Panel: Shut Walter Reed Hospital
A federal commission voted Thursday to close Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the crown jewel of Army hospitals, as it began its second day of decision-making on sweeping plans to restructure U.S. military bases.
Missouri also took a hit Thursday, as the base-closing commission voted to close two Defense Finance and Accounting Service offices in Kansas City and St. Louis, where more than 900 jobs are on the chopping block. Overall, Missouri is slated to lose more than 3,600 jobs in the base-closing process.
Located in the nation's capital, Walter Reed has treated presidents and foreign leaders as well as veterans and soldiers, including those returning from the Iraq war.
Most of Walter Reed's work would be relocated to a more modern, expanded hospital in Bethesda, Md., that will be renamed Walter Reed in a nod to the old facility's heritage.
The Pentagon calls this "jointness" — the services combining their strengths rather than working separately. Walter Reed's care is considered first-rate but the facility is showing its age, the commission found.
"Kids coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, all of them in harm's way, deserve to come back to 21st-century medical care," Commission Chairman Anthony Principi said Thursday, adding that the hospital is old. "It needs to be modernized."
One-time costs, including construction and renovations, would total $989 million. The Pentagon would save $301 million over 20 years, the commission said. The expanded facility would be renamed Walter Reed. The current hospital has about 185 beds, but the expanded facility would have 340.
The nine-member panel was voting on a host of big-ticket items Thursday in its second day of votes. Later Thursday it was to begin debating the Air Force's plans, arguably the most contentious of the group, as it steamrolled through hundreds of Pentagon proposals at a brisk pace after four months of study and preparation.
Principi said he expected to finish voting no later than Friday, a day earlier than planned. The commission must send its final report to President Bush by Sept. 8.
The commission's Air Force plans include recommendations to shake up the Air National Guard, a highly controversial effort. The Air Force also proposes closing both Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota and Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico.
Causing the most political consternation is what the commission will do with the Ellsworth base in South Dakota. John Thune, a freshman senator, had argued during the 2004 campaign that he — rather than his Democratic opponent, then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle — would be in a better position to save the facility. Nonetheless, it showed up on the Pentagon's closure list.
Mr. Bush can accept or reject the panel's recommendations in their entirety. Congress also will have a chance to veto the plan but has not taken that step in four previous rounds of closures.
On Wednesday, the panel agreed with proposals to shutter hundreds of small and large facilities in all corners of the country, including major bases such as Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, a naval air station in Georgia and an Army garrison in Michigan.
But the panel bucked the Pentagon by voting to spare a submarine base in Connecticut and a shipyard straddling the Maine-New Hampshire border, preserving a major military presence in New England and 12,000 defense-related jobs.
The commission also voted to shrink the Red River Army Depot in eastern Texas, where 2,500 civilian jobs would have been lost, rather than close it, reports CBS News Correspondent Dan Raviv.
Since the Pentagon announced its proposal in May, commissioners had voiced concerns about several parts of it, including the estimate of how much money would be saved.
In this Web-only video, an official in Glenview, Ill., tells Cynthia Bowers how the town reinvented itself.The Pentagon proposed closing or consolidating a record 62 major military bases and 775 smaller installations to save $48.8 billion over 20 years, streamline the services and reposition the armed forces.
CBS News Correspondent Cynthia Bowers reports that being targeted for closure does not necessarily spell disaster. After being shut down in 1992, the Glenview Naval Air Station in Illinois is
that created 5,000 jobs and will soon pump $500 million a year into the local economy.In some of its first decisions, the commission voted to keep open several major Army and Navy bases that military planners want to shut down, including the Portsmouth shipyard in Kittery, Maine, and the New London submarine base in Groton, Conn., two of the Navy's oldest bases.
"Yahoo!" exclaimed Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. "Submarine base New London lives, and I think that it will live forever."
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who urged the commission to save the shipyard in Maine near the New Hampshire border, added: "This is a sweet victory."
The survival of the two bases marked big wins for New England congressional delegations and governors. Even as the commission was voting, elected officials from those and other states — such as Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. — attended the hearing and served as visual reminders of their efforts.
The commission did, however, decide to close Naval Air Station Brunswick in Maine, rather than drastically reduce forces there as the Pentagon wanted. Commissioners argued that savings could be realized more quickly if it were shut down altogether.
"They have proved they are not a rubber stamp," said David Berteau, Pentagon official who oversaw base closings for the Pentagon in 1991 and 1993. "But we don't know yet what the common theme is because they're dealing with each of these on a case-by-case basis."