Political Quotes

“it is hard to add anything to what the chairman said, but I have found over the years it has cost us more in many cases to close these bases than we have saved. But in this particular case, I think we have got a different problem. About a year ago, General Jones of NATO and the Supreme Allied Commander said to me, we will realign the troops in Europe. Secretary Rumsfeld not long ago spent some time talking to me about the realignment in Europe and in the United States. For us to start to look at base closing before they get the realignment done would be a real mistake. I think it would be counterproductive. In the first place, we do not know when these troops come back. We are going to increase the size of the forces. We have already increased the Army by 30,000. They want to increase the brigades by about 25 percent. All those things have to be stationed someplace. Until they get the global strategy, the global footprints set up, I do not think there is any way we should make a decision like this. When it comes to savings, we spent in the Presidio, they talk about how much money we will save when we close the base. We spent $100 million in cleaning up that base afterwards. In Southern California, we spent almost $100 million cleaning up the base. We have ammunition depots, ammunition targets where we spend. The Navy Yard in Philadelphia, they figure to clean it up it would cost $1 billion.”