Political Quotes

“I am happy to be here at the time the Senator from Texas mentions this, because I think I am one of those who raised the question of the 1995 round. I did so when the Appropriations Committee was informed that approximately 10 percent of the bases that were ordered to be closed in 1988, 1991 and 1993 have been closed. We now are carrying on the books and are financing the operation of a series of bases that theoretically were closed in those previous three rounds of base closures. The reason they have not been closed is in the process of closure environmental problems were discovered. There were transitional problems with regard to transitioning the bases from one place to another. But in any event, of the literally couple of hundred bases, I guess, we have ordered to be closed, only 10 percent or less have been closed. The problem is, if we start into another round of 1995 and we are asked to put up the money for that process, which is in effect putting a lot more bases in the pipeline, we are actually running up more costs today by the bases that were not closed than we could possibly save by trying to close more. I am not in favor of not continuing the process of closing bases. But if we are asked now to finance the closing of bases in 1995, we are going to have to cut troop strength and cut procurement to do that.”