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WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, made the following statement Friday regarding recommendations by the Department of Defense on the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process: "Well overall Texas comes out a net winner but obviously there are a lot of concerns with some specific decisions of the Department of Defense. The good news is that the next step of the process is that the BRAC commission, which is an independent body, will review not only what the Department of Defense has provided, but also additional information from the communities that are affected and they will be the ones that will ultimately make a recommendation to the President. "We now have another opportunity to use the information that the Department of Defense has accumulated, but provide additional community data, homeland security interaction with the DoD function and press other issues which I am hopeful will have a more positive outcome. "I’ll be traveling around the state as early as this Sunday to meet with some of the communities that are most immediately affected, to talk to the community leadership as I have been doing already on telephone and to meet with them, to brief them on the next step in our strategy and to begin to collect the information that we need in order to press our case before the BRAC commission. "I’ve been talking primarily with military leaders like Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff, and Gordon England, who is the acting Deputy Secretary of Defense. And I’ve been calling leaders in the various communities that have been impacted by these decisions, explaining to them—first learning more from the military leadership on how they see the decisions from a military perspective—but then talking to the community leaders and letting them know that we plan to meet with them as we have been before, and to begin to plot our strategy on how to move forward and how we press our case before the BRAC commission. "We have essentially a clean slate, because though the Department of Defense has made their decision, we have a clean slate with regard to the BRAC commission, who will then make an independent decision, and could possibly overrule the Department of Defense in some instances. "Secretary Principi was the former Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs, who I’ve worked with extensively in that capacity. He is now the new Chairman of the BRAC commission and he is a good man and a decent man and I know that he is committed to having independent consideration of the recommendations of the Department of Defense but listening to communities that will be affected as well as the commission as a whole will. He has assured us that each of the communities, each of the bases that are affected will have at least one BRAC commissioner visiting in that community as they go forward with their independent deliberations."We have worked very hard over the last couple of years, both in my capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee but also with all of the communities and all of the bases throughout the state of Texas. We have one out of every 10 persons in uniform that calls Texas home; we have big wide-open spaces that are great for training with very little encroachment of those training operations and those bases. Plus, we have communities that welcome our military and provide great support for our military families—which is important not only for recruitment but also for retention." Sen. Cornyn has traveled to all major military installations in Texas and meets regularly with community groups from military areas in Texas. He has met with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other top military officials on several occasions to highlight the many benefits of Texas military facilities and urge returning more troops to the state. Most recently, he met with the Chairman of the BRAC Commission, Secretary Anthony Principi, regarding the BRAC process and how it will impact Texas military facilities. Among the topics discussed were the importance of homeland security considerations and the benefits of Texas installations for our national defense. In addition to chairing the Emerging Threats and Capabilities subcommittee, Cornyn serves on the Readiness and Management Support, and Strategic Forces subcommittees.