Orrin Hatch: “I understand well the consternation of my good friends from Texas and California. My State of Utah has been there, too.…”

“I understand well the consternation of my good friends from Texas and California. My State of Utah has been there, too. We have suffered no less a proportionate loss of jobs and installations from the past Base Closing Commissions. The great difference here is we are a small State with just five electoral votes. The conference measure gives California and Texas, vote-rich States, something that Utah and other States never had, a second chance at life through a Presidential circumvention of the very BRAC process that the President himself previously enthusiastically supported. My friends from Texas and California had several months to work out a compromise. Under the threat of Presidential veto and Senate filibuster, the Armed Services Committee and the Senators and staff from such States as Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Utah, among others, the so-called depot States or depot caucus States, which included Texas and California on other issues, have accommodated our friends. We could not be more sympathetic to their losses, which, after all, involve real people and families. As I said earlier, we have all been there. But we have given them just about everything they want, even though-- I repeat, even though--what we give them we do in a zero-sum sense.”