[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 4 (Friday, January 28, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: January 28, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    ACDA'S TROUBLED PAST AND FUTURE

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I wish to take a few minutes to discuss the 
future of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. I have spoken in the 
past about the need to eliminate this Agency now that the cold war has 
ended. Other Members took a different view and have attached an 
amendment to the State Department Authorization Act that not only 
preserved but also expanded this bureaucratic anachonism. I believe 
that this was fiscal folly.
  We have begun the process of adjustment to the post-cold-war world. 
We are massively cutting our military establishment. By fiscal year 
1996, we will have reduced the defense budget in real terms to less 
than half of the level in the peak spending year of 1985. We have 
reduced the National Foreign Intelligence Program budget. We will be 
restructuring and economizing on our international broadcasting 
capabilities. And, we will be cutting back on foreign aid that was sent 
to countries on the basis of calculations stemming from the cold war 
geopolitical competition.
  Yet the legislation to increase ACDA's authority and budget goes in 
exactly the opposite direction. It increases spending on an Agency born 
in the cold war, designed to address problems derived from the cold 
war, and doomed to irrelevance with the end of the cold war.


                        bureaucratic duplication

  Let us remember that ACDA was created in 1961 because of a perceived 
lack of expertise in the Federal Government in what was then the novel 
area of arms control. Yet, today we have experts, offices, or agencies 
dedicated to arms control work in the State Department, the Office of 
the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the three major armed 
services, the Department of Energy, the On-Site Inspection Agency, the 
arms control intelligence staff of the Central Intelligence Agency, the 
Defense Intelligence Agency, and other parts of the Government.
  Arms control is big business in the Federal Government and will 
remain an important focus of action even without ACDA:
  The Department of State has more people working on arms control than 
ACDA does.
  More that 65 professionals in 13 offices of the Office of the 
Secretary of Defense work on arms control, a figure that rises still 
further when you consider arms control staff in the Joint Staff and in 
the major services.
  In the Air Force, more than 300 employees worldwide are working just 
on research on arms control and implementation of arms control 
treaties.
  The On-Site Inspection Agency employs more than 1,000 professionals 
to handle the demands of inspection trips.
  The Department of Energy, in its own agencies and at the national 
laboratories, employs several hundred people in programs related to 
arms control.
  In the Central Intelligence Agency, an estimated 100 professionals 
perform analytical work on the Arms Control Intelligence Staff, with 
hundreds more in other offices and agencies contributing to collection 
of intelligence information related to arms control.
  Also at CIA, the nonproliferation center employs an estimated 100 
intelligence analysts.
  In addition to all this expertise inside the Government, the estimate 
is that the Federal Government as a whole spends $250 million on 
unclassified arms control research every year--that is, a quarter of a 
billion dollars every year, not even counting classified research.
  These examples only scratch the surface of arms control work and 
staffing in the Federal Government. The fact is that there is not a 
single aspect of ACDA's capabilities that is not duplicated or even 
triplicated elsewhere in the executive branch.


                        economy in arms control

  By eliminating ACDA, as I have urged, we would merely trim the 
funding for arms control. It would cut back middle management, just as 
American business has done to become more efficient. It would get at 
the fat, without hitting the muscle or bones.
  I would like to document that fact by citing a few arms control 
budget figures gathered by the Congressional Research Service for the 
last fiscal year:
  The State Department will spend $81 million on arms control.
  The Department of Energy will spend about $250 million on arms 
control.
  The Defense Nuclear Agency will spend an estimated $80 to $90 million 
on arms control.
  The Joint Staff will spend over $100 million on arms control.
  To be sure, this is an incomplete accounting. I am leaving out 
spending on arms control within the intelligence community. But if this 
did represent the entire arms control budget of the U.S. Government, 
eliminating ACDA would represent a total cut of only about 10 percent 
in Governmentwide arms control spending.
  Surely, in light of the end of the cold war, we can afford to trim 
this spending by 10 percent. Surely, we can make a cut of those modest 
proportions without imperiling the contribution that arms control can 
make to our security.


