While Trump promotes military buildup, some look at another round of base closings

At the same time that President Donald Trump is pushing a plan to increase defense spending by 10 percent, Washington state Rep. Adam Smith says it’s time to save money by closing some of the nation’s military bases.

Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, wants to reopen the controversial Base Realignment and Closure process, known as BRAC, last used in 2005.

While the 11th-term congressman has promoted base closings before with no luck, there are signs that the idea is getting increased attention this year on Capitol Hill.

“We ought to give it serious consideration,” Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview Tuesday.

And South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, another member of the panel, sounded receptive to the idea as well, saying: “I'll follow Senator McCain’s lead on this.”

Smith said that with McCain’s backing, “it makes it more likely that a BRAC will happen, if not this year, then soon.”

“It’s gaining momentum,” Smith said in an interview.

But he acknowledged that passing his bill on the matter — the Military Infrastructure Consolidation and Efficiency Act — won’t be easy, with many members of Congress worried that their districts might get hit by a base closing. And he said it’s unlikely that the Republican-led Congress would ever get behind the bill without a strong push from President Donald Trump.

“People are nervous about being a member of Congress when one of his or her bases (ends up) getting closed,” Smith said. “It’s a tough sell because that tends to be the focus, but look, given all of our national security needs, we need to save money wherever we can save money.”

In a report last year, the Pentagon said it has a 22 percent excess capacity rate and that it could save an additional $2 billion a year by closing or consolidating some of its facilities. The report said that prior base closures have saved the government more than $12 billion a year.

Others predicted that the bill is unlikely to go anywhere with Congress facing an already packed agenda.

“The plate is overflowing. I would say you’d have to say the odds on something like that are pretty small,” said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon.

McCain said he was uncertain how much backing a base-closing plan would have among Senate Republicans.

“I don’t know “ we haven’t discussed it,” he said. But he added that Congress must also move quickly on other fronts: “We need to build up the military. It’s been decimated.”

Two other veteran Republican senators said they had no interest in going through another round of base closings.

“All I can say is that my experience with the BRAC rounds was not a good one,” said GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. “I found the process extremely arbitrary and I think we have a real problem in this country that we no longer have active duty bases in the Northeast.”

The Midlands is home to three major military bases, including Fort Jackson in Columbia, McEntire Joint National Guard Base near Eastover, and Shaw Air Force Base near Sumter. Statewide, South Carolina has eight major military installations. A study released in January 2015 said those installations, along with the Army Reserve of South Carolina, have an annual economic impact of $17.9 billion.

This story was originally published March 22, 2017 at 6:00 AM with the headline "While Trump promotes military buildup, some look at another round of base closings."