At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) questioned Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Michael Rigas about the way firings at the State Department were handled.
00:00Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Senator Booker. Deputy Secretary, I have to add my voice to the chorus here and express how appalled I am at how the department conducted Friday's rifts, unceremoniously firing hundreds of dedicated members of the Civil Service and the Foreign Service with only a half-hearted hand wave at the appropriate process.
00:20My office has received direct outreach from dozens of those impacted by these rifts, and they have confirmed what we suspected would happen and what members of this committee directly warned the department about.
00:31These are public servants who have made countless sacrifices to serve our nation, and the department's actions are short-sighted and, frankly, sloppy. I would expect better of you.
00:41That they will take an already difficult moment, and you have made it even more precarious. And I can only scratch the surface in my short time of heartbreaking personal stories that I've heard.
00:49These are public servants who are not only concerned about their livelihoods, but the impacts of our national security and our ability to respond to the next crisis.
00:56You claim that you went through a thoughtful process to execute these rifts completely defy reality.
01:02To illustrate one example, individuals who were hired under veterans' preference were rifted with no acknowledgement of their veteran status in their service summary that you included in their letters.
01:12Why should we believe that you went through a thoughtful process where you can't even check this basic box of acknowledging their veteran service?
01:19And what about the multiple examples I've heard of individuals who were rifted while on TDY overseas who are now being put up in five-star hotels at taxpayers' expense while they struggle to get home, cut off from email access?
01:31So, thank you for the question, Senator. So, the rift procedures were done in partnership with the Office of Personnel Management. We did ask every employee in the weeks and months leading up to it to update their personnel files.
01:46And one of the challenges is there isn't a central repository.
01:50Wait, wait, wait. You're blaming OPM and the employees that you rifted?
01:53No, no, not at all. What I'm saying is...
01:55The shoddy way that you went about doing this?
01:57The employee file is owned by the employee, so if it does not have all of their past history, if they've worked at multiple departments or agencies and their SF50s have not been uploaded into their employee file,
02:12it's possible that some detail of their service may have been overlooked, so that's why every employee was asked to review their employee file before the reorganization to ensure that every aspect and every step of their service was included in their employee file.
02:27But if there are any issues that were overlooked or if anyone feels that their employee file is incomplete, we'll certainly address that immediately.
02:34It sounds like you're blaming the victim here. And the people that I've talked to did update their employee files.
02:41How do you reconcile that the Trump administration's own professional development program requires domestic service for FSOs to advance in the senior foreign service?
02:50This is something he implemented in 2017, yet you seem to exclusively target FSOs who are on domestic tours.
02:56They're on these domestic tours because President Trump in his first term said you need to do a domestic tour.
03:00As soon as they're on a domestic tour, you fire them. How do you reconcile that?
03:05Right, so as we noted, the reorganization did focus on the domestic-only operation of the Department of State.
03:11It did not focus on our overseas or global footprint. We have about 14,000 foreign service officers.
03:1810,000 of those foreign service officers serve at FSOs overseas, and we do have about 4,000...
03:23Okay, you're not asking my question. How do you reconcile that?
03:25Well, we had to be looking at the RIF. It could not fall entirely on the civil service. We had to be equitable in terms of how we address the reductions in force at the department.
03:37The vast majority of the reductions did fall on the civil service, but we did have a little over 200 foreign service officers who were impacted by the reduction in force.
03:45Like I said, that's regrettable, but when we had to eliminate offices and functions, the people who were encumbering those roles were the people who were RIF according to the federal government rules and regulations surrounding RIFs.
03:58But they were on domestic tour because President Trump told them they had to do it, so this is ridiculous.
04:04I want to go back to the subject of meeting our obligations. The cuts to EAP's team that managed U.S. engagement in ASEAN while the Secretary was at the ASEAN ministerial is just a perfect illustration of the shoddy and foolish way that you did this.
04:18It's clear that the real winner of this move is going to be the PRC as you eliminate our expert and capacity to engage in this critical region.
04:25Under your proposed reorganization, who will manage the Mekong issue and the Mekong-U.S. partnership?
04:30So all of these functions are going to be handled at the regional bureau level, so that would be the East Asia Pacific Bureau, and then all of the country desks within those bureaus will handle the individual.
04:42They don't have an overseas counterpart office.
04:44I'm sorry, who doesn't have an overseas counterpart office?
04:47The Mekong-U.S. partnership does not have an overseas office.
04:50So anything dealing with a particular region will be handled at the regional bureau.
04:55And where is that?
04:59The regional bureau is located in Washington, D.C., and the country desks are here, but their counterparts are at every post in every country overseas.
05:11But there's no counterpart overseas.
05:13This is the thing.
05:14You're firing people doing very important work without regard to these programs on a program that the PRC is really in the wrong on, and we had an opportunity to develop relationships.
05:26I'm astonished that you would do this to the State Department and to the national security of this country.
