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| <title> - DEPARTMENT OF STATE FISCAL YEAR 2002 BUDGET PRIORITIES</title> | |
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| [House Hearing, 107 Congress] | |
| [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] | |
| DEPARTMENT OF STATE FISCAL YEAR 2002 BUDGET PRIORITIES | |
| ======================================================================= | |
| HEARING | |
| before the | |
| COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET | |
| HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES | |
| ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS | |
| FIRST SESSION | |
| __________ | |
| HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH 15, 2001 | |
| __________ | |
| Serial No. 107-10 | |
| __________ | |
| Printed for the use of the Committee on the Budget | |
| Available on the Internet: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house/ | |
| house04.html | |
| _______ | |
| U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE | |
| 70-998 WASHINGTON : 2001 | |
| ____________________________________________________________________________ | |
| For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office | |
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| COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET | |
| JIM NUSSLE, Iowa, Chairman | |
| JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire JOHN M. SPRATT, Jr., South | |
| Vice Chairman Carolina, | |
| PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan Ranking Minority Member | |
| Vice Chairman JIM McDERMOTT, Washington | |
| CHARLES F. BASS, New Hampshire BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi | |
| GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota KEN BENTSEN, Texas | |
| VAN HILLEARY, Tennessee JIM DAVIS, Florida | |
| MAC THORNBERRY, Texas EVA M. CLAYTON, North Carolina | |
| JIM RYUN, Kansas DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina | |
| MAC COLLINS, Georgia GERALD D. KLECZKA, Wisconsin | |
| ERNIE FLETCHER, Kentucky BOB CLEMENT, Tennessee | |
| GARY G. MILLER, California JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia | |
| PAT TOOMEY, Pennsylvania DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon | |
| WES WATKINS, Oklahoma TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin | |
| DOC HASTINGS, Washington CAROLYN McCARTHY, New York | |
| JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California DENNIS MOORE, Kansas | |
| ROB PORTMAN, Ohio MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts | |
| RAY LaHOOD, Illinois MICHAEL M. HONDA, California | |
| KAY GRANGER, Texas JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL III, | |
| EDWARD SCHROCK, Virginia Pennsylvania | |
| JOHN CULBERSON, Texas RUSH D. HOLT, New Jersey | |
| HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South Carolina JIM MATHESON, Utah | |
| ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida | |
| ADAM PUTNAM, Florida | |
| MARK KIRK, Illinois | |
| Professional Staff | |
| Rich Meade, Chief of Staff | |
| Thomas S. Kahn, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel | |
| C O N T E N T S | |
| Page | |
| Hearing held in Washington, DC, March 15, 2001................... 1 | |
| Statement of: | |
| Hon. Colin L. Powell, Secretary, U.S. Department of State.... 4 | |
| Hon. Warren B. Rudman, co-chairman of U.S. Commission on | |
| National Security/21st Century............................. 39 | |
| Hon. Lee H. Hamilton, member, U.S. Commission on National | |
| Security/21st Century...................................... 40 | |
| Prepared statement of: | |
| Secretary Powell............................................. 8 | |
| U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century............ 42 | |
| DEPARTMENT OF STATE FISCAL YEAR 2002 BUDGET PRIORITIES | |
| ---------- | |
| WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 2001 | |
| House of Representatives, | |
| Committee on the Budget, | |
| Washington, DC. | |
| The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:30 a.m. in room | |
| 210, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Jim Nussle (chairman of | |
| the committee) presiding. | |
| Members present: Representatives Nussle, Sununu, Hoekstra, | |
| Bass, Gutknecht, Thornberry, Ryun, Collins, Fletcher, Miller, | |
| Watkins, Hastings, Portman, LaHood, Granger, Schrock, | |
| Culberson, Brown, Crenshaw, Putnam, Kirk, Spratt, McDermott, | |
| Bentsen, Price, Kleczka, Clement, Moran, Hooley, Holt, | |
| McCarthy, Moore, Honda, and Matheson. | |
| Chairman Nussle. Good morning. This is a full committee | |
| hearing on the Department of State budget priorities for fiscal | |
| year 2002, as we continue to explore the President's budget | |
| requests for fiscal year 2002. | |
