During Wednesday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) discussed President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio's efforts to reorganize the State Department.
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00:00Representative Barr. Thank you Mr. Chairman for this very important
00:05hearing and far from far from ceding Congress's authority to the executive
00:12branch. This entire exercise is about Congress reclaiming its important role
00:18in authorizing and reauthorizing the State Department. Thank you to our
00:24ambassadors for your service. I just returned from a bipartisan Codell to
00:29from our embassy in Tokyo. I thanked our incredible Foreign Service personnel
00:36there in that spectacular embassy there and thank them for their service and I
00:40think our Foreign Service personnel who are forward deployed and embassies and
00:46missions across the globe and who do a great job representing our country and
00:51our values overseas. They deserve a reauthorized State Department that
00:57reforms in some cases the department, that in some cases economizes the
01:03department, rethinks and reimagines and modernizes the department, strengthens
01:09and in some cases in some cases refocuses the department. I think our Foreign
01:14Service personnel and our diplomats deserve that and that's what this entire
01:19opportunity presents. I'd like to take my time to clear the air on some negative
01:25press that this administration has received for this much-needed
01:29reorganization of the State Department. Critics have argued that cuts and
01:33reviews undermine American soft power and damage alliances with their allies but
01:37our own Secretary of State and other senior officials have said that's not true.
01:40Secretary of State Rubio recently stated we're going to be involved in those
01:45things caring about human rights but it's going to be run at the embassy and
01:48regional level not out of some office in Washington DC. Speaking on the America
01:55First trade agenda Secretary Besant said America First does not mean America alone.
02:00To the contrary it's a call for deeper collaboration and mutual respect among
02:05trade partners. Tammy Bruce spokesperson for the State Department on
02:10reorganizing USAID said that don't mistake a change for indicating that
02:15something is gone. It was never about us abandoning our commitment to funding of
02:20any kind but it's going to look different and now it will. It will
02:23actually be going to be within a functional framework. Secretary Rubio said
02:28about diplomacy in the Middle East this is this is not a president that's looking
02:31to start wars he's a president that's looking to stop the Houthis and present
02:35prevent them. That's why we've been focused on Ukraine and that's why we're
02:39having talks with Iranians. We're committed to achieving a peaceful outcome
02:42that's acceptable to everyone. We want to achieve a peaceful resolution and not
02:46resort to anything else. Ambassador Jeffrey do you see the need for
02:51consolidation and more streamlined processes at the State Department and
02:54more focus and how could it be actually beneficial to advancing American foreign
03:00policy? Yes I do. I think first of all it's important that whatever this or any
03:08administration does it reflects a general thrust of policy that we can be sure the
03:15next administration regardless of Republican or Democratic will follow. When
03:20we deal with countries and they say yes to something we're asking they're
03:24making an investment just like people do in the stock market and they're
03:28investing in an assumption that there'll be returns on this it's somewhat
03:32transactional and thus predictability and consistency are important. So anything
03:38that streamlines the organization and makes it more efficient will help. Again the
03:44devil is in the details on what you throw overboard but there's a lot of stuff
03:48that needs to continue. Again focus on the operating elements of the Department of
03:57State. Those are the geographic bureaus. Those are the people who even though they're
04:01only assistant secretaries they spend much more time with the Secretary of State
04:05than most other people in the building and they're his or her operating arms.
04:10They're very important to empower. Well I do think that refocusing and
04:15reorganizing really could enhance morale among our diplomats and give them
04:20additional mission and purpose. One final question about China in this new era of
04:25great power competition. Where should the State Department focus its efforts
04:30with respect to competition with the PRC and should we think seriously about some
04:37of our diplomatic efforts that actually push would-be partners into the arms of
04:43China like our at the previous administration's efforts to to push to
04:49push against a domestic law in Uganda that actually encouraged China to build up a
04:54belt-and-road project there. Well I was involved when I was undersecretary in a
05:01major reorganization effort to confront the problem that we faced in China because the
05:05organization while there the Washington consensus as they say had shifted and
05:09recognized the problem the bureaucracy had not and so we took the positions that
05:14were liberated out of Baghdad, Basra and Kabul as circumstances changed there and
05:21assigned them to the to the China team. A lot of people wanted them to be sent to
05:25China and I was one of those arguing and successfully so against too much of
05:30that. Instead we needed those those resources and those people which are our
05:34main resource at the State Department to be on the front lines where we were
05:38dealing with the invidious Chinese influence and that included international
05:42organizations as well as different countries in the world you mentioned one of
05:46them and so that's and we did a we did a I think a pretty impressive exercise in
05:52gathering data to understand exactly what the nature of the Chinese threat was in
05:57every country in the world both business security public diplomacy all the
06:02different categories of influence and decide where where were the countries
06:06where frankly was too far gone that resources were wasted there where were the
06:12countries where there was still competition and where was the
06:14competition needed and then to make sure that our country teams in each of those
06:17places had the resources and the strategy to deal with it because how you
06:20deal with China in Thailand is going to be different than how you deal with it in
06:24El Salvador and then to proselytize with our people to make sure they
06:27understood whatever you were doing before now China was at the top of your list and I
06:32think we I think we made great inroads. Well I have great respect for our
06:35diplomats and that's exactly why I support this reauthorization process to
06:41continue to strengthen this the department. I yield back.
06:47I now