Andy Barr Praises Trump And Rubio For Their ‘Much Needed’ State Department Reorganization

Forbes Breaking News

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.

Transcript

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

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