MADISON GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, INC.

  • ABOUT

  • PROCESS

  • SERVICES

  • TEAM

  • NEWS

  • CONTACT

  • More

    Super Committee Spurs Comparisons to BRAC

    August 4, 2011

    For Capitol Hill veterans, the bipartisan committee created this week to cut the deficit by $1.5 trillion dollars brings back memories of the 2005 commission that spurred a round of military base closings across the United States.

     

    Lawmakers established both panels to make the kinds of tough choices that congressional committee members, who had vested interests in the issues at hand, could not make themselves. It is, by no means, an easy job. Indeed, the best outcome for the so-called super committee—and the Base Realignment and Closure Commission before it—is to convince lawmakers to go along with their recommendations, no matter how difficult or painful.

     

    Lawmakers and pundits have referenced the BRAC panel numerous times in recent weeks to explain the work of the super committee. “If you’re looking for an analogy, think of the base-closing legislation of a few years ago,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation.

     

    Here are a few of the similarities and differences between the two panels.

     

    1. Members

     

    Both committees are bipartisan, but the selection the members differs widely. Then-President George W. Bush appointed all nine BRAC commissioners with input from party leaders in both chambers. This time around, the White House has no control over who will sit on the super committee. The Congressional party leaders will be the ones selecting panel members.

     

    Likewise, the makeup of the super committee is different. Lawmakers, many of whom have bases in their districts, insulated themselves from base closings—and prevented member-on-member warfare—by banning any current members of Congress from sitting on BRAC. By contrast, 12 lawmakers—six from each chamber—will sit on the super committee, making the panel members more politically vulnerable.

     

    BRAC also had an odd number of commissioners, a move set up to prevent a deadlock. The commission also required a super majority of seven votes to add any installation to the Pentagon’s closure list. The super committee has a dozen members, equally divided by the two parties, and requires only a simply majority to approve their recommendations—a recipe for deadlock.

     

    2. Transparency

     

    BRAC was required to conduct public hearings in Washington and around the country. Public input, all documentation, analysis, and internal discussions wer posted on the commission’s website. In short, every move the commission made—and every letter it read—was public.

     

    It is unclear just how open the super committee’s proceedings will be. The legislation says the panel “may” hold hearings—and, if it does, it must announce them seven days in advance. But the legislation does not require documentation and other internal proceedings to be made public. It’s a safe assumption that much of the decision making—and the wheeling and dealing—will take place behind closed doors.

     

    3. Deadline

     

    BRAC received the Pentagon’s list of recommended base closures on May 13, 2005, and had to report its own proposal back to the White House by September 8. That gave commissioners less than four months to review thousands of pages of documents, sift through public input, and tour bases around the country before coming up with their final report.

     

    Members of the super committee, who have not yet been chosen, must vote on their deficit-cutting recommendations by November 23. That gives them an equally truncated time frame for which to review and debate sizable cuts to federal spending and potential tax increases.

     

    4. Vote

     

    As with BRAC, lawmakers will not have an opportunity to amend or tweak the super committee’s recommendations. Members of both chambers will have to decide whether to accept or reject the recommendations in their entirety.

     

    “Having the up-or-down vote by Congress … levels the playing field tremendously relative to the recommendations,” said Paul Hirsch, a staffer on the 1991 base-closure commission and lobbyist during the 2005 BRAC round. “It also brings some governance to the commission that what they’re going to propose, while it will be deep cuts, won’t be something that is so beyond the pale that … members of both houses won’t accept it.”

     

    But there is one key difference in the two votes. For BRAC, lawmakers once again protected themselves by requiring only a vote to reject—rather than accept—the commission’s findings. Lawmakers, in effect, didn’t have to approve the base closings. They just had to vote not to reject it. By comparison, lawmakers will vote up or down on the super committee’s report, stripping them of some of the political protection members value.

     

    5. Consequences

     

    If the House rejected the final BRAC report, the bases on the list would have remained open. In short, nothing would change—except the Defense Department would not reap the billions of dollars it had planned to save by shuttering many of its installations.

