; and (B) the funds required to sustain this excess infrastructure capacity could be better spent on other national security priorities. (3) In testimony before the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives on March 22, 2016, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter stated that we need to stop spending so much money to hold on to bases we don’t need and that we have more bases in more places than we need . (4) According to an April 2016 infrastructure capacity analysis conducted by the Department of Defense using projected fiscal year 2019 force structure levels, overall the Department has approximately 22-percent excess capacity, of which approximately 33 percent is excess Army capacity, 7 percent is excess Navy capacity, 32 percent is excess Air Force capacity, and 12 percent is excess capacity of the Defense Logistics Agency. (5) In a time when the Department of Defense is facing significant budget pressures, the Department is being required to expend valuable resources to maintain infrastructure capacity in excess of Department requirements instead of investing these valuable resources in meeting urgent readiness and training requirements or other priorities within the Department. (6) While the Department of Defense has already undertaken a number of initiatives to reduce the Department’s overseas infrastructure footprint, including the European Infrastructure Consolidation review and the relocation and consolidation of military facilities in Japan and the Republic of Korea, the Department’s ability to take similar actions regarding military installation inside the United States is extremely limited without specific authorization from Congress. (7) In testimony before the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives on March 22, 2016, John Conger, who was performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment, testified that by reducing excess infrastructure capacity by only 5 percent, the Department of Defense expected it could realize