HEARINGS ON FOREIGN ASSISTANCE LEGISLATION FOR FISCAL YEARS 1990-91

Part 1-Full Committee

Part 2-Subcommittee on Arms Control, International Security and Science

Part 3-Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East

Part 4-Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations

Part 5-Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs

Part 6-Subcommittee on Africa

Part 7-Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs

Part 8-Subcommittee on International Economic Policy and

Trade

Part 9-Full Committee Markup

(V)

FOREIGN ASSISTANCE LEGISLATION FOR

FISCAL YEARS 1990-91

TUESDAY, MAY 23, 1989

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC.

The committee met in open markup session at 10:12 a.m. in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dante B. Fascell (chairman) presiding.

Chairman FASCELL. The Committee will come to order please.

Now, everyone has a committee print in front of them and I cannot tell you how many days, weeks, and hours are involved in the print.

Let me express first of all my appreciation to Lee Hamilton, Ben Gilman, and the staff for all of the work that went into the task force with respect to the review of the foreign aid program and also the Administration for their cooperation in getting as far as we have gotten. I also want to express my deep appreciation to all the organizations, private, voluntary, academic institutions, and individuals who spent a lot of time, energy, effort and money to undertake a review of the entire program to give us a new look and a new sense of purpose. It was a monumental undertaking, and we have come a long way. We are close to taking the first major step on a long path. I am very grateful for everyone's cooperation in getting us this far.

There has been a genuine effort on the part of the Administration, in depth, to review along with members of the subcommittees, committees, and various staff groups in order to discuss the issues, and there are many of them, that have enabled us to achieve this goal.

We still have a lot of work to do and we are undertaking in the normal course of events to complete that work.

How fast can we do it?

Well, we have allocated Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. That is a very hopeful agenda and I doubt, myself, that we can do it. But I would certainly like to try because a lot of work has been done by the subcommittees in the sense they have reported in discussions, not only within our own committee, but also with the Administration, in trying to resolve our differences. And believe me, we have successfully managed to reconcile a great many issues. The basic recommendations of the Hamilton-Gilman task force were: To consolidate, to eliminate overlapping, duplication and ambiguity and unnecessary language. It is anybody's guess as to how

successful we will ultimately be in achieving this. I can tell you this, great strides have been made in carrying out that recommendation of the task force.

To narrow down language-wise a variety of criteria that exist which are all encompassing in terms of those initiatives in which this committee has struggled for for so many years, all of those initiatives are still in this bill. The language may appear somewhat more brief, but the initiatives are still there, initiatives that this committee has struggled so hard for, and others, over the years. Did we get 100 percent?

Of course not. With literally hundreds of organizations on the outside and all of the people who are involved in the Administration, on this committee, and in Congress, it is obviously impossible to get 100 percent. But we have come a long way. Amazing. And I think we will complete and finish our job in good order.

Of course, this is not the end-all. We tried some very difficult things. For example, in terms of trying to eliminate the certification process, which has been a very difficult one to implement, I do not think anybody has really been happy with it. We have an Administration now that says, in effect, "We know that there is a lack of confidence and trust that has been built over the years, but give this Administration a chance."

Our subcommittees basically are prepared to do that, assuming that we can reach understandings that are satisfactory on all the other matters.

The task force was interested in removing earmarks. We have removed some. We cannot remove all of them for obvious reasons, strongly felt reasons. We are trying to get the assurances that would be required in order to make it possible to build the confidence and trust that is absolutely essential between an Administration and a committee of the Congress with respect to, for example, functional accounts. While we may not be able to remove all the functional earmarks, we can at least remove the functional earmarks based on the assurances that there will not be any major change in the allocation of funds on the functional accounts, which are held dearly by organizations and people on this committee.

There are other difficult issues that we have tackled. There has been a big debate, for example, on the question of budgetary support and economic support funds. This is a matter which we have discussed for all the years that I have been a member of this committee. I think the first debate I participated in, on this committee, was on the issue of budgetary support.

I did not like it then, but I think that over the years I finally realized it is an absolutely essential tool for the United States Government. It has to be carefully monitored. I would like to think that we could do what the task force had recommended with respect to the economic support funds, but I do not believe that 100 percent possible, Mr. Hamilton. I know how strongly you feel about this. But Mr. Hamilton still wants to raise the issue by way of an amendment. I think it is important to raise the issue and let us debate it so that we can all become acquainted with the difficulty. This is just a brief review of the present situation. We have reconciled most of the provisions that are in the generic print. We will now hear from the subcommittees. What we want to do, of course,