“While I applaud the department’s desire to find responsible places to achieve savings, there is one area where there is absolutely no room for compromise this year,” McCaskill announced during the hearing of the Subcommittee on Military Readiness and Management Support.

“BRAC.”

McCaskill went on to question the actual savings realized by the last round of military base closures in 2005.

She argued that the Pentagon should take a thorough look at the billions of dollars that could be saved by closing some of the 1,000 military installations overseas, many of which she suggested are relics of the Cold War.

“The impact BRAC has on our communities around the country, such as those surrounding my home state bases Ft. Leonard Wood and Whiteman Air Force Base, is extraordinary,” McCaskill said. “I will not support a process that is callous or casual, or one that is rushed before we fully comprehend whether the traumatic task is clearly in the best interests of the American taxpayer and our national security.”

The Pentagon has been seeking a new round of base closings in order to cut federal spending in the defense budget.

Under BRAC, Congress would have to approve legislation to create a new base closing commission, which would then carry out an independent review of military installations and make recommendations to Congress for closures.

McCaskill’s announcement that she will not support any new base closures effectively closes the book on the effort.

“There is one area where there is absolutely no room for compromise this year, and that is BRAC,” McCaskill said Wednesday at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Readiness and Management Support subcommittee, which she chairs.

“I will not support the request for BRAC process to be carried out in 2013,” she said.

The Defense Department’s request for two new rounds of BRAC in 2013 and 2015 has been met with stiff opposition in Congress since it was announced, but McCaskill’s comments Tuesday are the surest sign yet that BRAC is going nowhere in the 2013 budget.

There has been bipartisan opposition to more base closures in both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, with two exceptions: House ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have said they back the idea.

The Pentagon’s budget, which cuts $487 billion over the next decade, included the BRAC rounds but did not attach a cost or savings estimate to implementing the base closures, suggesting the Pentagon knew it would be an uphill battle.

Pentagon press secretary George Little downplayed the 2013 BRAC proposal at a Wednesday press conference.

“BRAC was not part of the $487 billion proposal that we made to the Congress, but we thought it was the responsible thing to do, given the budgetary pressures that we were all under,” Little said. “We were really trying to exercise good fiscal discipline, and we thought it would be important to at least put BRAC on the table.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has acknowledged how unpopular BRAC is in hearings — pointing out that his district in California was affected by BRAC when he was a congressman. But Panetta has tried to make the case that the base closures are needed for long-term savings as the Defense Department reduces its forces by 100,000 and will have more excess infrastructure.

The argument hasn’t gone over well on Capitol Hill.

McCaskill pointed to the last BRAC round in 2005, which the Government Accountability Office has said will not begin to see savings until 2018. McCaskill and others have said that the up-front costs associated with closing bases mean the Pentagon should not do so when it needs to trim budgets now.

McCaskill also argued Wednesday that bases had to be closed abroad before closing more domestically, which Senate Armed Services Chairman (D-Mich.) has also suggested.

Pentagon officials say they want to simultaneously look at overseas and domestic closures. They argue that the 2005 BRAC round is not a fair comparison because it involved significant overhauls in the midst of two wars.

“I predict it’s not going to happen,” Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said after a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on March 20 when asked about the possibility of lawmakers authorizing a Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commission.

“I don’t think there’s much support for another BRAC round here at all,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of support for looking overseas, particularly in European facilities.”

In its 2013 budget request, the Defense Department has asked Congress to authorize two rounds of BRAC.

“If it’s not in the authorization, it won’t happen,” Levin said referring to the 2013 defense authorization bill, which his committee is responsible for crafting.

Leon Panetta went on to become director of the Office of Management and Budget and chief of staff to President Clinton, during which time two more base realignment and closure (BRAC) rounds took place.

In 2005, during what some people call “the mother of all BRACs,” Panetta served as co-chairman of the California Council on Base Support and Retention, where he fought to keep the Defense Language Institute and the Naval Postgraduate School open, both located in his hometown of Monterey, Calif.

