Political Quotes

“I rise to strongly oppose efforts to authorize additional rounds of base closings. I believe that it is bad policy to close more bases without accurately knowing the ramifications of previous cuts. Congress has already approved four rounds of base closings, the latest round occurring in 1995. My State of California has suffered unfairly during this process, losing 27 major installations. Job losses from these closings are estimated to exceed 250,000, and the total economic loss will top $8 billion. Although the California economy is experiencing an economic upturn, unemployment in my State continues to run two percentage points above the national average. It is clear that communities in California are disproportionately being hurt by the BRAC process. It is unfair to ask my State to bear the brunt of yet another round of base closings. It is even more egregious to ask Californians to go through another round of closings when they are still suffering from previous rounds. Past BRAC rounds will continue to weigh heavily on my State because many bases from the 1995 closure round will not close until 1999 or after. Furthermore, some of these closures have not proven to be cost-efficient, and that is one reason why we are not seeing the savings that had been previously promised. I believe that we should not even consider future base closings until we have had the time to properly analyze the ramifications of the previous four rounds.”