This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, August 19th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

When all those military bases close as part of the anti-political BRAC process,

what happens to them? That is, aside from the occasional... political brack process?

What happens to them?

That is, aside from the occasional fish concert.

In many cases, the land is easy to redevelop.

In others, well, they just kind of sit there.

Paul guessing is president of the Rio Grande Foundation in New Mexico, a state replete with current and former military installations.

We spoke last week.

By way of background, what is BRAC?

Well, BRAC stands for base realignment and closure.

It is a process that was set up by Congress in the late 1980s.

Congressman Dick Army at the time

was the lead sponsor of the legislation.

And it was a way for Congress to continue largely shutting

post-World War II military installations throughout the United States that had

outlived their usefulness and simply were not needed anymore.

One of the double-edged swords, if you will, of the Vietnam era was the shuttering of a lot, a lot of military installations preceding Brack.

And that process was done without the commission, without the input of Congress to a greater

extent and it ruffled a lot of feathers politically, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for purely, you know,

local reasons, local economic reasons, but the BRAC process set up a commission and the commission The and then Congress had an up or down vote. Arguably, it's the most effective budget cutting program that Washington has ever had,

...