Over the course of his career, Panetta has both fought against BRAC and made the case for it.

Now, as Defense Department secretary, he has said that as part of the 2013 budget,the Pentagon will ask Congress for legislation to establish a new BRAC commission to oversee up to two rounds of domestic base closures.

Panetta’s January announcement was met with immediate resistance from Congress,with influential members saying the proposal was dead on arrival as far as they were concerned.

However, Panetta’s experience, especially his understanding of the community-level concerns, could help the Defense Department gain congressional support for further base closures, according to past BRAC officials.

“He has been on all sides of this issue,” said David Berteau, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “I think therefore he has some unique standing, and if he chooses to put that standing into play, I think it could go a long way toward getting the authorization for a round.”

Berteau served as a senior BRAC official during the 1990s base closures.

After Fort Ord closed, then-Rep. Panetta urged his community back home to move on from the painful decision and start thinking about how the military base could be reused. Part of the old base is now home to a campus of California State University, which includes the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, as well as conservation land and commercial buildings.

Panetta’s unique background allows him to weigh in with members of Congress on a personal level, Berteau said. “If he’s personally willing to make the case, it will put a lot of credibility behind the request.”

That level of authority could come in handy, especially during an election year.

“Don’t ever forget: BRAC is the third rail of defense politics,” an issue so charged and controversial no one wants to touch it, said Ray DuBois, former acting undersecretary of the Army and now a senior adviser at CSIS. From 2001 to 2004, DuBois served as the deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations and environment, overseeing BRAC during that time.

The fact that President Obama is making a BRAC request during an election year shows just how serious the administration is about getting it done, Berteau said.

Resistance is already fierce.

When asked what he would do to a Pentagon request for domestic base closures, Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said: “Kill it.”

Such a request would be dead on arrival, at least in the House, McKeon told an audience Feb. 1 at a Reserve Officers Association conference.

McKeon was not alone in his opposition. Several Congressmen and senators issued press releases vowing to protect military bases and installations in their districts.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., questioned whether BRAC rounds ever result in savings.

“Before we have another BRAC round, I think we need to do a cost-benefit analysis of whether we’re really going to save any money,” she said during a Feb. 2 briefing on Capitol Hill.

Defense analysts agree that while closing bases costs money upfront, it produces savings in the long run.

According to the Government Accountability Office, the 2005 BRAC round, which was mostly completed last fall, will start paying for itself in 2018, a date that has slipped due to unforeseen costs.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, indicated he was open to discussing a BRAC request. “I think everything would be on the table,” he said. “We’re willing to negotiate on something like that.”

Meanwhile, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Washington Rep. Adam Smith, has said he supports base closures.

“I think without question we’re going to have to do base realignment,” he said in an interview. “I don’t see how any person looking at the strategy and looking at the changes coming down could conclude otherwise.”

If history is a guide, the most likely scenario is that Congress will ask for reports on the effectiveness of BRAC in its 2013 policy bill and then wait until 2014 to include language that would authorize a new BRAC commission, Berteau said. “The track record says that you’ve got to request it, knowing you might not get it this year.”

On that schedule, a new BRAC round would not begin until 2015, the same year the 2005 BRAC Commission recommended a new round of base closures.

DoD leadership would be needed to make the case on Capitol Hill as well as within the Pentagon, where the individual military services will likely push back on reductions to infrastructure.

“It takes a strong Defense secretary and strong [Office of the Secretary of Defense] leadership to demonstrate there are cost-savings and infrastructure reductions that can be achieved,” DuBois said. “If you were to leave it up to the services, you would not achieve very much.”

The military services have the tendency to evaluate base closures from their perspective alone, Berteau said. “To see the true potential for BRAC, you need to look at it DoD-wide.”

Following Panetta’s announcement that the Pentagon would be requesting new base closures, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said a new round of BRAC might mean minor changes for the Army, but nothing like the 2005 round.

