In November 1911 the Cleveland Commission on Economy and Efficiency, chaired by Frederick A. Cleveland, President William Howard Taft's chief economic adviser, released a report that called for the dissolution of the RCS and its responsibilities distributed to other agencies in the Federal government. The report stated that the military responsibilities of the RCS should be turned over the Navy and other civilian duties should be shared by several other agencies for a savings of one million dollars a year. Bertholf was faced with the task of organizing a defense against the proposal and with the assistance of the Navy; who didn't want the non-military tasks that the RCS performed, or the 1700 RCS personnel; he started gathering facts about RCS operations that would justify its existence. Secretary of the Treasury MacVeagh disagreed with the conclusions in the Cleveland report and directed Bertholf to meet with Sumner Kimball, the head of the USLSS to come up with a plan to merge the two services. They drafted a bill using the strength of both services to form the U.S. Coast Guard from the two services and presented it to Secretary MacVeagh, who in turn, looked for friendly members of Congress to sponsor the bill. In April 1912 the , a British passenger ship struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank with great loss of life. To prevent another disaster an International Ice Patrol treaty was signed with several other countries naming the United States as the operator of the patrol. Because the Navy didn't want the non-military duty, the RCS was tasked with the job of insuring that icebergs were tracked each spring and notices radioed to maritime traffic in the North Atlantic. This additional responsibility coupled with the changing of presidential administrations and the beginning of World War I made the Bertholf-Kimball proposal look attractive to President Woodrow Wilson and he sent word to Congress that he wanted the legislation passed that would create the U.S. Coast Guard. Senate Bill 2337, "An Act to Create the Coast Guard" (Public Law 239) was signed into law on 28 January 1915. On 19 June 1915 Bertholf was reappointed for four more years as Captain-Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard.