In this episode of Budget Watchdog All Federal, host Steve Ellis sits down with TCS Policy Analyst Gabe Murphy to discuss their comprehensive new report, “Base Instincts: A Case for Base Realignment and Closures at Home and Abroad.”
Nearly 20 years have passed since the last Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) round in 2005, yet the Pentagon continues to operate with significant excess infrastructure capacity. Murphy reveals striking findings from recent Pentagon reports showing 19-22% excess capacity across military installations, while also uncovering troubling inconsistencies in how this excess is being reported and measured.
The conversation explores why BRAC – a unique congressional process that packages base closure recommendations into an up-or-down vote – has been such an effective tool for eliminating wasteful spending, saving taxpayers an estimated $13.8 billion annually from previous rounds. Murphy breaks down what went wrong with the costly 2005 round, including problematic “joint basing” initiatives and contractor-driven cost overruns that have made lawmakers hesitant to authorize new closures.
Challenging common assumptions about the economic impact of base closures, the hosts examine data showing that affected communities often see unemployment drop and income rise in the decade following closures, when proper redevelopment planning occurs. The episode also addresses the Pentagon’s overseas footprint of 750 bases in 80 countries, costing $55 billion annually.
With deferred maintenance backlogs reaching $137 billion and ongoing fiscal pressures, Ellis and Murphy make the case that a new BRAC round could save an additional $2.7 billion per year while enhancing both fiscal responsibility and national security.
Announcer:
Welcome to Budget Watchdog All Federal, the podcast dedicated to making sense of the budget spending and tax issues facing the nation. Cut through the partisan rhetoric and talking points for the facts about what’s being talked about, bandied about and pushed to Washington, brought to you by taxpayers for common sense. And now the host of Budget Watchdog AF TCS President Steve Ellis.
Steve Ellis:
Welcome to All American Taxpayers seeking Common Sense. You’ve made it to the right place for 30 years. TCS that’s taxpayers for common sense, has served as an independent nonpartisan budget watchdog group based in Washington DC We believe in fiscal policy for America that is based on facts. We believe in transparency and accountability because no matter where you are on the political spectrum, no one wants to see their tax dollars wasted. It’s May, 2025. And dear podcast listeners, we’re discussing a critically important fiscal issue that impacts both our national security and taxpayer dollars base realignment, enclosure or BRAC. Earlier this month, TCS released a comprehensive report titled Base Instincts, A Case for Base Realignment and Closures at Home and Abroad. Here with me today is Gabe Murphy, TCS, policy, analyst and lead, author of this report. Gabe, thanks for joining me today.
Gabe Murphy:
It’s great to be here, Steve.
Steve Ellis:
So Gabe, no pun intended, let’s start with the basics. It’s been nearly 20 years since the last BRAC round in 2005, so people may not be familiar with this. What is BRAC?
Gabe Murphy:
Thanks, Steve. So BRAC is, stands for base realignment and Closure, as we said, and essentially it’s a process for the military to close, particularly domestic military installations that are excess to need. Realignments is another option that they have rather than closure. And it essentially is shifting missions from one base to another. So the base might remain, but some of the missions move around and that can also reduce costs in some cases, although in some cases as we’ll explain, it can increase costs. And essentially as the Cold War was winding down, we realized that we had more bases than we needed. And so Congress created this novel process to consider realignments and closures in a way that was difficult with the current law on the books.
Steve Ellis:
Alright, so what makes BRAC different than any other commission that analyzes and makes recommendations?
Gabe Murphy:
Well, in this case, the Pentagon actually starts with their own recommendations for closures and realignment, and that gives the commission some direction, but then the independent commission reviews and modifies these recommendations to come out with their own set of recs. And then Congress actually votes up or down on the entire package and a single up or down vote without amendment, and then it goes to the president’s desk and is signed into law. And then implementation begins.
Steve Ellis:
And I’ll say that BRAC at least has been viewed as a model for other processes. So for instance, the Simpson Bowles report was going to be a vote on up and down. That was the fiscal commission. There’s been other things that they’ve looked at and said, Hey, this is the only way we can get it through Congresses is a package. We don’t want to have amendments. We want to make sure that it can get on the Senate calendar. It’s forces things. And so it’s really been a tool that has been actually not really replicated, but people have talked about trying to replicate it in other fashions because it relieves the lawmakers of the political burden of supporting a specific closure in their own state or district, which made it hard for lawmakers to vote because who’s going to vote for that closure. And so essentially this is what’s been the approach. And so since it’s been a model, how successful has it been?
