mr. chairman , i rise in support of the bill before us to reject the brac recommendations ; and i thank the gentleman from illinois for his work on this bill .  while this process has proceeded during a global war , many of us in congress -- including me -- have taken issue with the timing .  doing this during a war and before we establish our global military footprint through the quadrennial defense review sends the wrong signal to our allies and to the soldiers and families who may depend on services at the bases we are closing .  i have fought this from the get-go .  the brac list hit my south texas district hard with the closure of naval station ingleside in san patricio county .  it was a base into which the taxpayers of nueces county and the state of texas plowed $ 50 million to assist the navy in bringing the base there .  the main thing that worries those of us in south texas -- and elsewhere along the gulf coast -- is that after brac the gulf of mexico will be a less safe place for all of us .  we have been concerned over the past couple of years about the illegal immigrants known as otms -- other than mexicans -- that are routinely released by law enforcement into the u.s. population .  many law enforcement officers believe we have -- or could be -- releasing potential terrorists who will do us great harm .  our nation 's refining capability and trading lanes run through the gulf of mexico .  for these reasons -- and many more -- we must have a navy presence in the gulf .  after brac , there will not be a single surface navy base in the entire gulf .  the gulf holds the nation 's bread basket and is the primary provider of petrochemicals and refined products to power the nation 's cars , heaters , and other machines we depend upon hourly in our daily lives .  those are my primary concerns .  now , the other concerns i have deal primarily with how the south texas community i represent will recover from the economic devastation that is part of a base closure in local communities .  as brac chairman principi said in an early statement , this will be a tsunami in south texas .  so if the house chooses to support the brac list today , we will bear no ill will ... ..  and we will work very hard to make the transition as painless as possible .  while our community is less concerned about the disposition of the property itself -- it should revert to the local port -- we believe the local community should not have to pay a $ 200 million cost to retain the base .  we are increasingly concerned about the enormous task before us in the coming years : how to deal with depressed property values after the base is to close ... ..  how to retrain the area workforce ... ..  and how our schools and housing market can recoup the losses we will most certainly feel in the coming years .  that will be the challenge before us in south texas for probably the coming decade if the house today fails to adopt my colleague 's bill to disapprove the brac recommendations .  