Nancy Kassebaum: “today, we have before us significant legislation which, if it becomes law, will restructure the principal institutions…”

“today, we have before us significant legislation which, if it becomes law, will restructure the principal institutions used to conduct America's foreign policy. The process leading to this point may have been less bipartisan and less open than some of us would have desired. But I want to commend the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Helms, for his determination in shepherding this difficult bill through the legislative process. The heart of this bill is its reorganization of our Nation's foreign policy bureaucracy. While I still have reservations about the continued deep cuts in our foreign affairs spending--an account that already has sustained deep cuts since the late 1980s--that is not the issue here. Congress made the decision to continue cutting our foreign affairs spending when we passed the budget resolution last year. The purpose of this authorizing legislation is to try to shape those cuts in a manner that will best protect our ability to carry out the Nation's foreign policy. I believe this conference report's approach to streamlining and consolidation--an approach dramatically different from the original versions introduced a year ago in both Houses--is reasonable. In essence, this legislation would require the abolition of one of our four principal foreign policy agencies and would require a savings of $1.8 billion over 4 years.…”