Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 2010 and 2011

Floor Speech

FOREIGN RELATIONS AUTHORIZATION ACT, FISCAL YEARS 2010 AND 2011 -- (House of Representatives - June 10, 2009)

Mr. DELAHUNT. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I rise in strong opposition to this amendment as well.

This provision is intended to improve the effectiveness of the State Department and USAID, to save taxpayer dollars, so that there is greater efficiency, improved capabilities, less waste, more bang for the buck, if you will. To do that, we have taken a page from the military.

Section 303 is modeled after Lessons Learned Centers in the armed services. These are mechanisms, if you will, which allow our men and women in uniform to learn from the successes and, as importantly, the mistakes of their colleagues. By cutting down on the need to reinvent the wheel, they have saved not just money, but they have saved lives.

But the State Department and USAID do not have a Lessons Learned Center, even though they, like the military, are spread across the globe with multiple missions. This results in waste, inefficiency, wasted energy, and, tragically, sometimes in the loss of lives of American Foreign Service personnel.

By the way, this is not just an intellectual exercise. With all due respect, I would suggest to my friend from Florida she read this book entitled ``Hard Lessons.'' It is about the colossal waste in the reconstruction of Iraq. If we had a Lessons Learned Center, we could have saved billions of taxpayer dollars.

Read the book, my friends.

It is put out by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Mr. Bowen, and it is a testimony about what happens if you do not have a tested blueprint with the expenditure of dollars overseas. It is a remarkable piece of work.

I want to make clear what this provision does. It begins the process of creating a Lessons Learned Center by authorizing its creation and requiring a report from the Department of State on how much it would cost to actually establish such a center. So it is only calling, at this moment, for a report, and that report, itself, will detail the cost.

I would be happy to work with the gentlewoman from Florida as this report is produced so that we can ensure that it details ways.

Please oppose this amendment.

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