                      an agency without a mission

  There is widespread recognition that ACDA has become a dysfunctional 
agency, at best playing a secondary role in the areas it should 
presumably lead.
  Over the last three decades, the State Department, not ACDA, has led 
the way in negotiating arms control agreements. Arms control policy 
coordination has been conducted by either the State Department or 
within the National Security Council. Arms control treaty 
implementation has largely been the province to the Department of 
Defense and the State Department. Verification has been the function of 
the intelligence community collection and analysis agencies, with 
policy decisions on compliance issues largely handled by the State 
Department, the Defense Department, and the members of the National 
Security Council.
  In this respect, I would like to summarize the conclusions of two 
major studies of ACDA's effectiveness, one conducted by the inspector 
general of ACDA and the other by analysts at the Stimson Center.
  ACDA's inspector general evaluated the Agency's performance in terms 
of its responsibilities as designated in the Arms Control and 
Disarmament Act of 1961:
  ACDA's first duty is that of the ACDA director to serve as the 
principal adviser to the President and the Secretary of State on arms 
control. The ACDA inspector general's report states:

       * * * once arms control became important presidential 
     business, as it did within a decade of ACDA's founding, 
     Secretaries of State and Defense and national security 
     advisers become the dominant figures in arms control.

  ACDA's second statutory responsibility is preparation and management 
of negotiations of arms control agreements. The ACDA IG's report 
states:

       When the ACDA Director some years ago agreed that the 
     negotiators of the principal arms control negotiations should 
     be State Department personnel, the decision had a very 
     negative impact on the Agency.

  The report then proceeds to describe how State Department officials 
negotiated virtually all of the major arms control agreements to recent 
decades.
  ACDA's third responsibility is research on arms control. The ACDA 
IG's report states:

       ACDA is not now--indeed, it never has been--in a position 
     to carry out Congress's charge to ensure the acquisition of a 
     fund of theoretical and practical knowledge concerning 
     disarmament.

  ACDA's fourth responsibility is in the area of providing public 
information on arms control. The ACDA IG's report reads: ``ACAD does 
not play a significant role in this area.''
  ACDA's fifth responsibility is to operate what the 1961 act called 
control systems, by which it meant monitoring and inspection systems. 
The ACDA IG's report states:

       ACDA never has actually operated or directed the monitoring 
     and inspection systems that check on foreign compliance with 
     agreements.

  On this point, let us also remember that the President and Congress 
expressed a lack of confidence in ACDA's abilities in this area when it 
created the On-Site Inspection Agency to conduct verification 
inspections and did not place OSIA under ACDA.
  To sum up this report, what we have here is the inspector general of 
ACDA concluding that the Agency is not performing its statutory 
missions; that other departments have supplanted ACDA in virtually 
every area because they possessed expertise and capabilities in the 
field far superior to ACDA's; and that ACDA has been bypassed with 
absolutely no detrimental effect on arms control.
  To be fair, the inspector general argues that the agency should be 
revitalized rather than dissolved. I would counter that since the real 
work of arms control is done elsewhere in the Government, there is no 
reason to preserve the bureaucratic duplication and waste that ACDA 
represents.

  The second report I mentioned was prepared by the Stimson Center, 
which is a private research organization here in Washington. This 
report, issued in 1992, lays aside the statutory criteria for 
evaluating ACDA and tries to measure the value-added that ACDA brings 
to the arms control process. It concludes:

       In its early years ACDA enjoyed a clear comparative 
     advantage in technical arms control expertise * * *. During 
     the 1970s and 1980s, ACDA's contributions to policy 
     innovation were less conspicuous * * *. On occasion, ACDA's 
     mission to focus on the nitty-gritty of arms control has 
     helped to concentrate human resources for specific technical 
     tasks * * *. In general, though, these examples represent 
     exceptions to a very perceptible relative slackening off of 
     ACDA's ``value-added'' to arms control * * *. In the past 
     several years ACDA has been more of a follower than a leader 
     in generating proposals and policies.