| Today we have a number of very distinguished witnesses to | |
| come before the committee. Leading off today, we have the | |
| distinct honor and privilege of having the Secretary of State | |
| before the Budget Committee. | |
| This is historic for us, Mr. Secretary. We have not had a | |
| Secretary of State come before the committee before. Part of | |
| the reason, as I discussed with you briefly prior to the | |
| hearing, that I think it is so important for us to have you | |
| before the committee is the changing nature of the Department | |
| of State over the last number of years, the changing nature of | |
| our foreign policy and the new ideas, the new blueprint that | |
| you bring to our foreign policy as the new Secretary of State. | |
| I remember listening with quite a bit of interest in some | |
| of your early statements with regard to the new tenor that you | |
| are bringing to the Department, and one of the things that | |
| caught my attention was your belief that what we do at the | |
| Department of State is akin to an insurance policy. If there is | |
| anyone who can speak boldly with regard to the need for that | |
| insurance policy, it is someone who has sat on both sides of | |
| the fence, someone who has had to deal with our country in a | |
| situation where maybe that insurance policy didn't work as well | |
| as it could have with regard to diplomacy, with regard to | |
| intelligence, with regard to making sure that the world was | |
| safe and involving our country in conflict, and now to stand on | |
| the other side, the opposite side, and to work for that | |
| insurance policy so that we never have to put our young men and | |
| women in the kind of harm's way that you have had to lead us so | |
| effectively in years past. | |
| So we are very interested in what you have to say today, | |
| how that affects the budget, the kinds of priorities that not | |
| only you and President Bush but we can be a full partner in, as | |
| we look toward the future. | |
| So we are very anxious to hear your testimony. I will yield | |
| to my friend and colleague, John Spratt from South Carolina, | |
| for any comments he has. | |
| Mr. Spratt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I join you in | |
| extending a warm welcome to General Powell. | |
| General Powell, when General Marshall was awarded an | |
| honorary degree by Harvard after unveiling the Marshall Plan, | |
| the citation said that his service as a soldier and statesman | |
| was ``brooked but one example in the history of our country.'' | |
| In my opinion, you are setting another such example. | |
| Secretary Powell. Thank you, sir. | |
| Mr. Spratt. The President is fortunate to have you in his | |
| Cabinet, and the country is fortunate to have you serve us once | |
| again. | |
| You will find that usually in Congress before we heap | |
| criticism, we lay on the praise. I want to be a constructive, | |
| useful critic for just a minute about Function 150, not the | |
| most popular account in the budget but nevertheless one that is | |
| very important and one that has taken its hits, more than its | |
| share of hits, over the last several years. | |
| Mr. Secretary, the Budget for International Affairs, | |
| Function 150 in our parlance, has been singled out as one part | |
| of the budget that the Bush administration has plussed up, but | |
| so was education. And when we looked closely we found less | |
| there than we expected. | |
| Frankly, we had the same reaction when we looked into | |
| funding for the request for international affairs, and let me | |
| explain to you our concerns with Function 150. | |
| Function 150 appropriations are $22.6 billion this year, | |
| 2001. In the President's request for next year, 2002, it is | |
| $23.9 billion. That is an increase of $1.3 billion, just over 5 | |
| percent. Actually, that is a slight overstatement because you | |
| have to increase funding just to keep abreast of inflation, the | |
| cost of living adjustments to your salaries. And according to | |
| CBO, you need $565 million just to run in place, to maintain | |
| Function 150 in 2002 at the level of 2001. | |
| So when you back out inflation, the increase in your | |
| budget, the real increase in your budget, comes to about $700 | |
| million. | |
| Now, that is not trivial, but the blueprint of the budget, | |
| which is the only thing we have, indicates that the full budget | |
| when it comes will include funding for Plan Colombia, to | |
| maintain and expand Plan Colombia to something Andeanwide. I | |
| understand, from listening to your testimony on the radio going | |
| home last night, that is about $400 million additional dollars. | |
| To the extent that this overall increase, this $700 million | |
| real increase, is used for initiatives like Plan Colombia, then | |
