ranking member, and I hope we can pass the Bunning amendment. I also hope we can pass the Hutchison amendment that will provide studies for the future, and that we can do this in the right way and in a thoughtful way, in a way that will make sure we do right by our men and women in the services and protect them wherever they may be in the world.

I yield the floor.