WASHINGTON — Members of Congress who want to ensure that military bases in their states don't close say President Bush's plan to move 70,000 troops stationed in Europe and Asia back to the United States strengthens their case.
But supporters say stateside bases must go through a closure-and-realignment round, known as BRAC, next May so Pentagon officials will know where to send the returning troops.
"Those who oppose it will argue, 'How can we close bases when we are bringing 70,000 troops home?' " said Ken Beeks, a defense analyst with Business Executives for National Security, a pro-base-closure policy group in Washington. "But I think BRAC still needs to go on, maybe even more now than ever."
It could be a tight fight.
Before the relocation plan was announced, the House had narrowly passed a two-year delay. That measure is part of the 2005 defense authorization bill, which is still being negotiated with the Senate. And even though leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee — including its chairman, Sen. John Warner, R-Va. — strongly oppose a delay, the whole Senate was just two votes short, 49-47, of including the two-year delay in its own authorization bill.
Fighting base closure isn't a party-line issue, even though Bush and Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry disagree on the matter. Bush strongly supports a 2005 round of base closings and has threatened to veto any defense bill that includes a delay. Kerry has said a delay is necessary to account for the Iraq war's effect on military needs.
But the real effort to delay base closings is being led by House Republicans and Democrats defending hometown bases.
In a House debate earlier this year, Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., and Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, argued that a delay was justified by uncertainty in Iraq and a request to increase the Army's size. On Monday, Wilson cited the president's troop-shifting plan as a boon to her argument.
"It does not make sense to go ahead with a BRAC process that was authorized before the current situation was envisaged," Wilson said in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urging a delay.
For the last several years, the high stakes of the impending base-closure round have been clear to Congress. The Pentagon says it has about 25 percent more military facilities than it needs and Rumsfeld is set on cutting that excess.
For members of Congress who have one of those 425 military bases in their districts, the idea that a quarter of them may close has created an intense effort to win military funding. When the House bill to delay base closings first came up, 34 members quickly signed on as co-sponsors.
The effect of the Bush relocation plan can already be seen in the positions of some members of Congress.
Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has 17 bases at stake in his home state. Although he continues to support a round of base closings for 2005, he said he will make sure the Pentagon takes into account a base's potential to house returning troops before any decision are made.
"As the (Department of Defense) makes its BRAC recommendations, defense officials should consider how the pending decision to bring several thousand troops to the United States from overseas bases will affect the needs of the military," Cornyn said. "This consideration is a prerequisite, in my opinion, for any future action on the BRAC process, and the Pentagon has assured me that it will."