Gabe Murphy:
Well, for a while, Steve, it worked really well in 1989. That was the first background. And then they did another one in 91 and another in 93 in 95. And then one more in 2005,
Steve Ellis:
- Were you just pausing or it stopped there? Why did it stop there?
Gabe Murphy:
Yeah, no, it stopped pretty much did in its tracks after the 2005 round. And that’s because unfortunately, the legislation behind this round made some tweaks that actually had some cascading impacts and ultimately limited some of the savings and led to significantly higher implementation costs. Unfortunately, the lawmakers still point to that as a reason not to do a new BRAC, even though the savings in the long run surpassed those costs and certainly already have for the 2005 round.
Steve Ellis:
Okay. Well, I want to get into those issues with the 2005 round, but now that we’ve explained the basics, let’s step back and take a look at the rationale for BRAC. Aside from the political benefits of a process that relieves some of the pressure on specific lawmakers, what are the broader strategic and fiscal reasons for Congress to authorize a new round of base realignment enclosures?
Gabe Murphy:
Right. Well, I mean essentially from both a fiscal and a strategic perspective, excess infrastructure capacity is the key issue here. And I think this warrants a bit of a sidebar because it’s a little complex, but the idea is simple. We have more infrastructure than we need, and that costs money. It costs money to maintain these bases. There’s energy costs, there’s personnel costs, there’s all sorts of costs associated with maintaining bases that we don’t need. And the military also has a real problem right now with sustainment. I mean, we have a deferred maintenance backlog in the realm of 137 billion worth of maintenance that’s needed. And when you have all these excess bases, that makes it hard to figure out where you prioritize that maintenance and it ultimately contributes to that backlog.
Steve Ellis:
So Gabe, what do we know about the current status? I mean, it’s been 20 years.
Gabe Murphy:
Yeah, well, so the most recent widely available report, at least is from 2017 under the last Trump administration. And at that time, they looked at the sort of whole forest structure from both domestically and overseas, and they found a lot of excess. I mean, the Army had 29 to 33% excess capacity. The Navy was more like six or 7%. The Air Force had around 30%, and overall it came to between 19 and 22% excess capacity.
Steve Ellis:
Wow, that’s a lot of excess, especially when you’re thinking of percentages. We’re talking about an agency that oversees about 4.1 trillion in assets spread out over 26.7 million acres. So what did the Pentagon have to say for itself in this report?
Gabe Murphy:
Well, Steve, they used the report essentially to call for a new background. They said that the excess they identified, and I’ll quote them here, requires a comprehensive BRAC process to reduce excess while enhancing military value, achieving recurring savings and ensuring retention of excess space for contingency and surge requirements such as change missions, tactics and technology end quote.
Steve Ellis:
But Gabe, the world is an evolving, changing place. We don’t necessarily know what we need. So this isn’t some of that excess valuable.
Gabe Murphy:
Sure it is. Steve and the Pentagon acknowledges that. I mean, that’s why they say that they are going to ensure the retention of excess space. And a lot of people look at BRAC and they say, well, we need some excess. And that’s a valid point. But the military takes that into account when they’re looking at BRAC. And really this is about getting rid of truly unnecessary facilities and installations while still allowing for some of those contingency needs. The last BRAC was authorized when the US was still in two foreign engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Steve Ellis:
I mean, the Pentagon is usually asking for more. So when they say we have more than we need, that’s probably an understatement.
Gabe Murphy:
Right. Steve and the report also admits that its findings are likely understated. In this report, they used a 1989 baseline, and with that baseline, they essentially assumed that at that time there was no excess capacity, but the report itself admits that there clearly was excess capacity as evidenced by the backgrounds that immediately followed it.
Steve Ellis:
Several backgrounds. It was exactly, I mean in short succession. So Gabe, is 2017 really the last time the Pentagon took a look at excess infrastructure?
