Gene Taylor: “probably one of the least known things about the President's budget request over the year is that in June 2001 President…”

“probably one of the least known things about the President's budget request over the year is that in June 2001 President Bush presented his defense budget to Congress and in it asked for the authority to conduct a round of base closures in 2003 called the Effective Facilities Initiative. In September of that year, after the House had refused to act on it, the other body passed by a very small margin the authority for two rounds of base closure. Later, the House conferees worked that down to one round, but in the year 2005. But this May, knowing how close we were coming to it and the fact that our Nation was at war not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a much smaller war, but still a war, in Colombia, this body by almost a 100-vote margin voted to delay BRAC for 2 years. There were a lot of good reasons for that. The President asked for this in June 2001. Our Nation was at peace. We had no troops in Afghanistan or Iraq. We were talking about shrinking the military. In this bill we are going to vote on shortly, we expand the ranks of the Army by 20,000. We expand the ranks of the Marine Corps by 2,000. Those are both good things. The President is talking about bringing troops home from Korea and Europe. Where is he going to put them because, by the administration's own admission, they are not talking about closing one base or two bases, they are talking about closing 25 percent of all of the bases in America, not overseas.”