Individual service Chiefs and Congress strengthened its veto power for closures during 1980 to 1987.
This being an issue, Congress finally granted authority to an independent Defense Base Closure and Realignment (BRAC) commission to work with the Department of Defense (DoD) to identify bases and installations to the executive and legislative branches for closure or realignment between 1988 and 1995.
Even though these BRAC actions represented a large amount of physical reductions in installations and associated units, the DoD continued to request more infrastructure cuts to offset reduced congressional funding for defense.
Additional BRAC rounds were requested by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) because there continues to be a significant disparity between support structure capacity versus the number of units and associated military personnel levels.
[6] DoD had reported to congress that billions of dollars could be saved annually if excess base infrastructure could be eliminated .