Gabe Murphy:
Well, we can’t know for sure. I mean, there may be classified reports on this. Obviously we have no way of knowing that. But there was actually a report in 2024 that we came across that was in response to FY 2024 NDA requirement. That’s the National Defense Authorization Act. Essentially the Pentagon’s policy bill, and I want to give a shout out here to Nick Cleveland Stout, who’s research associate over at the Quincy Institute. He brought this report to my attention and we actually co-authored an op-ed for Responsible Statecraft on this. And the report has some different numbers than the 2017 report.
Steve Ellis:
Ooh, that’s interesting. What did it say, Gabe?
Gabe Murphy:
Well, we looked at it, and one of the issues here is that there wasn’t the same methodology across departments, so it was a little difficult to parse, and that’s a problem in and of itself. We actually took the numbers that were in the report and then had to add some numbers from the General Services Administration or GSA to figure out the full scope of excess infrastructure because in some cases they only listed the excess but not the total amount of facilities. And so to get a percentage, we had to get those numbers from GSA, but in the end it found that the Pentagon had closer to 10% excess capacity by facilities or nearly 10% by square footage, and that’s a big drop. And so we were a little skeptical of whether that could have really happened without a BRAC.
Steve Ellis:
Yeah, I mean that sounds a bit different than what they had to say in 2017, which I will note was at the beginning of the first Trump presidency
Gabe Murphy:
And the lack of consistency across departments is one thing. But the Air Force, for example, in the 2017 rounds, they had 28 to 32% excess is what they listed. And then in this 2024 report, based on the numbers that we saw from GSA of the overall scope of their properties, the Air Force only reported 0.09% of excess at its facilities and only 0.04% by square footage. That’s a massive drop. And so that in particular seems really unlikely, particularly in light of the fact that you have the Air Force Chief of Staff General, David Allen, who’s been going around highlighting that the Air Force has 30% excess capacity in this dispute with lawmakers he’s having over the deferred maintenance that we mentioned.
Steve Ellis:
Wow, that is a huge drop and it’s jarring. So why would they under report?
Gabe Murphy:
Well, what we found, and we talked to a Pentagon official about this, who we did not name in the op-ed, but they told us that unfortunately installation commanders are incentivized to under report because sustainment funding is tied to excess capacity. When they declare a facility or a building to be in excess, they lose 85% of the sustainment funding for that building. So let’s say it costs a hundred thousand dollars for sustainment for a building, when you declare it excess, suddenly you only have $15,000 that you get. And so by not labeling a building excess, they get to keep that money and use it for actual needed sustainment elsewhere on the base.
Steve Ellis:
It’s really wild. And it underscores this broader issue of deferred maintenance. General Allen’s been working on, as we discussed, there’s this huge backlog of deferred maintenance. And so installation commanders have legitimate reasons wanting to hold onto as much sustainment funding as they can, even though they’re basically making it up as far as the facilities. So their real needs that they’re trying to meet, not just pocketing the cash,
Gabe Murphy:
Right, but the incentive to underreport excess means that we don’t have a clear up-to-date sense of actual excess capacity. And that’s a problem because this excess is one of the main reasons to authorize a new background. So without real numbers here, it’s harder to reduce wasteful spending that could otherwise be actually spent on needed sustainment.
Steve Ellis:
Well, if that’s not enough to make your head spin, what about the transparency issues with this new report? I mean, I haven’t actually seen it myself because it’s not posted anywhere online. Have you seen it, Gabe?
Gabe Murphy:
I have Steve, but it wasn’t easy. This report, it’s not classified, it’s not another designation known as controlled unclassified information, but it’s not posted online anywhere.
Steve Ellis:
So budget watchdog AF faithful, I know this story, but for your benefit, Gabe, have you seen the report?
Gabe Murphy:
I have. And in order to do this, and anyone technically could actually do this, but it’s not easy. You have to go into Congress, then you have to find your way to the Senate Armed Services Committee office. They informed me that I couldn’t take pictures of it, I couldn’t make copies of it, and I obviously couldn’t take the report itself with me. They allowed me to take notes and they said that some people even sit there and record the whole report by speaking it out.
Steve Ellis:
So there you have IT listeners, A TCS Mission Impossible.
