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To Leon Panetta for proposing a mini-BRAC.

Wisely is it said, “Let no crisis go to waste.” The defense secretary’s recent announcement that DoD’s 2014 budget proposal will include a new round of base closings is a good way to put the current fiscal climate straits to use.

As any high-level budgeteer will tell you, the U.S. military still holds far more Cold War-era infrastructure than it needs. And as any budgeteer will tell you off the record, that’s thanks to congressional demand for pork. The last time Panetta suggested shedding some fat, in 2012, lawmakers howled and the proposal died. May this worthy effort, advanced in times of more intense budget pressure, succeed.