| the other elements of Function 150 cannot be increased. And | |
| when you combine these two factors, inflation and Plan | |
| Colombia, the increase in your budget is only about $300 | |
| million, or 1.3 percent. | |
| Now, Function 150 is just 1 percent of the budget, | |
| something that we continually remind people of as we | |
| appropriate the money. I wouldn't really bother to make the | |
| point except that it seems to be consistent with the pattern | |
| that we have seen elsewhere in this budget and it raises | |
| concern. In education, for example, there was an increase of | |
| 11.4 percent claimed. It turned out to be about half of that. | |
| So there are certain accounts in this budget that seem to carry | |
| the aura or perception of a robust increase that just doesn't | |
| bear up under scrutiny. | |
| When you put the details together, we are finding that this | |
| budget tends to plus up certain high visibility areas but it | |
| comes at the expense of other items in the budget, in your | |
| case, Ex-Im Bank, for example. I really doubt that the Congress | |
| is going to make those cuts when it comes time to make them. | |
| That is our concern about this budget. Function 150 is tight, | |
| it has been tight in the past. And it is not only tight for | |
| 2002 but as you look beyond 2002, the outyears seem to be even | |
| more inadequate. There is not even a nominal increase in 2003 | |
| if I read the budget correctly. There is a cut of $100 million. | |
| Now, for historical context, just to show you where we have | |
| been in the recent past, we have this chart here. This chart | |
| shows that over the last 25 years, between 1977 and 2001, | |
| Function 150 averaged somewhere between $25 billion and $26 | |
| billion in real 2002 dollars. | |
| The recent past has not been nearly that high, but | |
| nevertheless, over the last 25 years that has been the level | |
| where we are. And we are a long way from getting back to that | |
| level of real commitment in this particular account. | |
| You testified last week, I believe, before the | |
| International Relations Committee that this budget was just a | |
| down payment and that, in your words, you would be fighting for | |
| further increases, and I take it you acknowledge yourself then | |
| that the outyears simply aren't sufficient. | |
| My concern is the whole budget. If there are other accounts | |
| like this that aren't sufficient, your best bet, if you want to | |
| plus up this one, is to fight this year because decisions will | |
| be made in this year that may foreclose the option of fighting | |
| for more in the outyears. The present budget assumes that we | |
| can rein in spending, mainly nondefense spending, and offset a | |
| large tax cut. | |
| When you read through the budget, we don't have all the | |
| details yet, looking for where those cuts are coming, you | |
| finally come to page 186 and there is a footnote, 188, which | |
| says, quote, ``the final distribution of offsets has yet to be | |
| determined.'' but when that determination is made, let me tell | |
| you from somebody who comes from a small town in South | |
| Carolina, where foreign affairs doesn't rank high on anybody's | |
| priority list, when we are given the choice of voting for | |
| domestic spending or foreign spending, you know how that choice | |
| will be resolved. | |
| So, that is our concern about this particular budget. There | |
| are going to be other witnesses here today, Lee Hamilton, | |
| Warren Rudman. I have said that Function 150 doesn't look | |
| adequate to me in this particular budget. Frank Carlucci, a | |
| former colleague of yours and close friend, said dramatically | |
| ``the dilapidated state of America's foreign policy apparatus | |
| is a national security crisis that warrants the President's | |
| personal attention.'' | |
| Lee Hamilton, who is on deck to testify just after you, was | |
| a member of that task force with Carlucci. Warren Rudman is | |
| here. He is on deck to testify. The Rudman task force | |
| concluded, and I am quoting, ``the United States will be unable | |
| to conduct foreign policy in all its dimensions without the | |
| commitment of new resources.'' . | |
| I may be wrong, but I don't think this budget is what they | |
| had in mind in making those dramatic statements. | |
| If I didn't respect you so much, I wouldn't have been so | |
| tough on you and blunt about it, but it also gives you an | |
| opportunity to defend this budget and to say what you expect | |
| for the future. Thank you for coming here. | |
| Secretary Powell. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Spratt. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you for | |
| your service to our country. | |
| Chairman Nussle. Mr. Secretary, your entire statement will | |