Gabe Murphy:
Yeah, I’m a real Tom Cruise. But anyway, the other thing about this is, is a courtesy, I was informed there’s no requirement that the SASC, the Senate Armed Services Committee has to provide this. They also told me that has the House Armed Services Committee doesn’t offer this courtesy. So the Senate Armed Services Committee is literally the only place where a citizen can go to take a look at this report. Look, there’s only one reason for the Pentagon to restrict this report in this way, and that’s if there’s no rationale to classify it, but they just don’t want anyone to read it.
Steve Ellis:
So, bottom line, given this perverse incentive to UNDERREPORT and other methodological issues, the 2017 report is the best estimate that we have on actual excess.
Gabe Murphy:
Yeah, that’s my assessment as well.
Steve Ellis:
Alright, so moving on. You mentioned some of the problems with excess infrastructure, it costs money to maintain, it makes it harder to tackle deferred maintenance. Are there other reasons for Congress to authorize a new background?
Gabe Murphy:
Absolutely, Steve. One of the main reasons that is often overlooked, I mean there’s the savings to be sure, but without a background, closures and realignments can still happen in a de facto way behind the scenes. They’re not going to be official. But when the Pentagon wants to close a military installation and Congress won’t authorize a new brand, they’ll sometimes reduce personnel realign missions without actually closing the base. And that has a similarly potentially harmful impact on local communities as a full closure because really it’s the personnel at bases who generate the economic activity that support local communities near these installations. So, when you reduce personnel, whether it’s through a BRAC or not, that has impacts on communities. But the difference is that unlike this sort of stealth BRAC, as some have called it, there’s not really a system in place to support these communities with BRAC. There’s economic adjustment assistance, there’s planning support, there’s the ability to actually repurpose the former base land for redevelopment. But when you don’t actually close a base and just reduce personnel, you have all the negative economic impacts of that without any of the benefits of opening up the base for other economic activity.
Steve Ellis:
Yeah, I’ve actually been to a brewery at the Brunswick, Maine Naval Air Station or former Brunswick Maine Naval Air Station, which I actually had stayed at when it was a naval air station. So not saying a brewery is necessarily the highest purpose, but nevertheless it still is economic activity that was being done in that community that people were attending. So speaking of economic activity, you looked at some of the economic data from communities facing major closures in the wake of the 2005 background, what did you find?
Gabe Murphy:
Right, so this has been a major concern for lawmakers and local communities near installations. But the data, and you actually look at it, tells a different story than the one we often hear looking at unemployment. On average unemployment dropped by 0.89 percentage points relative to the change in the national average in the 10 years following the closure announcements. And looking at the national average here is important because it corrects for those broader macroeconomic factors and gets you a more accurate sense of the impact of BRAC on these communities.
Steve Ellis:
Right, because obviously if you talk about the 10 years after the 2005 background, you’ve got the great recession right in the middle of that, which certainly impacted places in the country that had nothing to do with BRAC. What about personal income?
Gabe Murphy:
Yeah, well with per capita personal income counties on average saw that rise over that 10 year period, not quite as much as the rise in the national average, though about 2.5 percentage points less, but still in real inflation adjusted terms, these counties saw their per capita personal income grow by $4,220 from 2005 to 2015 compared to about $5,600 nationally.
Steve Ellis:
Okay. So these are the averages. Did it work out across the board?
Gabe Murphy:
No, I mean there were 20 different counties that faced major closures during the 2005 background, and there were certainly outliers on both sides of the spectrum. On the positive side, we saw San Patricia County in Texas Naval Station Ingleside was closed there and per capita personal income rose relative to the change in the national average by almost 20 percentage points by 2010 and by almost 22 percentage points by 2015. So that was a positive example. On the negative ends, we had Fulton County, Georgia, this is where Fort McPherson was closed, and per capita personal income there dropped relative to the change in the national average by about 15 percentage points by 2010 and only 11 points by 2015. So those are real issues. There are outliers here. We’re not trying to say that there’s no negative impacts from some of these closures, but on average these communities fared nearly as well, if not better than the national average. And I think that really underscores that when done right, closures can create opportunities that communities can seize.
