As the process gets under way, lawmakers and communities are stepping up efforts to show their bases are essential. They also are lobbying for new missions and projects for their facilities to make the bases less attractive for closure.

Congress authorized the closures last year, rejecting a delay until 2007. Still, some Republicans and Democrats continue to fight.

"I will try to stop it at any point and in any way I possibly can," said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. Closing bases while the country is at war is "the worst possible timing," Lott says.

He lobbied hard during previous rounds to keep open the Meridian Naval Air Station in Mississippi, which barely escaped closure. It could be targeted again this year.

Other lawmakers say the round will go forward.

"We had a debate. We voted. We had a majority say we're going forward. How could you possibly reverse it? It would be crazy," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it was essential for the military to eliminate "those bases, structures, buildings, compounds that aren't on the very edge of what we need to defend ourselves."

The Pentagon estimates that previous closures in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995 eliminated 20 percent of domestic bases and saved about $16.7 billion through 2001, and roughly $7 billion annually since.

Congress has refused repeated requests by the Pentagon to close more bases since 1995. Part of the reason was lingering Republican distrust after President Clinton moved to ease the economic impact from two base closings in vote-rich California and Texas just before his re-election campaign in 1996.

In 2001, with Clinton out of office, the Pentagon nearly got its wish for closures in 2003. But after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress delayed the closures until this year.

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E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com