  ACDA duplicates the activities of other agencies and departments. It 
has no distinct mission. It is providing little added-value to the arms 
control process. By eliminating this Agency, we could streamline 
Government without impairing the arms control policy process.


                         revitalization options

  Let us all remember one thing: the United States has pursued an 
active arms control agenda not because ACDA existed but because U.S. 
Presidents and Members of Congress concluded that arms control would 
benefit U.S. security and international stability.
  However laudable the intentions of those who hope to revitalize ACDA, 
their plans will not work. Arms control is integral to U.S. foreign and 
defense policy and cannot be artificially lifted out of the State 
Department and the Defense Department.
  Historically, ACDA's role has diminished for three reasons. First, 
arms control has become such an important aspect of our foreign policy 
that the Secretary of State, not the Director of ACDA, dominates the 
diplomacy of arms control. The principal negotiators of arms control 
treaties have worked out of the State Department, not ACDA.
  Second, ACDA lacks significant field activities that would give it 
bureaucratic clout in the interagency process. It does little of the 
arms control negotiation, executes even less of the treaty 
implementation work, and issues verification reports that are merely 
derivative of analysis produced in the intelligence community.
  Third, over time, ACDA's comparative advantage in arms control 
expertise has vanished. All departments and agencies concerned with 
arms control have a depth of expertise in arms control superior to that 
of ACDA. In fact, all the studies of ACDA have documented the 
outmigration of experts from that Agency. The Stimson Center report 
notes that in the 1970's ``one began to see * * * a siphoning off of 
ACDA's institutional memory and expertise in key areas such as 
strategic arms control and nuclear safeguards technologies.'' It is 
only reasonable that these U.S. experts would want to leave ACDA in 
order to be where the action really is.
  Mr. President, none of the proposals for revitalizing ACDA face up to 
these three problems, which are the root cause of the evisceration of 
ACDA's contribution to arms control policy. We can pretend to provide 
ACDA with new powers, but in the end the players with the superior 
expertise and the bureaucratic clout derived from real field activities 
will carry the day in debates in the interagency process.
  Even in the Clinton administration, policymakers appeared to 
understand these realities. It is reported that shortly after taking 
office, Secretary of State Warren Christopher developed a major 
reorganization plan that would have created a new Undersecretary for 
Arms Control and International Security Affairs. ACDA's functions and 
some of its personnel would have been folded into this new office.
  I believe that President Clinton made the wrong decision when he 
ultimately chose not to follow this course. Most important, I do not 
believe that anyone can seriously argue that if he had chosen to fold 
ACDA into the State Department, arms control would have suffered as a 
result.
  In studying this issue and the options before us, I have heard one 
argument over and over again. This argument runs, ``We need an 
independent arms control agency, first because arms control is so 
complex and second, because we need a voice concerned solely with arms 
control in the interagency process.''
  I understand the thrust of this argument, but I cannot share its 
conclusion.
  Yes, arms control is complex. But so are many other areas of foreign 
policy. Yet, we do not set up independent agencies just to argue such 
points of view.
  International terrorism is a complex issue. Do we have an independent 
agency to handle it? No, we do not.
  Human rights is a complex issue. Do we have an independent agency to 
handle it? No, we do not.
  International law issues are profoundly complex. Do we have an 
independent agency to handle them? No, we do not.
  Do we have independent agencies in any of these areas so that single-
issue perspectives have a voice in the interagency process? No, we do 
not.
  There is nothing inherently more complex about arms control than any 
of these other issue areas. There is nothing inherently more important 
about arms control than these other issues so that we need a special-
interest voice for arms control in the interagency process.
  On all issues apart from arms control, we manage affairs within the 
State Department, the Defense Department, the intelligence community, 
other departments, and the interagency process that brings their 
disciplines and expertise together. We can do the same for arms 
control, without in any way harming arms control.
  And, if we are really concerned about the deficit, we can make a 
small dent in it by eliminating ACDA--an agency that has clearly 
outlived its usefulness and whose functions can--and already are--being 
performed elsewhere. It seems to me, Mr. President, that ACDA could be 
the poster boy for wasteful, unnecessary Government bureaucracy.