     

    If the super committee fails, the consequences are much more dire. Failure would trigger a $1.2 trillion across-the-board cut. The Pentagon would shoulder roughly half of those cuts, a scenario that senior leaders have already said is unmanageable and even dangerous. The Defense Department would be forced to furlough thousands of employees and scale back programs—not to mention what would happen across the rest of the government.

     

    “If that happens, it could trigger a round of dangerous across-the-board defense cuts that would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families, and our ability to protect the nation,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta wrote in a lengthy letter circulated on Wednesday to Defense Department personnel. But Panetta stressed that the cut, or “trigger,” is meant to force both parties to negotiate to find the requisite savings. “It is designed to be unpalatable to spur responsible, balanced deficit reduction and avoid misguided cuts to our security,” he wrote.

    Tags:

    #BRAC

    Please reload

    Recent Posts

    Trump and the Military Do Not Share the Same Values. The Armed Forces are not an extension of the White House.

    November 26, 2019

    The comeback coast The birthplace of America’s Space Age fell into decay once the shuttle retired. Now it’s bouncing back, fueled by private industry.

    May 22, 2019

    Pentagon: Climate change threatens military installations

    January 18, 2019

    NYTimes PodCast: A Republican Congressman From Texas Who Opposes the Wall

    January 17, 2019

    Congressman Will Hurd Selected for House Appropriations Committee

    January 17, 2019

    Travis Air Force Base breaks ground on KC-46 hangars

    January 16, 2019

    Travis breaks ground for 3-bay KC-46 hangar

    January 16, 2019

    Congress in 2019: Why the first branch should bring back earmarks

    January 2, 2019

    Trump emphasizes workforce training in new vision for STEM education

    December 3, 2018

    Trump Space Force, Pentagon Plan Set to Collide With Budget Caps

    October 12, 2018

    Please reload

    Archive

    November 2019 (1)

    May 2019 (1)

    January 2019 (6)

    December 2018 (1)

    October 2018 (1)

    September 2018 (1)

    July 2018 (1)

    February 2018 (2)

    January 2018 (4)

    November 2017 (3)

    October 2017 (4)

    September 2017 (1)

    August 2017 (7)

    July 2017 (3)

    June 2017 (3)

    March 2017 (4)

    February 2017 (2)

    January 2017 (8)

    December 2016 (1)

    November 2016 (9)

    October 2016 (7)

    September 2016 (4)

    August 2016 (11)

    July 2016 (3)

    June 2016 (1)

    September 2014 (2)

    August 2014 (2)

    July 2014 (2)

    December 2013 (1)

    November 2013 (5)

    October 2013 (7)

    September 2013 (2)

    August 2013 (4)

    July 2013 (14)

    June 2013 (29)

    May 2013 (36)

    April 2013 (28)

    March 2013 (21)

    February 2013 (21)

    January 2013 (16)

    December 2012 (6)

    September 2012 (1)

    August 2012 (5)

    July 2012 (6)

    June 2012 (1)

    May 2012 (8)

    March 2012 (3)

    February 2012 (5)

    January 2012 (3)

    December 2011 (5)

    November 2011 (5)

    October 2011 (4)

    September 2011 (2)

    August 2011 (16)

    July 2011 (12)

    June 2011 (9)

    May 2011 (2)

    April 2011 (2)

    March 2011 (4)

    February 2011 (9)

    January 2011 (15)

    Please reload

    Search By Tags

    #AFCP

    #Acquisition

    #Afghanistan

    #Air Force

    #AirForce

    #Army

    #BRAC

    #Base Closures

    #Bioenergy

    #Budget

    #California

    #Clinton

    #Community Partnership

    #Congress

    #Continuing Resolution

    #CyberSecurity

    #DC

    #Defense

    #Defense Budget

    #Defense Spending

    #Department of Defense

    #DoD

    #Earmarks

    #Economic Development

    #Election

    #Environment

    #FAA

    #Florida

    #HASC

    #House

    #JFCOM

    #Jobs Stimulus Package

    #KC-46

    #Legislation

    #Lobbyist

    #Marines