Combating Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Agency Budget ProcessesRecommendation 3.4: Each Cabinet secretary or agency head with proliferationrelatedresponsibilities should designate a senior proliferation budget manager.The Commission believes that White House coordination and decision making will not befully effective unless the participating agencies themselves give priority to proliferationrelatedprograms and to the internal transparency needed for proper resource planning.No agency currently gives these programs special attention. This must change.In Chapter 2, the Commission recommended that each agency with proliferation-relatedresponsibilities designate a single senior-level, presidentially-appointed official to managethose responsibilities. Each agency should also make one senior resource officialresponsible for proliferation-related budgets. This official would work with the NationalDirector and the Director of OMB in the resource planning process.Congressional Budget ProcessRecommendation 3.5: Congress should develop a means to review thePresident’s proliferation-related budget as a whole, rather than dividing it amongseveral authorization committees and appropriations sub-committees.In the end, Congress appropriates. But just as proliferation-related programs aredistributed widely among the departments and agencies, so too is congressionalresponsibility for funding these programs widely dispersed among authorizationcommittees and appropriations sub-committees. This means that even if the Presidentwere to send Congress a cross-agency proliferation-related budget, as the Commissionrecommends, Congress would not be able to consider it as a whole. Instead, it would haveto be cut into agency- or department-specific programs and budgets, with each consideredindependently in a separate jurisdiction.In Chapter 2, the Commission urged that Congress examine its organization with the goalof streamlining consideration of proliferation-related matters. Nowhere is this moreimportant than on budget issues.The Commission urges Congress to find a forum for reviewing the President’s proliferationrelatedbudget as a whole—perhaps through joint hearings in the Armed Servicescommittees, the Foreign/International Relations committees or the GovernmentOperations/ Affairs committees. It would also help if each Appropriations committee23