Mark Hatfield: “Well, I think that the situation is such that when the House rescinded the total figure of unobligated funds, it sent a…”

“Well, I think that the situation is such that when the House rescinded the total figure of unobligated funds, it sent a very, very strong message to the agencies themselves. I suppose it should send a message to the authorizing committee as well, which the Senator from North Carolina chairs. We have a whole foreign aid bill under constant review. Nothing is a commitment very far down the road. We are dealing with the problem right now in this appropriation bill report that is pending as to how to delineate between the Department of Defense pursuing and executing a humanitarian program as a police action program and as it relates to the defense of this Nation. In other words, there are those who say we should not be charging, in offsets, any of these incursions into Haiti, et cetera, et cetera, back to the DOD appropriations budget. So we are engaged in a lot of issues here that are pretty cloudy at this moment. I do not think any part of this can be a statement of future commitment at all.”