Steve Ellis:
And I really want to underscore that point because I think it is how a community goes into this is how they’re going to come out of it. Meaning if they plan and they sort of embrace the fact that the base closure is happening and figure out what are some of the economic opportunities of these facilities, because taking over buildings and shops and parks and golf courses that they can use as an amenity in the community that then they can actually diversify their economy. Because as you said earlier, Gabe, a lot of the economic impact is the personnel, the people coming off the base that are going to the bars, et cetera. And so you can actually diversify that economic base for the community, which can have really longstanding benefits. And I think that’s the story that we want to tell to members of Congress, partly because they look at the immediate impacts of BRAC and change is scary. And so these communities that have been used to this facility being there are worried. And in the context of relatively short election cycles, only two years in the house, it can obscure some of those medium and long-term benefits that come from repurposing former base land to create these new economic opportunities.
Gabe Murphy:
And as much as it’s lawmaker’s job to get elected, I mean that’s one of their goals. Obviously their real job is to support the national interest and support their communities. And when we see that communities can have these positive impacts to overlook that and just throw it all out the window to hang on to what can often be a less significant generator of economic prosperity in the form of military bases, it’s a little shortsighted.
Steve Ellis:
Agreed. Alright, we’ll stop proselytizing and let’s talk about some of the cost drivers particularly that were in that 2005 round that were different. What were they?
Gabe Murphy:
Well, one of them was joint basing, and I know you have some opinions about this, Steve.
Steve Ellis:
It is a pet peeve of mine, particularly you drive around the DC area, there’s JBAB as you’re going down 2 95 and DC and that’s joint base Anacostia Bowling, which were neighboring Navy and Air Force facilities that were conveniently named joint and basically operate in the same footprint, do the same things they did before. It’s just now instead of being two facilities, it’s one facility because it’s joint base, Anacostia Bowling or joint base, Meyer Henderson Hall, which is Fort Meyer and Henderson Hall, which is Army facility, Fort Meyer. And Henderson Hall was a Marine Corps facility. And again, just because they’re neighboring, they just basically merge them and call them joint. And now you only have one facility instead of two. Okay,
Gabe Murphy:
Take it away. So just to back this up with some data, Steve, the 2005 BRAC Commission recommended merging 26 installations into 12 joint bases and they said that there would be a 20 year net present value that’s essentially a measure of the value of future savings minus the upfront costs over a 20 year period of $2.3 billion. But when the Pentagon did a revised estimate in 2011 and their budget submission, they said that the 20 year net present value would actually be 249 million. So that value dropped by about 2.1 billion or 91%. And that was really a reflection of these massive one-time implementation costs that they didn’t
Steve Ellis:
Anticipate. Alright, so what are some of the other things that were cost drivers in 2005?
Gabe Murphy:
Well, PRI privatization in place they call it was one thing that was a cost driver in 2005, but also another rounds, although I will say that this was not a widespread practice, so it doesn’t seem like it was the dominant cost driver, but we looked at similar data, what the initial savings estimates were versus what the revised savings estimates were. And we saw that in the cases where they did do privatization, which is essentially just handing over the mission of a installation to a private entity to continue conducting the same work on that base land, they found that the savings often were not as good as they anticipated. And it’s hard to know if savings from realigning a mission instead would’ve been higher because they don’t share a lot of data on that. But the data we do have suggests that this might not be the most cost effective approach. And so we said that in our report and we didn’t recommend necessarily prohibiting privatization in place. We just want to make sure that there’s some thoughtful process here that actually looks at alternatives to privatization as well.
Steve Ellis:
So you actually spoke with somebody, Gabe, that had direct experience with the 2005 round, right?
Gabe Murphy:
That’s right, Steve. I spoke with Dan Grazer, who’s a senior fellow and director of the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center and a former BRAC action officer for the Marine Corps during the 2005 round. He was a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps at the time in 2008, recently home from Iraq. And he was assigned to instruct Marines at an armor school where Marines learn to operate tanks. And as part of his role, he was tasked with monitoring implementation of a BRAC recommendation to move the Armor Center and School at Fort Knox, Kentucky to Fort Benning, Georgia, and also to establish the Maneuver Center of excellence and sort of combine that school there. And his job was essentially to make sure that the Marine Corps would still have everything it needed to train Marines as this process unfolded. And he explained that it was really a messy process and one that ultimately was supposed to be about enhancing military value.
