[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 93 (Thursday, June 8, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1198]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                THE ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT AGENCY

                                 ______


                        HON. JOHN JOSEPH MOAKLEY

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                         Wednesday, June 7, 1995
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I want to share with my colleagues an 
editorial recently published in the Boston Globe which highlights the 
impact of legislation pending before the House and Senate which would 
fold the U.S. Agency for International Development, the United States 
Information Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency into the 
State Department. I think that the Globe makes a very strong case for 
allowing the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency to retain its current 
status as an independent agency.
                    The Masochism of Chairman Helms

       All other systems are worse than democracy, Winston 
     Churchill once observed. But there are moments when it is 
     salutary to remember that Churchill also recognized that 
     democracy can look plenty bad. This is one of those moments.
       Grandstanding, demagoguery and perversity: These are some 
     of the qualities on display in congressional attempts to 
     restructure and cut funding for agencies that carry out US 
     foreign policy.
       Though budgets of these agencies should be scrutinized for 
     economies and pruned accordingly, the legislation initiated 
     by the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 
     Sen. Jesse Helms, is composed of measures that would, if 
     implemented, do grave harm to US interests and to millions of 
     people around the world.
       In a spirit of score-settling, Helms, a North Carolina 
     Republican, and other conservatives in Congress have been 
     truffling the House and Senate foreign aid bills with 
     irresponsible provisions pertaining to America's lost 
     sovereignty over the Panama Canal and abortion in China. In a 
     hamhanded manner, they have also been seeking to meddle in 
     the Clinton administration's delicate negotiations to make 
     North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons program without 
     having to bomb Pyongyang's cooling ponds. The posturing of 
     Helms and his emulators in the House, if judged by its likely 
     effects, amounts to a show of unwitting masochism.
       Of three independent agencies the Helms bill would absorb 
     into the State Department--the US
      Agency for International Development, the US Information 
     Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency--the 
     strongest case for preserved independence belongs to the 
     arms control agency. Not only does this lean, inexpensive 
     agency have the most impressive record of achievements and 
     the most fateful missions in the aftermath of the Cold 
     War, it also owes its success to its status as a separate, 
     specialized entity.
       The agency has saved taxpayers billions of dollars and 
     enhanced US security because it has been able to offer advice 
     on policy directly to the secretary of state and the 
     president. Its expert judgments on Pakistan's nuclear weapons 
     capability or on the proper interpretation of the Anti-
     Ballistic Missile Treaty, for example, did not have to be 
     trimmed or inverted to comply with the parochial bureaucratic 
     interests of the Departments of State and Defense.
       Without the independence of the Arms Control and 
     Disarmament Agency, the other national security bureaucracies 
     would hardly have pursued the banning of the Soviet Union's 
     dangerous and destabilizing SS-18, an intercontinental 
     ballistic missile with multiple warheads. Nor would the 
     United States be on the road to a comprehensive nuclear test 
     ban treaty and a verifiable Biological Weapons Convention. If 
     the arms control agency were folded into the State 
     Department, as Helms proposes, its decisive, expert influence 
     on crucial issues of national security would inevitably be 
     diluted. The loss would be incalculable.
     

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