WASHINGTON – An effort in the House to delay any new military base closings for two years is setting up an election-year showdown with the Senate and the Bush administration.
As part of a broad defense bill, the House Armed Services Committee wants to put off until 2007 what would be the first round of base closings since 1995.
“There was a majority who felt when you are in a middle of war, like now, that this is not the time to go through a process that could lose you facilities that you could never get back,” said Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., chairman of the panel’s subcommittee on readiness.
Hefley and Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, originally wanted to delay by 18 months a new round of base closings scheduled for next year. But when Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., offered an amendment Wednesday to scrap the base closing process altogether, the committee settled on a two-year delay with some new study requirements for the Pentagon.
“Had we passed the language to do away with (base closures) altogether, I think the president would veto that,” Hefley said. “I think we’ll get a veto threat, but it’s hard to imagine the president would veto a bill with two-year delay in order to get information we need to make a decision.”
Nonetheless, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said he expects the White House and Pentagon to strongly oppose the delay.
“The preparatory work has been done,” Thornberry said. “To delay it further only stretches out the anxiety, only puts money in lobbyists’ pockets. It serves no real purpose.”
The House is expected to take up the bill next week. It voted a year ago to restrict how many bases the Pentagon could close.
The Senate, which has stayed out of the base-closing process, will start debate next week on its version of the annual defense bill. The Senate bill has no base-closing delay.
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