“The Army went through a very significant BRAC here not too long ago,” he said during a press briefing. “For the Army, I believe, a follow-on BRAC would not have as much impact on the Army, because we’ve pretty much done what we want to. We have to do some minor things, I think, as we go through BRAC, but, I think for the most part, we’ve established our installations.”

The Navy and the Air Force also say they’ve been aggressive in previous BRAC rounds.

The Army had 12 major closures in the 2005 BRAC round, while the Navy had five. The Air Force was also slated for five major closures; but Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., was eventually taken off the list.

While the Marine Corps has far less infrastructure than the other services, it probably has excess capacity, especially as it had zero major closures in the last round, DuBois said.

Berteau said it is premature to say how a BRAC may affect any of the services.

Two keys things haven’t been determined yet, he said. “To get the most out of a U.S. base closure, you’ve got to know what your endpoint is — your force structure, but also your support structure for those combat troops.”

Today’s plans call for the Army’s active-duty force to be reduced from 547,000 soldiers to 490,000, a move tied to the Pentagon’s $487 billion cut, which was mandated by the initial spending caps included in the Budget Control Act of 2011.

However, it is far from certain whether defense will be cut further, Berteau said. “Even if it rests at $487 billion, you still have a good case to make for base closures, but the real case to be made is that it’s probably not the last reduction.”

As the Pentagon considers closing stateside facilities, it will have to look at its depots and laboratories, too, which raises the question: What kind of capability needs to be maintained inside DoD and to what extent does the government feel comfortable relying on the private sector?

“Those questions are much bigger than base closures, but would clearly create an opportunity within base closures,” Berteau said. In the end, “the No. 1 measure of whether you close or realign a base, or not, is the military value, not the budgetary savings. That’s a very powerful dynamic I think the department wants to preserve.”

An unfolding controversy in Western Pennsylvania demonstrates how difficult it will be to cut defense, however, and calls for a comprehensive approach.

The Air Force wants to cut spending partially by reducing the force by 286 aircraft. It announced last week that it wants to relocate two C-130 transport planes from the 911th Airlift Wing, stationed at Pittsburgh International Airport, and mothball the remaining seven. Doing so, the Air Force said, would help phase out all of its aircraft of that C-130 variant and eliminate all maintenance costs for that variant.

The wing has 1,300 reservists and 300 full-time civilian employees.

Members of the state’s congressional delegation vowed to fight the move, which is exactly the reaction that would occur anywhere such a closing is proposed.

Clearly, defense cuts will have to be accompanied by a new version of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, which in the past has compiled a comprehensive list that Congress must vote up or down without amendment.

Before that, however, the Pentagon, the administration and Congress need to address the issue of bases overseas. With the cold war now history, does the United States still need 80,000 troops in Europe, nearly 54,000 in highly secure Germany alone? Isn’t it safe, 66-plus years after the end of World War II, for Japan to assume more responsibility for its defense, thus reducing the number of U.S. troops there from 36,000?

The United States defense budget is larger than those of the next 17 nations combined. Even projected reductions would leave it larger than the next 10. Achieving cuts is not just a matter of dollars, but sense.

After the Bridge to Nowhere and ethics questions like those raised in the Post, why even bother to try to fix the earmark process? Because earmarks provide some of the best examples of responsive, effective, locally-driven projects that can transform communities and change people’s lives.

For every cringe-worthy earmark anecdote detailed in the Post series (and there were more than a few, for sure), any current or former member of Congress or staffer who has worked on appropriations can talk your ear off about terrific earmarked projects that have revitalized communities, saved lives, or improved local economies. Earmarks have funded hundreds of job training programs, paved roads that reduced traffic, supported the police officers protecting our streets, underwritten research on diseases, revitalized blighted neighborhoods, developed technologies to improve national defense, built libraries and schools, and given children new opportunities to learn. Every one of us has benefited from earmarks in some way. Unfortunately, a small number of worthless, even outrageous, projects have turned member-directed spending into a convenient, lazy punching bag—rather than a legitimate, important exercise of the power of the purse that Article I of the the Constitution confers on Congress.