                      acda's claimed achievements

  Mr. President, I hold in my hand a copy of a document entitled 
``Current Activities and Accomplishments.'' It is produced by ACDA. It 
professes to provide an account of the agency's major accomplishments 
of the last year and its major activities for the future. It runs seven 
pages. It in effect tells us what we are buying if we continue to pour 
tens of millions of dollars a year into ACDA.
  I must say that this is an interesting document, indeed a very 
revealing document. Here we have ACDA's best case for its continued 
claim on the taxpayer's money. Here we have--in effect--the resume of a 
Federal agency applying for continued work.
  Mr. President, there is a phenomenon in this town called resume 
padding. We all know about the way applicants will sometimes make 
dubious claims on their resume on the grounds that it is very unlikely 
that a potential employer will check on the details.
  Well, I have looked over very closely the resume that ACDA has 
provided. And, Mr. President, I must say that this document gives 
resume padding a bad name.
  I have gone through every one of the 62 items on this list, and in 
the vast majority the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency does not play 
the lead role or even an essential role. It is a bit-part player, 
typically duplicating the work done by the Department of State, the 
Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and the many agencies 
of the Intelligence Community.
  I do not have the time to run through every item on ACDA's list of 
current activities and accomplishments. Instead, I have put together a 
top-10 list of the most dubious claims made by ACDA on this resume:
  Dubious claim No. 10: ACDA asserts--and I quote--``We will be working 
with State in support of completion of START ratification in Ukraine 
and in support of START II ratification in Russia.''
  Mr. President, I want to point out that when the executive branch 
sends a delegation to Ukraine or Russia on this matter, ACDA is not 
even represented. How can ACDA claim this as a major agency activity 
when it is not even on the plane taking our officials to meet with the 
Ukrainians and Russians?
  Dubious claim No. 9: ACDA asserts that the Agency will remain 
actively involved in regional arms control efforts, particularly in the 
Middle East.
  Again, what do we find when we look into this claim? We find that the 
State Department plays the lead role in virtually all regional arms 
control efforts. In fact, it is my understanding that ACDA participates 
only when the State Department invites ACDA to participate.
  As we find across the entire spectrum of arms control activities, the 
State Department, not ACDA, is the preeminent player for the simple 
reason that foreign policy and arms control cannot be separated.
  Dubious claim No. 8: ACDA claims that one of its major activities 
will be liaison with the intelligence community.
  Yet every department--State, Defense, Energy--conducts liaison with 
the intelligence community as necessary. I do not see how this can be 
construed to be a major agency activity or accomplishment. In fact, I 
would point out that ACDA is not even a voting member of the process 
that develops NIE's--that is, National Intelligence Estimates.
  Dubious claim No. 7: ACDA claims that it will provide verification 
guidance to the On-Site Inspection Agency [OSIA] on a regular basis.
  Yet it is my understanding that ACDA personnel seldom participate in 
on-site inspections conducted by OSIA. In even fewer cases do ACDA 
personnel lead such inspections.
  The fact is that the experts on such inspections reside in OSIA, not 
ACDA. OSIA does the inspections. OSIA personnel are the ones on the 
ground. They know what works and what doesn't far better than ACDA 
