Prospects for a new round of closures. Speakers included former va secretary who chaired the last commission in 2005. The Heritage Foundation hosted this hourlong event. Good morning and welcome to the Heritage Foundation. Welcome those who join us on our heritage. Org website as well as those joining us on the cspan network and for those inhouse we asked the courtesy to see our mobile devices have been silenced or turned off simply to avoid any unnecessary distractions. For those watching online you are welcome to send questions or comments at any time by emailing speaker at heritage. Org. We will post the program on the heritage home page for future reference following the presentations today. Leading our discussion and welcoming our special guest is frederick zero. Fred is our policy analyst for defense budgeting for the Center National defense at the Heritage Foundation or to join me in welcoming him. [applause]. Thank you for making the time to come over here with the first and congress back in town which i assume is a busy time for everyone. Im going to introduce our guests and then explain to everyone a little bit if you are hereby accident and you dont know what brac is im going to give you like a twominute introduction to make sure the audience knows as well and we arent talking of the same thing. So, to my left is the assistant secretary of defense for Energy Installation environment at dod. He served as a professional staff member on Armed Services committee and provides oversight for the 2005 brac graham. Retired air force officer in Air National Guard to services. To his left is anthony, chairman of the south five Brac Commission from 2001 to 2005 he was secretary of the va and has multiple stints in the Armed Services committee and a graduate of the us naval academy. To his left is andrew hunter. Is a senior fellow at the international securing program. He served as Senior Executive at dod and chief of staff to both ash carter and Frank Kendall while they are working at a p l. He served as professional staff member on Armed Services committee. Brac was created as a political compromise between executive and legislative branch to close realign the plastic real basis. Initially the executive was able to determine which bases would be close. This resulted with legislative push back and in 1977 congress stopped all closures. This reporting requirement as a prohibition base closures. They were only overcome with the creation of brac involving establishing criteria for the evaluation of possible closures are dod developed a list of actions which later resulted in a nine Person Commission before going to the president and congress for approval. The first round of brac took place in 1988 fold by three consecutive rounds and 91, 93 and 95. The fifth and last round took place in 2005. 12 years later author reading authorizing a new route of brac is part of the political discussion. We currently have over 20 of infrastructure and the resources dedicated to the upkeep of these bases could be better allocated somewhere else in the defense budget. To talk about why we need a brac now, secretary niedermayer will inform us on that. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to talk your heritage. A topic thats timely for those of us that watch the ongoing congress from daytoday know that the senate is about to consider the fy 19 Defense Authorization act on the floor and we do have amendments pending for both the chairman and Ranking Member that would provide for an authorization of closure. Its important to be able to talk to you all and take questions and to be able to talk about why we believe that apartment is in a good place now to request an authorization foreclosure and two carried out with the intent of congress and what theyre looking for both and cost savings and the ability to make the military more effective. Couple quick hits for my background on brac. When i was in the air force and on the committee and ultimately now serving in a new capacity ive been in the job for three weeks and two of those weeks i traveled and just got back from 60s in guam. If i start to nod off while im on stage its because im still on guam time. To look at it, brac has been a great process for the department of defense. Stand back and say where do we need to go with military value . Where do we need to look at whats happening in the world with weapons systems, Emergent Technology and how can we best station our forces domestically to take advantage of those opportunities provided by structure as well as to maximize effectiveness of the training . If you look back on it, Congress Took this position and provided authorization for five previous rounds. For those of us who are here say there is no way that congress has been authorized brac my response is that they have done it plenty of times before so ultimately congress believes in the value of conducting a process which is fair and transparent. If we look at also what the authorization provides and again we need to step back a bit. People think sometimes your commission in law or that its a Standing Authority, the only Standing Authority that the commanderinchief has right now is to Close Military installations. Standing in the way of that is section 2867 providing onerous reporting requirement that has made it tough to actually get recommendations up to the hill and have them considered. Thats what has resulted in a separate piece of legislation that allows for a transparent open process with the secretarys recommendations which the commission then looks at fords to the president. The value of that legislation is immeasurable, not that any Community Wants to suffer from a brac or suffer from a closure, but if you look at the law there is only about 20 pages that talk about how the secretary will conduct the review and how the commission will consider those recommendations. The