Uproar Over Base Closings

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) went public early with parts of a federal commission’s plan to save nearly $700 million a year by shutting down 86 military bases around the country. The parts affected bases in his district. Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) got on the record early with his outrage over what he called a “very seriously flawed” plan that would wipe out or transfer to other states slightly more than 17,000 Defense Department jobs, military and civilian, in California.

More than a decade ago, Congress began using this kind of calamity howling to scare the Pentagon into calling off the routine weeding out of military bases that the Defense Department engaged in year in and year out. Not a single base had been closed since.

This time the outrage of members in one state or another will not be cumulative, and is likely to have no effect on whether the bases are closed. The reason is that Congress signed off on the plan without ever seeing it, first by creating the commission and then by passing a law saying that Congress must take all of the commission’s recommendations or none of them. There will be no log-rolling, no voting to keep bases open here in return for votes to keep them open there.

It may not be a heroic system, but it was the only way in which Congress could insulate itself from the anger of selected communities that may well suffer temporary economic setbacks because of base closings. It lets members of Congress argue to those communities that they tried to pound some sense into the Pentagon and fought to keep bases open but that other members paid no attention.

For the most part, the California economy will scarcely notice that the bases are gone, which in any event will not come until the mid-1990s. It would take more than a loss of 17,000 jobs to slow an economy that in Southern California alone produces more goods and services than all but seven other entire nations. In fact, the loss probably will not be that large--especially among the military’s civilian workers whose skills are in demand in private companies.

There will be exceptions. The planned closing of George Air Force Base near Victorville, 70 miles northeast of Los Angeles, will take away 5,000 jobs. It will take time for the high-desert region’s economy to make up for that loss. Moving three squadrons of military cargo planes from Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino County will cost 6,500 jobs, but about half of those will move down the road to March Air Force base in Riverside County.

The news was not all bad, particularly the plan to close the Army’s historic Presidio of San Francisco, located in heavily wooded hills overlooking the Golden Gate. The Presidio will make a great park, and maneuvering to make that come about is already under way.

The plan is not perfect. Its estimated savings of $700 million a year are well below predicted savings of $2 billion. The commission picked the minimum number of bases that the military can do without instead of the maximum, but it regards the plan as simply a first round of cuts.

Ten years is a long time to hang onto expensive military facilities that even the military no longer can make a case for keeping. And the best news is that the weeding-out process that once was routine may be routine again.