bureaucrats who sit in their comfortable offices in Foggy Bottom.
  Dubious claim No. 6: ACDA claims that its role in the Nuclear 
Suppliers Group, the Australia Group, and the Missile Technology 
Control Regime process represents a major activity that justifies 
retaining an independent agency dedicated to arms control.
  Yet I have found that in the meetings of all of these groups, it is 
the State Department, not ACDA, that plays the lead role and that ACDA 
is at best a secondary player. In all of these groups, ACDA essentially 
is an adjunct of the State Department, which again calls into question 
whether in all honesty this can be represented as a major ACDA 
activity.
  Dubious claim No. 5: In several places in this document, ACDA claims 
to provide intelligence support.
  That is utterly false. ACDA is not an intelligence agency and is not 
part of the intelligence community. It does not collect intelligence 
information and is not even given full access to raw intelligence. ACDA 
is merely a consumer not a producer of intelligence analysis.
  In another place, ACDA also claims that it produces red team analyses 
of arms control agreements. I was a member of the Select Committee on 
Intelligence, and I can tell you that this same work is performed by 
the Arms Control Intelligence Staff in the Central Intelligence Agency 
and at the Defense Intelligence Agency. That's where the real expertise 
exists. There's no need to triplicate this work at the Arms Control and 
Disarmament Agency.
  Dubious claim No. 4: In the section dealing with ACDA's 
accomplishments of the last year, the document boasts that ACDA 
reviewed essentially all U.S. munitions and dual-use related exports.
  Yet ACDA is not a licensing agency under our export control laws. 
ACDA is simply duplicating work that is performed in the State 
Department, Defense Department, and the Commerce Department, which are 
the licensing agencies.
  I ask the members of this chamber, Do we really need yet another 
level of redundancy in the Federal bureaucracy? The real expertise on 
these issues lies in the Departments of Commerce and Defense, with the 
State Department handling diplomatic aspects of export control issues. 
I would strongly argue that three principal agencies are enough.
  Dubious claim No. 3: In this document, ACDA makes great claims about 
its participation in meetings of various commissions established by 
arms control treaties to deal with implementation issues among the 
signatories. These included the JCIC, the BCC, the SVC, the SCC, the 
JCG, and the OSCC.
  First of all, ACDA leads the delegations to only four of these 
commissions. And the total number of meetings for those four during 
1992 and the first 6 months of 1993 is only eight. Eight meetings. 
That's it. Eight meetings, and ACDA makes a vaunted claim that this 
represents a major activity that justified keeping an independent 
bureaucracy tasked only with arms control.
  Dubious claim No. 2: ACDA is proud of the fact that its personnel 
served on the U.N. ballistic missile inspections teams in Iraq, and 
this is listed as a major achievement of the agency in the past year.
  What do we find when we look into this claim? One staffer. That's 
right, one ACDA staff member served several times as a member of 
inspection teams in Iraq. And we are asked to believe that this is a 
major achievement.
  What is more, ACDA pulled back from that role. I understand that 
ACDA's leadership was concerned about this staffer's health and safety 
and probably will not allow the staffer to play this role again.
  And, the No. 1 dubious claim about ACDA activities and 
accomplishments comes at the bottom of page three. It is an item 
entitled ``Antarctic inspections.'' Mr. President, I want to quote it 
in full so that there can be no misunderstanding:

