Dan Crenshaw: “there are a lot of good reasons to support this legislation, but let me just touch on one, the Millennium Challenge…”

“there are a lot of good reasons to support this legislation, but let me just touch on one, the Millennium Challenge Account. It is a new way to deal with foreign aid and foreign assistance. The old way has run its course. We would appropriate money, hold our breath and hope the countries might reallow some of the things that we wanted to happen. And, yet, now we have a results-oriented approach. Because built in to these Millennium Challenge Accounts are incentives for countries to adopt new policies, to provide for economic and personal freedom, and that is a giant step forward. If you stop and think about it, our threats to this country in terms of terrorism are not going to come from rival global powers. They are going to come from the smaller emerging countries, smaller failing countries. Those are countries where they lack education, they lack the rule of law, they lack personal freedom; and those are countries where terrorism can flourish, where terrorism can fester, where terrorists can find sanctuary. If we want to deal with those kinds of threats, it seems to me we can prevent that from happening through this new approach where we encourage policies like the rule of law, encourage human rights, civil liberties, and we can build the kind of countries through our foreign aid that will prevent this from happening in the future. Mr. Chairman, I encourage all of my colleagues to support this legislation for these and other good reasons.”