Foreign Affairs Panel Calls For Overhaul of State Dept.

The report also notes a third option, which apparently received the least support, of simply merging all foreign assistance activities within the State Department.

The U.S. Agency for International Development was merged into the State Department during the Clinton administration, a move now viewed as poorly implemented. Under Bush, USAID's central role was further weakened, some say, through the creation of separate programs, such as the Millennium Challenge Corp., which assists countries that meet certain governance standards.

The dissenters said that even elevating foreign assistance within a larger State Department would still leave it as a stepchild. In their minority statement, they urged the United States to follow the British example and create a Cabinet-level foreign aid agency. Former prime minister Tony Blair created that ministry, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown has enhanced it; the commission members who favor this approach said it has been successful.

"The British experience has been very positive and has succeeded," said commission member Leo Hindery Jr., managing partner of InterMedia Partners, an investment firm, and a vice chairman of the commission. "There is no precedent for super-State," he said, adding that the idea was "largely internally generated by the commissioners without much impact from the outside."

The majority said that the British experience is not comparable because "the British parliamentary system is very different from our own governmental system."

The commission was formed in 2004-05, at a time when both the House and Senate were controlled by Republicans, and its makeup reflects that. In a joint dissenting statement, three Democrats -- Hindery, Jeffrey D. Sachs and Gayle E. Smith -- said the full commission report does not "adequately make the case for foreign assistance, recommend sufficient funding for it, or sufficiently establish its stature and position within the United States government."

In a separate statement, Republican William C. Lane said he also favors a Cabinet-level department for foreign aid. The super-State proposal "goes well beyond the Commission's mandate," he said. The proposal should be studied as part of a comprehensive review of the State Department, Lane said.

Hindery, a top adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, predicted that, given the current makeup of Congress, the notion of a Cabinet-level development agency will have better odds than the commission's push for a super-size agency. Sachs, a Columbia University professor, said he is not advising any particular candidate but some have expressed interest in creating a Cabinet-level department, a move that Sachs said "almost all major donor countries" have already taken.