       ACDA will assist in the planning and will participate in 
     the two inspections to be held pursuant to the Antarctica 
     Treaty.

  This is indeed fascinating. Here, in this official document, the Arms 
Control and Disarmament Agency has made the claim that its 
participation in Antarctica inspections represents a major agency 
activity.
  I have looked into this major activity. This inspection will involve 
four to six people. ACDA will not lead the inspection team but will be 
represented.
  Mr. President, it begs credulity for an agency of the Federal 
Government to claim that sending one or two people on a trip represents 
a major programmatic activity that should be touted in a document like 
this before Congress.

  But let us take a deeper look at this item. What are the provisions 
of the Antarctica Treaty relevant to arms control? Article One 
prohibits States from undertaking any measure of a military nature, 
including weapons testing, in Antarctica. In negotiating the treaty, 
President Eisenhower sought to preclude both superpowers from building 
military bases in Antarctica.
  For the record, no bases were ever built. In fact, by the 1970's, it 
was clear that the Antarctic environment was so harsh that no one in 
their right mind would be interested in building a base there, whether 
or not an agreement existed to preclude bases.
  I have read ACDA's report on its expedition to Antarctica in 1989. In 
reporting on its visit to a French research station, ACDA tells us, 
``The station reported no arms or munitions on station except for a 12-
guage shotgun and a flare pistol.'' Mr. President, does ACDA truly 
believe that counting flare pistols in Antarctica is an arms control 
issue that deserves full funding?
  There is more, however. The summary finding of the report on arms and 
military activity reads as follows:

       No arms violations, military activities, storage or 
     disposal of hazardous or nuclear materials, or activities 
     with significant military implications were observed during 
     the inspection.

  Mr. President, that was the state of play on this issue in 1989. 
Since then we have seen the democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe, 
the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the collapse of the Soviet empire 
in the third world, the democratic election of the President of Russia, 
the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the forging of a 
partnership with Russia and some of the other newly independent states.
  I cannot speak for my distinguished colleagues, but I am prepared to 
trust the new democratic Russia when its leaders state that they are 
not engaged in the overt or covert militarization of Antarctica. Soviet 
leaders never tried to do this during the cold war, and given Russia's 
troubles today, I cannot even imagine a scenario in which Russia's 
elected leadership would do so now.
  Yet, that does not stop our friends at ACDA from launching a full-
field inspection of Antarctica. There are no military activities in 
Antarctica. There are no intelligence indications that would lead us to 
suspect military activities are underway in Antarctica. There is no 
reason whatsoever to believe that we need to reconfirm the findings of 
the 1989 visit. Yet we find that ACDA is footing the bill for all the 
day-to-day expenses of this Antarctic inspection trip even for 
participants who are not part of ACDA.
  I cannot understand the rationale for this inspection. However, I do 
understand that this trip is very popular at ACDA. I am told that 
officials and bureaucrats are competing to try to get a seat on this 
trip. Mr. President, I do not know what the constituents of other 
senators call this kind of spending, but in my State of Utah taxpayers 
call this boondoggle.

  I submit that arms control is supposed to enhance our security. 
Therefore, I have one simple question: What is the military threat to 
the United States emanating from Antarctica? What is the threat that 
requires us to spend taxpayer monies on arms control inspections of 
Antarctica? Why should taxpayers be providing money for an arms control 
inspection of a continent on which here has not been any significant 
military activity for almost half a century?
  Mr. President, this list of ACDA's activities is very revealing--
revealing about the limited value of ACDA in the arms control process, 
revealing about the marginal achievements of ACDA both in the 
interagency process and internationally, and revealing about the 
dubious nature of much of ACDA's spending.
  I could go on with more examples, but what I have tried to provide 
here is a representative sampling of the egregious exaggerations that 
ACDA has made in providing this lengthy account of its activities and 
accomplishments.
  I am not arguing that ACDA does nothing of value. I would point out 
that the statements in this document on ACDA's role with respect to the 
Chemical Weapons Convention, the activities of the International Atomic 
Energy Agency, and a few others do represent contributions made by ACDA 
to the arms control process. What I am arguing is this: When you look 
into all of the individual claims in this document, you do not find 
sufficient activities and accomplishments to justify the continued 
existence of an independent arms control agency.
  This document itself is proof positive that this agency is 
desperately struggling for ways to justify its existence. ACDA's 
leadership had to reach down a long way to generate these seven pages 
of dubious claims. In fact, as I have noted, they have had to reach all 
the way down to Antarctica.


