Richard K. Armey: “Mr. Chairman, this is a debate that I would much rather not find myself participating in. Any of my colleagues that were…”

“Mr. Chairman, this is a debate that I would much rather not find myself participating in. Any of my colleagues that were here in the legislative years of 1987 and 1988 will recall that I spent almost my entire time during those two years working on the base-closing legislation that resulted in the BRAC Commission. And I recall vividly that I spoke to every Member of the House during that period of time many times. And in each and every case, in each and every conversation, my job, as an advocate of base closures, was to convince the Members that the process would be apolitical, that nobody, no President would have the ability to intercede in the process on behalf of a base to be closed as a punishment against a Member or a base to be left open as a reward against a Member. No politics. We had three rounds of base closing, and we are all very proud of the process because politics never intruded into the process. That ended in round four. And all of my colleagues knew at the time, and we know now, that the special conditions for McClellan and Kelly, California and my own State of Texas, where you might think I have a parochial interest, were in a political invention. We talk about this being privatization. No, it is not. It is a new concept. It is privatization in place, created specifically for these two bases in an election year for no purpose other than politics.”