Bedford Minuteman
Wednesday, July 28, 2004

DoD budget increasing despite base cuts

By Peter Martin/ Staff Writer

The Department of Defense may have its eye on closing bases, but that
doesn't mean reduced funding.

President George Bush steadily increased the defense budget, from
$296.8 billion when he took office, to $401.7 billion in the 2005 budget.
When military spending increases by billions of dollars one might suspect it
would result in the construction and expansion of military bases. Not so.
Only once in history, at the peak of the Cold War, has the U.S. boasted a
fatter defense budget. Despite this fact, the Department of Defense has
never looked more intensely at eliminating, downsizing and consolidating
military bases.

The Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process has eliminated or
trimmed 548 bases since it began in 1988. The last round, a decade ago, cost
an estimated $3.8 billion to carry out and produced a projected savings of
$18.4 billion measured over 20 years. The current BRAC round aims to do much
of the same, cutting up to 100 of the 425 continental U.S. bases under
consideration.

Hanscom Air Force base, a large regional employer that provides an
estimated $3.1 billion annually to the region's economy, is one of the bases
being reviewed for closure.

"The first goal of BRAC was not saving money, but making more
sufficient use of our resources," said Massachusetts Congressman John
Tierney.

Tierney adamantly supports Hanscom and the function of the Air Force's
Electronic Systems Center. He, and other congressmen, lobbied for the base
to be exempt from the latest BRAC round as a special research and
development facility. He also supports the BRAC concept, to trim the fat and
save taxpayer money, while at the same time he witnesses what he considers
supreme waste and an endemic problem with defense spending.

"President Bush has put another $10 billion into a national defense
shield [Star Wars], a totally unproven system that many experts say can not
work," said Tierney.

The F-22 fighter jet program spiraled out of control, said Tierney, and
recently cost $20 billion in "unanticipated cost growth." Missile shields
and the development of F-22 fighter jets is just the tip of the iceberg to
officials who point out gross misappropriation in military spending.

"Bush said they wanted a new, leaner, meaner fighting force and they
were moving in that direction," said Tierney. "There were some initial
feints in that direction, but they want to have it all. All the old Cold War
programs and platforms."

"The military-industrial complex is a phenomena first recognized by
Eisenhower," said Tierney. "It has not decreased, but grown. There's a
revolving door from business to the Pentagon, and it goes around and
around."

The war in Iraq also carries a heavy price tag that, even at the modest
estimates of $100 billion, dwarfs the savings provided by BRAC. The war
expenditure could easily cover operating costs at Hanscom for many years.

"You only develop weapon systems to fight wars when you need to," said
Chuck Payone, spokesman for Hanscom's Electronic Systems Center.

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