Doug Bereuter: “I rise in opposition to the Ackerman amendment. Mr. Chairman, our colleague, the gentleman from New York, has put forth…”

“I rise in opposition to the Ackerman amendment. Mr. Chairman, our colleague, the gentleman from New York, has put forth an amendment, but in reality what the amendment really does is to put a hold, to absolutely gut the provisions of the bill. This bill, as written in this section, will allow the consolidation of ACDA, AID and USIA functions within the State Department. Of the organizations that are in an unusual fashion expressing support for this bill today, the support is coming because we are in fact consolidating the agencies that now exist as separate agencies, AID, ACDA and, of course, USIA. That is the reason we are having the taxpayer groups and so many other conservative groups, who ordinarily would never come out and suggest that we ought to vote for a foreign assistance bill, but in fact it is one of the major ways that we are saving an extraordinary amount of money. I want to call my colleagues' attention to a couple of changes that the committee made in the course of deliberations on the proposal to consolidate these agencies. One of the most important concerns I had early in the process was the fact that we may be burying ACDA, the arms control agency, and their recommendations, too deep in the bureaucracy of the State Department. So in fact we amended that and moved the placement so that the director of ACDA will be making recommendations not through some layer of bureaucracy but directly to the National Security Council, to the President.”