Every earmark is hand-picked by someone elected to represent the community. Most federal money trickles into communities by way of funding formulas, grants to state and local government, or bureaucratic decision-making. Earmarks, on the other hand, are—or should be—the best expression of what a community wants for itself. Members of Congress are in constant communication with constituents, and most have a well-developed sense of unmet community needs. They use that perspective to winnow large numbers of community earmark requests down to a handful of the most important state or district priorities—of which a much smaller number are actually funded.

Frequently, that selection process leads to bipartisan collaboration. Earmarks are one of the few areas where members of opposing parties routinely work together—and in the current era of broken, acrimonious government, that may be enough reason to keep them. For example, in 2010, a bipartisan group of legislators from Minnesota agreed that the state needed to drastically improve services for its National Guard members returning from long deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Working across the aisle and in close cooperation with the Guard and the veterans, most of the state’s congressional delegation supported a $2 million earmark to fund counseling and other services. The earmark passed, and the program was so successful that other states replicated it.

What could the members of the Minnesota delegation have done if earmarks had been banned? Their best option would have been to call Pentagon officials and beg for the funding, a practice called “phone-marking,” when members of Congress contact an executive agency and communicate spending priorities through back channels. Phone-marking should trouble people more than earmarking: it occurs behind closed doors, leaving no public records and therefore no public accountability.

The earmarking process before last year’s moratorium was subject to much greater disclosure. Under House rules, legislators had to provide a written statement for each earmark request, detailing the name and address of the proposed earmark recipient, the purpose of the earmark, and a statement certifying that neither the member nor his or her spouse had a financial interest in the earmark. If this isn’t sufficient information, we should solve the problem by requiring disclosure of whatever additional information is necessary, not by shutting down earmarks altogether. They are too important.

One of the best days I ever spent as a congressional aide was visiting a job training program that one of my bosses helped establish with an earmark. The program, which is still operating today, prepares low-skill workers for jobs in the culinary industry, helping them escape from minimum wage jobs into union positions with a career path and wages sufficient to support families. The program was a collaboration between an enormous local union and a group of area employers who eagerly snapped up almost everyone who successfully completed the program. I visited the center on graduation day, and the excitement in that room was overwhelming. Many of the program participants were in their late 20s, 30s, or 40s and had never graduated from anything before, so it was an important occasion for them and their families. One mom explained to me that she pulled her kids out of school for the morning so that they could see her graduate, because she wanted them to believe that graduating was attainable and important. Each program participant was called forward to accept a certificate of completion and to announce the results of his or her job search, and the reaction was the same each time: enthusiastic applause from the whole audience, but the graduate’s family cheering loudly, often with little kids jumping up and down in excitement. In that moment, you could see life transform, not just for one person, but for a whole family. People were getting a shot at a better life by virtue of their own hard work . . . and a good earmark.

The GOP lawmakers say the moratorium should be reconsidered after the 2012 election, when there is a chance that Republicans will have control of the House and the Senate.

The earmark issue divides Senate Republicans, and thus is usually not discussed during their weekly meetings. But it is again front and center because of an effort spearheaded by Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) to permanently ban earmarks.

Thirteen Republican senators last week voted against the Toomey-McCaskill bill. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, who has a long track record of securing earmarks for his home state of Kentucky, quietly voted to approve it.

The measure has alarmed some Republican senators, even those considered among the chamber’s most conservative members.

“It’s a cessation of a constitutional power of Congress,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the senior Republican on the Budget Committee.

The Senate Republican Conference adopted a two-year conference-wide moratorium on earmarks in November 2010 after picking up seats in the midterm election.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) worked for years before successfully implementing an earmark ban, and he doesn’t plan to let up anytime soon.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is in Boehner’s camp. The GOP front-runner in the 2012 presidential race supports a permanent ban on earmarks.

