BUDGET/MILITARY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump’s vow to massively rebuild the US armed forces comes with an interesting wrinkle in his first budget request: a call to close military bases.
Trump’s Pentagon is asking for a new commission to study closing or revamping bases in its budget request, as the Defense Department says it has upwards of 20% excess infrastructure capacity and slimming down would save money.
But the request to close bases, which would not occur until 2021, is an uphill climb on Capitol Hill. Republicans are already unhappy that Trump did not propose a bigger military budget after his pledge to massively add ships, planes and troops. GOP lawmakers say going through another round of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process is another step in the wrong direction when the military has been constrained for years by the so-called ‘sequestration’ budget caps.
‘The last thing the military needs right now is a BRAC,’ said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican. ‘But if you can’t raise sequestration numbers then you’re going to have to do a BRAC.’ “
-Jeremy Herb, “Trump wants to rebuild the military, but budget could close bases,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, May 30, 2017 02:20pm