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Senators: Base programs must be funded, implemented
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Congress and the Bush administration must ensure that scheduled military base realignment and closing programs are fully funded and carried out, Ohio Sens. George Voinovich and Sherrod Brown jointly urged on Thursday.
Voinovich, a Republican, and Brown, a Democrat, made their pitch in letters to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Senate Appropriations Committee's leadership.
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The $464 billion spending bill the Senate approved on Wednesday is $3 billion short of the amount President Bush requested to carry out the 2005 BRAC decisions to reorganize the military and improve its efficiency.
That potentially puts at risk Wright-Patterson Air Force Base's scheduled $19 million in infrastructure work this year to prepare for $260 million in construction, starting next year, of new buildings to house aerospace medicine and other research programs to be moved in from other bases by 2011.
Also in jeopardy are a transformation of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service — the Defense Department's accounting arm — that will bring several hundred jobs to Columbus and Cleveland, as well as construction projects and reorganization for the National Guard, the senators wrote.
"Without the full amount of BRAC funding required, our communities will face delays that will put at risk our key defense priorities and the goal of saving our taxpayer dollars," Voinovich and Brown wrote in the letter to Appropriations Committee chairman Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and ranking Republican Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi. "In Ohio alone, hundreds of jobs would be at risk if we do not fund the priorities that we adopted into law."
Additional BRAC money to fund the scheduled programs could be inserted into Bush's request for additional spending authority for war costs, Voinovich and Brown wrote.
The senators urged Gates not to cancel or delay scheduled BRAC programs in favor of other programs, if the spending legislation fails to specify which programs are being funded.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.
