Senator: BRAC amendments delayed defense authorization vote

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., says efforts to use the fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill to thwart the base-closure process were the primary reason he could not move the legislation before the August recess.

The $441.6 billion bill was introduced on the Senate floor more than a week before recess but was shelved days later after unsuccessful attempts by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to invoke cloture. Had Frist succeeded, debate would have been limited to germane amendments, preventing senators from inserting language on base closures.

During a hearing Thursday, Warner told the independent Base Realignment and Closure Commission that he has several amendments on file that would halt or otherwise change the base closure process, and expects more at the end of the August recess. He added that he hopes the chamber can "steadfastly move ahead with our bill" with no changes to the law.

Warner, a longtime BRAC champion who helped write and revise base closure law, continued to defend the process, saying it is "essential to the country that this BRAC process be completed." But he joined other lawmakers from Virginia in defending the Master Jet Base at Oceana Naval Air Station, a last-minute addition to the list of military installations under consideration for closure.

Warner, along with Sen. George Allen, R-Va., and Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, said there is no alternative location on the East Coast for the jet base, which provides 10,000 civilian and military jobs. Commissioners voted last month to add Oceana to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's list of recommended base closures because of concerns that development in the Virginia Beach area was encroaching on the base and impeding flight-training missions.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations, acknowledged that training at Oceana is "not ideal," but said the Navy does not have the resources to open another jet base by 2011, as required if Oceana is closed.

"I fully support" the Defense Department's desire to have an East Coast major jet base, Mullen told the commission. "That base certainly for the foreseeable future is NAS Oceana."

Within several days, the commission plans to send staffers to Florida's Cecil Field, the Navy's only other East Coast master jet base until it was closed in 1999. Several commissioners have expressed interest in studying whether reopening the former base, now a general aviation airport, could be an option if Oceana is closed.