And actually did the opposite Part of this was that Booz Allen was contracted to implement this recommendation, and as he explained it, they were looking at ways to inflate the requirements of implementing this recommendation. One of the ways they did that was they recommended a new headquarters building, but it ended up being about four times larger than it needed to be. They also recommended a variety of simulators for training service members on how to operate tanks, and that just didn’t really jive with the Marine Corps method, which is much more field oriented than the armies, for example. Then one of the more striking things he told us is that they recommended building a counseling simulator, which is essentially just like a wall size screen for simulating conversations with subordinates. That’s just truly not a requirement. So this was happening across the board with realignment, new requirements popping up and that increased these upfront implementation costs because of unexpected construction needs.
Steve Ellis:
Well, this is more of an aside, but now they don’t need it at all because they transferred all the armor over to the Army as part of force design 2030. But it sounds like Congress is right to be worried about the upfront cross of a new background.
Gabe Murphy:
Yeah, Steve, I mean the shorter answer is yes, but that does not mean that they should throw in the towel and agree to never close the domestic military installation ever again. There are in fact solutions for addressing cost drivers in previous routes.
Steve Ellis:
Well, we’re all for solutions. So Gabe, what are some of the solutions that TCS found?
Gabe Murphy:
Well, one of the biggest ones is around military value. In the 2005 backgrounds, they created a new requirement for the Secretary of Defense to prioritize military value in defining the selection criteria for making recommendations above everything else. And that had the effect of sidelining criteria related to costs and savings. And we’re not saying military value shouldn’t be considered it should, but to subordinate costs and savings means that you end up with a focus that oftentimes add costs. And that’s what happened in the 2005 round. What we would suggest is having criteria related to both, but just ensuring that each recommendation actually meets those criteria and that it’s not, oh, if this supports military value, then it doesn’t matter if it costs $2 billion, for instance. So that’s one thing. I think another important recommendation we had is independent reviews of these new requirements that often contractors are coming up with because we need a process to actually know that the unexpected costs that we’re seeing are necessary costs and not just things that are going to benefit contractors.
Steve Ellis:
So it sounds like if Congress actually took a moment to consider the root causes of higher costs, they could enact some fixes in a new round and we have some recommendations in our report that can help with that. Alright, pivoting here. We kind of buried the lead, but BRAC has and will continue to save taxpayers a huge amount of money, and you actually crunched the numbers on this. So how much are previous BRAC round saving us, Gabe?
Gabe Murphy:
Well, Steve, this was actually harder to answer than I anticipated when I first took on this project, but the Pentagon has said that previous BRAC round are saving about 12 billion a year. When you adjust that for inflation, it’s almost 16 billion a year.
Steve Ellis:
But
Gabe Murphy:
GAO took issue with this. They first pointed out that these savings are really true estimates. They’re not measurements because it’s impossible to measure savings on things that essentially it’s avoided costs that they’re calling savings and that’s just not possible to measure. So they’re really true estimates for one second, GAO pointed to environmental and caretaker costs that were not accounted for in the estimates of savings that took place after implementation was actually done. And third, and this one really blew my mind, when the Pentagon was estimating savings, they counted savings from military personnel reductions that never actually took place in the 2005 round. Unlike previous rounds, personnel were largely just moved around, not cut. And so when you count savings from personnel that way, you dramatically inflate the numbers.
Steve Ellis:
Well, that’s almost as bad as some of the fake math going on in the reconciliation bill before Congress. Not really, but that’s another story Budget Watchdog AF Faithful, please listen to the last episode. Gabe, please go on.
Gabe Murphy:
Well, Steve, bad math can be contagious and maybe that’s what’s going on in Congress now. But anyway, we corrected for all of this bad math as much as possible and still found that prior backgrounds are conservatively saving 13.8 billion per year adjusted for inflation.
Steve Ellis:
And that’s how much then do the math quickly. It’s 166 billion over the last decade. So that’s not bad. And that’s the ongoing savings, avoiding costs if you assume that we would’ve kept these bases. So what about a new round? How much could we save if Congress got its act together? Can we get a drum roll
Gabe Murphy:
On top of ongoing savings from prior rounds? If a new background mirrored average savings estimates from prior rounds, taxpayers would save an additional 2.7 billion per year.
