Enjoyed the piece. One note of correction: BRAC instead of forcing an up or down vote, established a mechanism of silent approval.
There was no need for an up-or-down vote in Congress.
“Forcing members of Congress to take an affirmative vote of approval […] poses a far larger barrier than allowing politicians to stand by as proposals get implemented in the absence of an affirmative act of disapproval.”
Good call, Romina -- thanks for the correction. I do remember now. The congressional buy-in was not in approving each round of closures, but in approving the BRAC process in the first place. Then, with every BRAC round, Members had the opportunity to advocate during the hearings stage for their base remaining open (by convincing the Commission to take it off the draft closure list), but once the final list was released, the deed was done. Still a brilliant process -- even more so than I remembered it!
Enjoyed the piece. One note of correction: BRAC instead of forcing an up or down vote, established a mechanism of silent approval.
There was no need for an up-or-down vote in Congress.
“Forcing members of Congress to take an affirmative vote of approval […] poses a far larger barrier than allowing politicians to stand by as proposals get implemented in the absence of an affirmative act of disapproval.”
Good call, Romina -- thanks for the correction. I do remember now. The congressional buy-in was not in approving each round of closures, but in approving the BRAC process in the first place. Then, with every BRAC round, Members had the opportunity to advocate during the hearings stage for their base remaining open (by convincing the Commission to take it off the draft closure list), but once the final list was released, the deed was done. Still a brilliant process -- even more so than I remembered it!
I wrote about the mechanism here https://open.substack.com/pub/debtdispatch/p/thats-not-how-the-brac-commission