Obama, meanwhile, endorsed an earmark moratorium during his 2011 State of the Union address.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has frequently defended Congress’s right to direct federal spending on local projects, and did so again last week.

Reid has said Obama is “absolutely wrong” on earmarks and should “back off.”

Sessions claimed he was an enthusiastic supporter of the moratorium “because the process had been abused.”

Sessions and other Republicans, however, do not want to give the executive branch the everlasting power to direct spending in their districts.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), a former House appropriator, said Republicans should consider agreeing to lift the moratorium at the end of 2012.

“What we agreed to do, and I think on balance it was a good policy, was have a moratorium for this Congress, which we have done and with which we are complying, and then revisit the issue,” he said.

Some Republicans say there is broader support for revisiting the earmark ban, noting last week’s amendment was a “message vote” that had no chance of passing. It mustered only 40 votes.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) voted for Toomey’s amendment, though he has made clear he would prefer to reform the practice of earmarking, rather than end it.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a member of the Appropriations Committee, said that “we have some done some pretty substantive reforms,” adding there would be much more transparency in the future, with lawmakers posting project requests online.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of the most outspoken opponents of the earmark ban, said momentum is gathering to overturn the moratorium. He said GOP colleagues increasingly realize they have ceded too much authority on funding home-state projects to the Obama administration.

“I think they’re learning,” said Inhofe. “It’s been long in the making, but people now realize — more people every week realize that argument is real, that we’re ceding our authority to Obama.

Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations panel, has vowed to revisit the moratorium this year.

Still, Boehner poses a major obstacle, because even if the Senate revives the use of earmarks at some point, he would seek to remove them in House-Senate conference discussions.

Boehner has never solicited earmarks during his congressional career, and many of the conservatives in his conference would balk at resurrecting them.

“I think the American people would be outraged if earmarks became a regular process in bills again,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), one of Boehner’s closest friends.

Burr said he does not see the earmark moratorium lifting while Boehner is Speaker.

Boehner is seeking to move a controversial transportation bill through the lower chamber that, unlike prior highway measures, does not have any earmarks.

There are a fair number of House Republican critics of Boehner’s earmark moratorium, including Reps. Ron Paul (Texas) and Don Young (Alaska).

Controversy surrounding earmarks surfaced again this week after an investigation by The Washington Post found that 33 members of Congress directed more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending measures to public projects proximate to properties they owned, potentially enhancing their value.

Toomey and McCaskill have said they will offer their Earmark Elimination Act again as an amendment to the transportation authorization bill, which is due to reach the Senate floor soon.

“The earmarking system wastes taxpayer dollars, creates the appearance of corruption and undermines public confidence in the legislative process,” Toomey said Wednesday. “Although our amendment failed last week, nothing in Washington gets done without sustained effort, and we will not stop until we eliminate this wasteful earmarking from the halls of Congress.”

“It was a lot better than combat rescue missions, no one was shooting at us,” Macrander said, a day after Brevard County authorities credited the crews of two helicopters with diverting from their training to help save the four men in the St. Johns River crash.

The boating accident happened about 7 p.m. after the airboat snaked through the darkened waterways and slammed into a tree west of Interstate 95 near the Sweetwater Boat Ramp. One of the men called 9-1-1, prompting Brevard County Sheriff’s Office and Brevard County Fire-Rescue crews to send out airboats in search of the boaters. Among the victims was a man in his mid-50s who was tossed several feet. The rescuers also needed air support.

Low-lying clouds and moderately windy conditions, however, kept helicopters from Holmes Regional Medical Center and the sheriff’s office grounded. Paramedics would have been forced to first find the injured, then take them back to a boat ramp and then transport them by ambulance to area hospitals. The injured men did attempt to flip over the disabled air boat but the craft took on water,leaving the four stranded.