rest of the brac law is actually a series of actions that allows communities to quickly redevelop the property. About 100 pages of authority with the establishment of local redevelopment authority, agencies and also opportunity for funding from the department of defense to assist in transition. If you look at it standing back from what the department is trying to do, brac really does provide not just transparent process, but also a great deal of ability for the department of defense to assist those community impacted by brac. If you look at it from a standpoint of community faced with reduction of forces were community faced with potential of it being closed, they much would prefer to do it under the brac process than under standard process. You go no further to ask folks in the community surrounding Naval Air Station sugar grove and West Virginia as they are still struggling what to do with that parcel peered database was closed a couple years under authority other than brac and they are struggling on how to use the property. With that said, the department has asked for a request authorization to conduct brac over the last five years. In the past the request was based on the justification that there might be in efficiency to be gained. Savings to be gained. Brac offered as an opportunity where we might have excess capacity to go ahead and close or reduce bases in order to eliminate and save dollars. No doubt that its a noble cause and even in our administration and the current to request thats one of the goals, but i have to say right now the more important thing for us right now is the department of defense. The fact we are undergoing a process within the department for the review and update of the National Defense strategy we are also looking at whole new realm and era of new technologies, new methods of warfare, emerging capabilities and with fifthgeneration weapon systems and that really for us needs an updated strategy to meet emerging and new National Defense strategy. The department of defense, thats the sole and primary reason why congress allowing us the ability to look at are basing to make prudent decisions on where to station forces. In order to optimize our effectiveness in you go back to suck up a modest when he took over he wants to address readiness concerns immediately. You want to increase military capabilities and enhance. From my perspective, working for him the brac process offers us the opportunity to address readiness by providing our forces the best possible range and installation. And how that impacts our defense establishment, changing threat environment, yet we are still at that same footprint. At the same time theres a brac ongoing but its a brac under the radar screen, a stealth brac. Of course dod is limited on what they can do in terms of closing military bases. But they are forced because of budgetary constraints to move people. So brigades are consolidated and other changes are taking place and save a lot of bases with empty buildings that you need to heat and cool. Dollars that could be better expended advancing our defense establishment and our National Security concerns. One could make the argument that indeed we need to have a brac. Of course the many women we charge with leading our defense establishment have been pleading for brac for over several several administrations including the Current Administration has done so as well. 2005 was unlike any other brac in my view, limited expands on the 1993 brac. In terms of major and minor closures and realignments it was double the number of all previous brac rounds combined, 190 recommendations that really had 783 distinct closure or realignment actions associated with it because the way the brac recommendations were structured. Secretary rumsfeld made it very, very clear that this is not about cost savings, primarily about cost savings, this is about military transformation. Im not sure we carried the ball over the goal line but we certainly moved it down the field somewhat. Unlike other previous back rounds were asked to evaluate recommendations at a time of ongoing comics in southwest asia. A stable or increasing force structure where in the past force structure was declining back in 2005. 2005 it was increasing and the redeployment of 70,000 troops and their families from asia and europe. So thats the context upon which 2005 brac took place. A number of things went well. I was blessed to have a commission, of three retired 4star flag officers, army, navy and air force, to form a cabinet officials, two former members of congress both republican and democrat, a former assistant secretary of defense who also served as assistant secretary of energy and at the White House Office of technology. Willie an expert in Nuclear Power matters, and former retired to start Major General to start head of the air force nurse corps. So indeed the some people of experience, the flag officers with insight in the middle to his advice was invaluable to all of us on the commission. We also had an incredible professional staff puts it on previous brac rounds. Detailing some gao and the pentagon who came over to work on the staff, working 24 7 for a period of time, and of course i think as lucian mention it was an open transparent process. You know take politics out of it, never take lobbying complaining of it. We cant especially could make it open, transparent and apolitical. 