Ted Stevens: “the strange thing is that the three of us, I think, are committed to the same concept of maintaining the strongest…”

“the strange thing is that the three of us, I think, are committed to the same concept of maintaining the strongest possible defense for the United States. I say to my two friends that the Appropriations Committee has been notified that studies made by the General Accounting Office and by the Congressional Budget Office have indicated that the original estimates of the cost of closing bases was exceedingly low. It was an estimate, and we have now processed 1988, 1991 and 1993 bases to be closed. The difficulty with it is the environmental costs alone are such that it is now estimated that we will not break even in terms of the cost of closing the bases and the savings, until the turn of the century. The problem that we have is, we anticipated these closed bases would be off the appropriations demand by 1996, and we find that is not the case. If we add to the list--already we are going to have to bring down, unless we get an increase in defense spending--we are going to have to bring down something in order to meet the added costs of closing these bases. My point is that I believe in readiness so much that I believe we have to recognize if we add to this list of bases to be closed in 1995, if we start funding in 1995, by the turn of the century--it will be way into the turn of the century before we break even.”