Thirty miles away,Macrander and the other rescue-wing crews — all stationed at Patrick Air Force Base — were in the medium-lift helicopters carrying out live gunnery exercises with mounted .50-caliber guns at the military’s Avon Park installation when a call came in from 38-year-old Maj. Rod Stout.

The Air Force rarely carries out civilian rescues except when requested. Both of the helicopters, which can fly indefinitely with in-air refueling and in windy weather, were used on missions in Afghanistan and plucked stranded civilians from rooftops and waterways in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

“The initial call was that the airboat was going to try to make it out on its own and that our assistance was not needed…that changed,” Stout said, adding that a reservist had informally called the air base to report the incident. “It was a very easy decision to make. Life, limb or eyesight, if we can affect that mission or save that person’s life, that’s what we’re going to do.”

Stout dispatched messages to the Pave Hawk crews by radio and then to a sheriff’s watch commander by cell phone, who then radioed information to paramedics at the scene.

Macrander, 48, said the rescue was actually less complex than the combat scenario the airmen — Macrander, Mstr. Sgt. Randy Wells and Mst. Sgt. Will Towers — were practicing at Avon Park.

“We were doing some landing zone work when they called and said we might have a real-world mission for you,” said Macrander, a full-time reservist technician who has flown the HH-60 since the 1990s and flew combat missions in Afghanistan.

Paramedics located the men and worked to stabilize them as the modified Blackhawk helicopters slowly hovered to the ground by night-vision-guided pilots. Three of the injured boaters were loaded onto the helicopter piloted by Macrander.

Two paramedics also got onboard for the eight-minute flight to Holmes Regional Medical Center’s trauma center in Melbourne. A fourth patient was taken by ambulance. Their conditions — not believed to be life-threatening — were unknown late Tuesday.

“It was just another day at the office,” Macrander said.

“We train to do this sort of thing all the time.”

Congress tries to disable automatic spending cuts

The deficit-slashing supercommittee left Congress with quite the mess to mop up in 2012.

With each day that ticks by, the nation becomes a bit closer to a painful round of automatic budget cuts that the 12-member supercommittee failed to prevent because of its members’ inability to agree on a $1.2 trillion deal to cut the deficit.

So, despite a veto threat from President Barack Obama, congressional Republicans and a handful of Democrats have vowed to somehow unravel the spending cuts this year — which are scheduled to hit defense and domestic programs equally in January 2013.

“I’m very concerned about the defense cuts in sequestration, but it’s also the cuts to nondefense discretionary [that] are also devastating,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told POLITICO. “Ultimately, I think there’s a very strong feeling that it’s not going to go into effect.”

It’s easy to see why there’s such an appetite on Capitol Hill to blunt the budget ax.

If the defense cuts, including the trigger, go on as planned, it could lead to more than 1 million job losses in just one year, according to a study conducted by Stephen Fuller of George Mason University. And the domestic side of the ledger will also be hit hard — for instance, the National Education Association has estimated that more than 71,000 education-related jobs would disappear in 2013 under sequestration,the formal term for the $1.2 trillion in the automatic, across-the-board cuts.

“The Department of Defense just can’t sustain additional cuts beyond what they’ve already taken without seriously jeopardizing … the national security capability,” said Cord Sterling, vice president of legislative affairs for the Aerospace Industries Association, a group that has been talking with lawmakers and staffers on the impact of sequestration. “It will [also] have a very serious and negative impact on the U.S. manufacturing industry.”

But how it ultimately shakes out is the question mark looming over Capitol Hill this year.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said “no one really wants to go there” on the spending cuts and that Obama needs to work with Congress to find a way to avoid them. And a handful of legislative proposals to block the cuts are already circulating in Congress.

California Republican Buck McKeon, the powerful chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a Boehner ally, has introduced a bill that would trim the federal workforce and use those savings to offset one year of automatic cuts to both defense and domestic programs.