183 site visits three site visits to military installations around the country, for the hearings around the country and in washington, and having to produce a report to be submitted to congress. A number of things went wrong. When we were nominated for confirmation by president bush, one senator wanted to kill brac so he put a hold on all of our nominations so we had to wait to get recess appointments. The day after we received this form of information from dod, the recommendations of all the data, they determined this is classified. When you consolidate all this information it becomes classified. We had to wait until it was declassified. That took time and, of course, we only had four months upon which to act on all of these recommendations. The cost issues, i mean, you know, the quantitative analysis that is done to determine cost in savings is based on whats the acumen cost of base realignment actions, gao found it was a reasonable calculator to determine what the cost in savings were as you compare these various military bases of closure. But the problem was they underestimated the requirements. For example, they estimated implementation costs of new construction to be about 13. 4 13. 4 billion. It turned out to be 25. 5 billion. They underestimated the Information Technology requirement that cost significant amounts of money to implement brac. And very importantly, they underestimated or overestimated the personal cost savings by saying if you close a military base and jinga 5000 people, you have 5000 troops cost savings, but there was no reduction in force structure. Those people were just being moved. So the savings the projected at 45 billion over, i think was ten or 20 years, i dont recall, willie was significantly less. Those are some of the things that went wrong and im hopeful when the next brac round comes those issues identified and addressed. Can i borrow your pen . Sure. Ill conclude. We were blessed to have lucian as the assistant secretary, and having knowing basically living brac as a member of the Armed Service committee, staff on Armed Service committee. Without i will conclude and be happy to answer any questions you may have. Im going to talk about the environment for brac on the hill, both big picture and in the Current Situation. Im going to start big picture and sort of what is the logic of brac, why did brac ever work and why might it work again. I want to start actually with what i think is the key point which is brac always is hard and its not popular. Its not Something Congress likes to do. They key element is addressed to be a champion. There has to be someone in congress who is highly respected who was really taking this on and pushing it forward and of necessity that needs to be someone who chairs one of the two Armed Services committee, because thats message you need to be in to would serve as the champion. In the past there is folks have served that role. The last 2005 rent it was really senator warner who served in that role, what is interesting and notable anything for a significant this year is that we have a champion with steps forward and senator mccain, along with his colleague senator reed, the two of them together to serve as the champion. That is a critical and deep critical event. I should recognize congressman smith has been there for some time as the Ranking Member and has been pushing the issue which has been greatly helpful and pushed it, moved the process forward, but as a regular he hasnt been in a position to really push it through. Thats a key element that has fallen into place this year. The basic formula that the previous brac rounds of operate on is that they start of the level of theory, and so the authority is granted. When there are no specific winners and losers, the authority has been granted when in theory as one could be either a winner or loser. In reality a lot of members of congress either know or believe that have a target on their back when comes to brac. They think their facility is at risk. And by the way there are winners in brac although we tend to think of it as a losing game, i happen to work for one member of congress during my stint on the hill, norm dicks, again out of every brac round, substantially at every brac round, interests arent enough to your point about stealth brac, the one facility that didnt benefit from brac and lost a lot of work, which was a shipyard in his district, just because the navy got smaller s support the shipyard got smaller, they never benefited from brac. There was no brac action the lead to the navy getting smaller. It was just a decline in the number of ships. They lost half the personnel and never received any economic assistance as a result of a 50 decrease in their scope because it wasnt under brac. But under brac his district was always a big gain in terms of fort lewis and other facilities in washington state. There are winners and brac and in many cases the folks who are likely to win know who they are. But one of the key formulas has been at the brac authority has granted before the winners and losers have been definitively identify. When the recommendations come back from the commission its an up or down vote, and the vote is to disapprove if you are trying to stop something thats in process rather than affirmatively voting to close someone elses face. Your voting to keep the process going, and generally speaking, the political winners in the process have been able to just say the process work its will, its that were greedy and were trying to diss avenge our college but this is the process and all were doing is supporting whats already underway. Ill circle back to that when we they get to where we are in todays, the Current Situation in congress. Congress has in recent years obviously really struggled to cope with brac, the idea of a new brac round. A number of injections to objection seven race, upfront cost during a time when the department of defense was hit with a very sad this been reduction in 2013 as result of sequestration and the budget control act. There was a strong logic for saving money, but one of the big concerns congress had, right now for the first years of sequestration is when the budget was the lowest and the was the biggest cut and thats when the wouldbe increase costs as a result of doing a brac round, if they have been at the time when the department started requesti