A House-passed bill would direct the State Department to spend fewer taxpayer dollars overseas and require President Clinton to eliminate at least one major foreign-affairs agency.
The focus of a yearlong struggle between Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina and the Clinton administration, the bill passed Tuesday is a compromise worked out in House-Senate negotiations last week.After passing the House by a 226-172, largely party-line vote, it now goes to the Senate where strong opposition from Democrats is again expected.
The White House has said Clinton will veto the bill as congressional infringement upon the president's authority to make foreign policy.
Rep. Benjamin Gilman, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said the administration was missing an opportunity for the first reorganization of the State Department in 50 years.
"Regrettably the administration refused to engage in any effort to revitalize, to reinvigorate, to reorganize, to reform, to reconstruct or reconsider the foreign affairs programs of this nation," said Gilman, R-N.Y.
Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has held up legislative action on diplomatic nominations and treaties for months in his effort to break administration opposition to his plan to reorganize the State Department and eliminate three independent agencies.
Helms said $1.8 billion could be saved if the functions of the Agency for International Development, the United States Information Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency were incorporated in the State Department.
Under the plan worked out last week, Clinton must abolish one of the three agencies.