'You Are Lighting The Room On Fire': Brian Schatz Grills Sec. Marco Rubio On Foreign Aid Cuts

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At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week, Rep. Brian Schatz (D-HI) questioned Sec. Marco Rubio about responsiveness from the State Department and spending.

Transcript

00:00Senator Schatz. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, ranking members. Secretary, thanks for being here,

00:04and I appreciate our ongoing dialogue, even if we're in some disagreement about a number of

00:09things. I want to ask you, and I'm going to try to work the senator out of you here,

00:13a bunch of yes or no questions. They are not trick questions. Are you still the acting USAID

00:18administrator? Yes. Do you control hiring and firing at USAID? Yes. Well, I delegate the

00:26authority to an administrator, but obviously, yes. And you control hiring and firing at state?

00:32Again, we obviously rely on our bureaus that do, I mean, it depends what you're, I mean,

00:36that's a highly technical question. I don't hire the line officers in every embassy, but I mean,

00:41technically, yes. You're ultimately in charge? Yes. Okay. Did you personally review all the

00:47programs terminated during the foreign assistance review and personally make termination decisions?

00:51Yes. Do you have the authority to direct any state or U.S.

00:56aid staff to brief Congress? Yes. Can you have Mr. Lewin or you come back to Congress and talk

01:05about USAID in the context of the coming end of the federal fiscal year and SFOPs and appropriations?

01:14That's already planned to do that, not just him, but others, because we'll have to update you on

01:17that, on our reorganization, whatever OMB decides to do with money. So there's a host of things for

01:24us to all talk about. So I just want to illustrate, whenever I talk with you, I feel pretty encouraged,

01:33and then stuff doesn't happen. I wrote eight unanswered letters, and I request to enter those

01:42into the record without objection. And my staff has sent 200 unanswered questions, 200 unanswered

01:51questions about this much paper. Consultation is not a courtesy. It is required by law, and

01:58we have now 200. And these are perfunctory. What are you up to? What does this mean? This

02:03is the kind of normal pace of operations. Radio silence. Other than you're very responsive,

02:10your department and USAID has not been very responsive. Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring

02:16Act, the Impoundment Control Act, the Anti-Deficiency Act, the Foreign Assistance Act, and the annual

02:21appropriations bills for state and foreign operations have been violated in multiple ways.

02:28On March 12th, you wrote, we plan to engage Congress as required both by law and reality

02:33before we start drafting a plan to bring USAID over under state. That did not happen.

02:39As you know, we have a pledge. We owe the Global Fund $1.3 billion. I spoke with the head of the

02:45Global Fund in response to my repeated requests and multiple other people's repeated requests.

02:51You told me that those funds were going to be released. It has not happened. I'd just like

02:56you to respond to that. And again, I like you. I like our working relationship. But what is happening

03:01is we have a good conversation. And then, I don't know, it seems to be getting sandbagged

03:05underneath you in this vast bureaucracy.

03:08Yeah. Well, that's part of the reason why we want to reorganize is to have less vast bureaucracy.

03:13But I wouldn't blame that on this. The first couple of points, we believe and continue to believe

03:17that we have complied with the law on every step of the way, including through advising Congress

03:22of our roles. And even now with the reorganization, we have not issued a congressional notification

03:25yet. We issued a preliminary. We have taken input from members. I actually personally signed

03:30a letter that I think should have been delivered to you. I was overseas. I don't know if it

03:33was Monday or Sunday or Saturday, but it was in response to your latest letter.

03:36Last night. Yeah.

03:37So I hope you did get that. And obviously, we'll continue to engage with you on all of this

03:40as well.

03:41So the practical effect here, right? Because everyone can agree that, well, I don't know if everyone

03:47can agree, but it seems to me that most of us agree that there is virtue in reforming

03:52any big institution and that aligning USAID's operations with the State Department and the

03:59President's and the Secretary's foreign policy objectives is beneficial. The question is, can

04:06we do this lawfully and in a way that doesn't damage our international reputation? Mothers who

04:14have fled Boko Haram in Nigeria are watching their babies starve. Children in South Sudan are

04:19dying of cholera. Families are dying because they have been cut off from their HIV medications.

04:28There are about 103 deaths an hour. And so we can talk about the reorganization of the State

04:38Department. But this becomes quickly not an abstraction, not a normal public policy tug

04:45and pull, because the way that this has been done, set aside our disagreement about whether

04:51it's been done lawfully. It's been done in a just catastrophic fashion. And so on some level,

04:59that's water under the bridge. But what I want from you is a commitment to try to get an appropriations

05:08bill that is done on a bipartisan basis that reconstitutes the foreign aid enterprise. I think

05:14we can do fewer things. I think we can be more narrow in our focus. But you are pushing on an open

05:23door. And instead of pushing on that open door, you are lighting the room on fire. Maybe that was not

05:29your intent. And I think we have two objectives right now. Minimize suffering and reputational

05:36damage. That's one line of effort. And the other is, how do we get back to the regular order where we

05:42can do a bill together? And I'd like your thoughts in the remaining minute and a half.

05:45Yeah. Well, first of all, that is the intent here, right? Is to rebuild the foreign aid enterprise under

05:49the State Department. By the way, it's something multiple secretaries of states before me have wanted to

05:53do because we want foreign aid to be a part of our diplomacy toolbox and our way we engage the world,

05:59not its own separate entity, but all of it coordinated one with the other. So that's our

06:04hope on the reorg. And that's what we're trying to endeavor towards. I also don't think it's fair,

06:09by the way, you highlighted a couple points. Like in South Sudan, there's distribution problems there.

06:13It's not just a program. PEPFAR is 85% operative right now. So you touched about HIV medication.

06:19Secretary, you are required to spend 100% of the money, not 85% of the money.

06:23Well, but 15% of that is funding of programs that we've canceled. We're going to cancel those

06:28programs we've rescinded because they don't reach the purpose of the – those are elements of

06:32individual programs, for example, that were not meeting the mandate of the program. They were not

06:36being delivered. We just the other day at the embassy level in Namibia identified fraud, where millions and

06:43millions of dollars of U.S. aid was found on the store shelves being resold into the marketplace.

06:48It was our ambassador who discovered it. We tried to work with local authorities to fix it,

06:52and it was not fixed. And he was weeping at the conference while announcing this decision because

06:56he'd hated to do it. And some of the places you highlight, it's important to remember,

07:00even if the money is distributed, sometimes it cannot be – it cannot be brought out – the

07:04aid does not reach people because armed elements in Sudan, in South Sudan, are impeding aid from

07:09reaching their intended recipients. It's a very complicated world in terms of the delivery of aid.

07:13The one point I'd like to – Senator, you're out of time?

07:16With your indulgence, 30 more seconds. And you and Senator Murphy had an exchange about this.

07:24It is just not true that only 12 percent of the aid reaches recipients. The way you get to 12 percent

07:31is it's 12 percent local NGOs. So that is excluding care. That is excluding the World Food Program. That is

07:42excluding Catholic Relief Services. And so if you're going to count that as like overhead or

07:47inefficiency, Secretary Rubio, you and I have honest disagreements. But that number has been given to

07:56you and is not an accurate assessment of the extent to which aid reaches the people who need it. And I

08:03will just say, if there's an enterprise to reduce overhead, count me in. But it is not 88 percent

08:11overhead. That's not what's happening. Thank you.

08:14Well, that number, just to clarify, it was actually Samantha Power's number. And she regretted that

08:19one of the things she was unable to do at USAID is improve upon that number.

08:23Thank you. Senator Brasso.

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