RETHINKING BRAC: Do you really need five garages if you have only four cars? The Pentagon estimates that about 20 percent of its infrastructure is no longer needed, and in a letter to leadership of House and Senate Armed Services committee this week, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis once again pleaded for authority to close bases, or make other changes to help meet the Pentagon’s budget shortfall. “We have studied shortcomings of previous rounds and are confident the savings generated by a new BRAC in 2021 would save $2 billion or more annually,” Mattis argued, in what the Pentagon calls the annual “heartburn letter,” a memo to Congress outlining the issues in the National Defense Authorization Act that are causing “heartburn.”

BRAC, of course is the “Base Realignment and Closure” process, a plan cooked up decades ago to take the politics out of downsizing military infrastructure. As it became clear that no member of Congress would vote to close a base in his or her district, the idea was to outsource the process to an independent commission. That group would consider each base and facility on its merits, produce a list of recommend closures, which then Congress would have to approve or disapprove as a package, but could not change.