                      savings by eliminating acda

  Mr. President, I offered a bill, S. 1085, to eliminate ACDA. Senators 
Cochran and Lott cosponsored this legislation with me. It would have 
produced significant savings, totally $171 million over the next 5 
years.
  I have brought with me a letter from Director Reischauer of the 
Congressional Budget Office that reads in part, ``CBO estimates that 
savings in outlays would total $26 million in 1995, $46 million in 
1996, $49 million in 1997, and $50 million in 1998.'' Mr. President, I 
ask unanimous consent that the letter be reprinted in the Record.
  I know that many might argue that this is not much money, that it's a 
drop in the bucket when we look at the $200 billion deficits we face 
under the current budget plan. And, frankly, I do not find the argument 
at all persuasive that just because an amount of money is small by the 
Federal Government's standards we should not save it at all.
  In my State of Utah, $171 million is a lot of money. In my State, 
$171 million is greater than the total State revenues spent on 
education in even the largest school district in the State. It is 
almost twice the total Federal revenues transferred to Utah for 
elementary and secondary education in the 1990-91 school year.
  This body has adopted an amendment to the State Department 
Authorization Act to increase spending on ACDA. I believed this was a 
profound error, and I will be watching closely the performance of ACDA 
over the next year to determine whether this vote of confidence had any 
merit.
  In closing, I just want to pose a simple question. We might call it 
the $171 million question. Why does this body continue to ignore 
opportunities to streamline Government and to save the taxpayers money? 
Why does the Congress continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars 
on an agency that is clearly a relic--a creature that should not have a 
continued claim on taxpayer monies but rather should inhabit a 
bureaucratic Jurassic Park.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                  Congressional Budget Office,

                                     Washington, DC, July 1, 1993.
     Hon. Orrin G. Hatch,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator: At your request, the Congressional Budget 
     Office has reviewed S. 1085, the Economy in Arms Control Act, 
     as introduced into the United States Senate on June 9, 1993. 
     The bill would abolish the Arms Control and Disarmament 
     Agency (ACDA) and would transfer certain ACDA functions to 
     other U.S. agencies.
       If the bill were enacted by the start of fiscal year 1994, 
     it would become effective in fiscal year 1995. Compared to 
     current law, enactment of S. 1085 would result in no savings, 
     because appropriations for ACDA are not authorized for fiscal 
     years 1994 through 1998. Compared to a projection of ACDA's 
     1993 funding level, however, CBO estimates that savings in 
     outlays would total $26 million in 1995, $46 million in 1996, 
     $49 million in 1997, and $50 million in 1998.
       These estimated savings are less than ACDA's projected 
     appropriation for several reasons. First, S. 1085 would 
     transfer some ACDA employees to other agencies to help carry 
     out arms control functions. Section 6 of the bill would 
     transfer 10 percent of ACDA personnel working on policy 
     formulation to the State Department and would transfer 30 
     percent of ACDA personnel working on non-proliferation and 
     verification issues to the Department of Defense (DoD). Based 
     on information received from ACDA, CBO estimates that this 
     provision would result in the transfer of about 30 of ACDA's 
     220 employees. The State Department and DoD would incur 
     increased costs for salaries and related expenses that CBO 
     estimates would total about $3 million annually.
       Second, once ACDA is abolished some employees would lose 
     their jobs and would be eligible for severance pay and pay 
     for unused annual leave. According to ACDA, employees would 
     receive severance pay in regular intervals after the 
     employees leave federal employment. These severance costs 
     would be incurred in 1995. CBO assumes that payments for 
     unused annual leave also would be incurred in 1995. Assuming 
     30 people are transferred to other agencies, CBO estimates 
     that about 90 people would be eligible for these payments. 
     Based on information provided by ACDA, CBO estimates that 
     payments for severance costs and for unused annual leave 
     would total about $2 million in 1995. The remaining 100 
     people are assumed to find other federal jobs or to retire.
       Finally, if ACDA is abolished at the start of 1995, another 
     $18 million in obligations from prior year budget authority 
     would still be spent in 1995.
       Enactment of S. 1085 would not affect direct spending or 
     receipts. Therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures would not apply 
     to the bill. Also, enactment of the bill would not affect the 
     budgets of state and local governments.
       If you wish further details on this estimate, we will be 
     pleased to provide them. The CBO contact is Kent Christensen, 
     who can be reached at 226-2840.
           Sincerely,
                                             Robert D. Reischauer,
     Director.

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