Byron Dorgan: “The Senator from Texas has just used information that is not accurate. He is referring only, when he talks about 18…”

“The Senator from Texas has just used information that is not accurate. He is referring only, when he talks about 18 percent, to the bases in this country. We have also closed bases overseas. When you add that to it, the total bases closed represent about 27 percent of the infrastructure. But the point of my second-degree amendment is to say this: Let us at this point not authorize two additional rounds of base closures until we figure out what we have done, what the consequences of what we have done are in the last four rounds. We do not have all the facts about what the last four rounds have given us in terms of costs and benefits. Let me not speak for myself. Let me have the Congressional Budget Office do it, and the GAO has done something similar. It says: The Congress could consider authorizing an additional round of base closures if the Department of Defense believes that there is a surplus of military capacity after all rounds of BRAC have been carried out. That is what CBO says. Then CBO says: That consideration, however, should follow an interval during which the DOD and independent analysts examine the actual impact of the measures that have been taken thus far. Why does CBO say that we ought to wait and take a measure of what we have done? Because they cannot get the facts. No one knows what are the costs and what are the savings. What CBO is saying is let's figure out what we have done.…”