Sam Brownback: “I rise today, while we are just about to finish up on this historic State Department reorganization bill, to say a…”

“I rise today, while we are just about to finish up on this historic State Department reorganization bill, to say a couple of things about it and the people who have been involved. I was in the House of Representatives on the Foreign Affairs Committee where we started the attempt to reorganize the State Department. We were able to pass it through, and the bill got vetoed by the President. I think that is what is historic and taking place here. We are now working together to do the thing we need to do, which is to make the overall operation run more efficiently, to eliminate some of the apparatus created by the cold war, and to try to create a foreign policy agency and a setup that is more forward looking, more organized, and that I think can represent our interests better in this post-cold-war atmosphere. I think it is a real tribute to the people who have been involved in this that we have been able to get this done. Overhauling the American foreign policy bureaucracy needed to be done, and this bill will abolish agencies and bureaus born of the cold war imperatives that are no longer necessary. Achievement was hard won and something the American people can be proud of. Now we can reduce the size of the Federal Government, something I have certainly long supported.”