Steve Ellis:
Well, if that’s not worth the squeeze, I’m not sure what is. I mean, it’s been 20 years since we last did this, so excess has likely grown over time and the savings could be even higher, right?
Gabe Murphy:
Yeah, that’s right, Steve. I mean, it’s hard to know until we actually get this done, but 2.7 billion is I think a conservative estimate of savings.
Steve Ellis:
Okay. So we’ve been really talking about domestic basis for the most part. Let’s turn to overseas basis. Your report also makes the case for addressing excess capacity abroad, correct?
Gabe Murphy:
Yes. And this is actually an area where action could be taken much more readily because the executive branch already has the authority to close overseas installations without congressional approval. Currently, the US maintains about 750 military bases in roughly 80 foreign countries, and this costs about 55 billion a year. That doesn’t include personnel costs. So even just a 10% reduction in overseas basis could save over 5 billion a year.
Steve Ellis:
There’s also some of these other ancillary benefits that are not direct costs, right? I mean, some other places where we would have a beneficial impact.
Gabe Murphy:
Yeah, I mean there certainly could be, and those are worth looking at. Reducing overseas spaces in certain regions can help actually decrease tensions and mitigate some of the risks. Our troops face forces in countries contending with violent extremist groups face regular attacks, and our positioning in regions like Europe and the Pacific is often cited correctly or not by Russia and China’s points of tension. So cutting excess infrastructure would save taxpayer dollars. That’s the bottom line, but it could also serve to reduce some of these tensions and actually improve national security.
Steve Ellis:
Alright. You mentioned the bottom line. So what’s your bottom line, Gabe? What recommendations does the report make?
Gabe Murphy:
Well, we have specific recommendations and there’s a lot of them, so I recommend, first of all actually reading the report, but these recommendations include ideas for Congress, the administration, as well as local communities facing enclosures. I think for Congress, the most important step is to just authorize a new background while addressing some of these cost drivers from the 2005 round. And we talked about some of the ways to do that. Congress should also be willing to increase economic adjustment assistance for communities impacted by closures, particularly those that are less well positioned for redevelopment and some are just less well positioned than others. That’s a fact. For the administration, we would recommend a comprehensive assessment of excess basin capacity, both domestically and overseas, and a plan to close overseas bases that are no longer essential for national security. We really shouldn’t have to wonder how much excess we have.
The Pentagon should be doing this on a regular basis, and they should be using consistent and accurate methodologies to the extent possible. I think that’s a big one, and Congress can play a role in requiring the Pentagon to produce these reports, and that’s certainly something we recommend as well. Lastly, for communities near military installations, we would suggest beginning redevelopment planning early rather than fighting what are largely inevitable closures and soliciting broad community input. We looked at case studies here and found that when the redevelopment authorities didn’t take into account the community needs, I guess obviously the community’s needs were not met. So soliciting that broad input on a consistent basis. And lastly, diversifying redevelopment plans so that you’re not relying all on one single developer who might fall through. That happened in some ways with Fort McPherson in Georgia and it’s avoidable.
Steve Ellis:
So Gabe, in closing, what would you say to lawmakers, staffers, and communities who might be hesitant to support base closures and realignment in the future?
Gabe Murphy:
Well, look, clearly BRAC isn’t easy. It’s an incredibly complex process. It takes years of hard work to plan and to implement, but undeniably it’s the most comprehensive and equitable approach we have to tackling excess infrastructure at the Pentagon and to reap the savings, the national security benefits, and in many cases the economic benefits for local communities that can result from base closures. So after 20 years, it’s time to give this another shot.
Steve Ellis:
Well, there you have it, Gabe Murphy. Thanks for joining me on budget Watchdog af. Thanks for
Gabe Murphy:
Having me, Steve.
Steve Ellis:
Alright, podcast listeners. Addressing the Pentagon’s excess infrastructure is long overdue and a properly structured BRAC process remains the most fair, transparent way to do it. This is the frequency market on your dial, subscribe and share and know this taxpayers for common sense has your back America. We read the bills, monitor the earmarks, and highlight those wasteful programs that poorly spend our money and shift long-term risk to taxpayers. We’ll be back with a new episode soon. I hope you’ll meet us right here to learn more.
