Secretary Marco Rubio: Staff Reductions Are Intended To Make State Department 'More Efficient And More Focused'

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked about a reduction in force at the State Department.

Transcript

00:00acts that we're seeing again these are defensive weapons the reduction in force of the state

00:04department is that something that we should expect to happen while you are traveling or

00:10is it something you want to be in washington dc while it happens for no i mean we've already

00:15notified that the congress understand our reduction in force was done

00:19i'm very proud to say i think i i would argue probably in the most uh deliberate way of anyone

00:24that's done one we went very specifically through and reorganized the state department and when you

00:29reorganize the state department there were certain bureaus we wanted to empower the regional bureaus

00:33and there were certain bureaus these functional bureaus that were closed and so it made sense

00:38to to so that's been a that's been notified to congress and to the workforce for some period of

00:43time and uh so we've been ready to implement it pending a court decision which now has been reached

00:51there's some timing associated with how you do that how you how you actually implement it but

00:55you know our intent is to move forward the plans that we've notified congress of weeks ago and

00:59that we took months to design will the numbers be the same as what was notified to congress sure

01:04i mean our plan that we notified the congress is what we intend to do and then we'll have achieved

01:08our our again the reduction of force is a consequence of the reorg it's not a consequence of getting trying

01:14to get rid of people but if you've closed the bureau you don't need those positions understand that some

01:18of these are positions that are being eliminated not people some of them are unfilled positions for

01:23potentially or positions that someone took early retirement um and and therefore are now are about

01:29to be unfilled so but we took a very deliberate step to reorganize the state department to be more

01:34efficient and more focused that's been publicly noticed to congress months ago we've been prepared

01:40to implement it and the thing that slowed us down was the court decision by a district judge in

01:44the northern district of california the supreme court has ruled on that and so we're prepared to act

01:49on it it'll come as no surprise and that is our reorg that that'll be uh the extent of what we intend to

01:54do um and we're already operating under the new organizational structure as is for the most part

02:00so uh this will further enhance that okay thank you thank you