| be made a part of the record; and you may proceed as you wish. | |
| We are honored to have you here, and we are honored to receive | |
| your testimony. | |
| STATEMENT OF COLIN L. POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE | |
| Secretary Powell. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is | |
| a great pleasure to appear for the first time as Secretary of | |
| State before this committee, and I am honored that apparently I | |
| am one of the first Secretaries of State to ever appear before | |
| this committee. But I can assure you it is not an unfamiliar | |
| scene to me having appeared here as Chairman of the Joint | |
| Chiefs of Staff. And I couldn't help but note, as I looked to | |
| my right and left, I see my old friends Bill Gray and Leon | |
| Panetta, with whom I had such interesting debates as we fought | |
| for the necessary increases for the Defense budget over the | |
| years that I was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. | |
| I want to say to you this morning, Mr. Chairman and Mr. | |
| Spratt, members of the committee, that I will bring that same | |
| fighting spirit up before this committee and all the other | |
| committees of Congress as I do what I think is necessary to | |
| support the President's budget, which I think begins the | |
| process of turning around the dilapidated state, as it has been | |
| called, of the State Department. | |
| Let me tell you one thing about the State Department. There | |
| may be elements of dilapidation, if I can coin such a word, | |
| within the Department, but don't ever use that term to refer to | |
| the dedicated men and women who are within that Department. In | |
| the couple of months that I have been down there, I have found | |
| people who are working their hearts out to do the very best for | |
| the American people, to capture the spirit of the American | |
| value system and to take that spirit around the world. We | |
| should be very proud of what they are doing. | |
| What my challenge is, what our challenge is today, is to | |
| make sure that they have the wherewithal, they have the | |
| resources, so they are not working in dilapidated embassies; | |
| they are not working with dilapidated, old communications and | |
| technology systems; that if we think it is important for our | |
| fighting men in the Pentagon to go into battle with the best | |
| weapons and equipment and tools that we can give them, then we | |
| owe the same thing to the wonderful men and women of the | |
| Foreign Service, the Civil Service and the Foreign Service | |
| nationals who are also in the front line of combat as you | |
| alluded to, Mr. Nussle, in this new world. | |
| I am pleased to be the Secretary of State, and I am pleased | |
| to be here this morning to defend the President's budget. The | |
| President had a number of tough choices to make in putting this | |
| budget together, and I was very pleased that he saw fit to give | |
| the Department of State and the 150 Function a 5 percent | |
| increase, which when you break it down, as you will see | |
| shortly, into the actual operating accounts of the Department | |
| of State, the money we use to buy new technology, to buy new | |
| information systems, to invest and secure facilities and | |
| embassies, to hire people, represents a much more significant | |
| increase, something like 14 percent over the past year. | |
| So while I too am concerned about not being at historical | |
| levels, I think we are starting to turn that around. As you | |
| note, Mr. Spratt, the outyears are not adequate, but outyears | |
| are outyears, and you can be sure that I will be doing | |
| everything I can in the course of the remainder of this year, | |
| as we get ready for 2003, to make sure that I present to the | |
| administration, to the President, the best arguments that I can | |
| come up with as to why these increases should continue. | |
| The government, the United States, the American people, | |
| they have so many ways in which they interact with the world. | |
| The President, in holding meetings with world leaders, the | |
| travels that he takes, the travels that I take, such as the | |
| trip I made to the Middle East a few weeks ago, all of this for | |
| the purpose of representing our interest, all for the purpose | |
| of working with friends and allies, all for the purpose of | |
| dealing with former enemies, who perhaps, now are on the way to | |
| becoming friends. But what I do and what the President does and | |
| what other Cabinet officials do in this regard is nothing | |
| compared to what is done every single day by those wonderful | |
| men and women that I am privileged to be the leader of. That is | |
| why it is so important we keep in mind that people across the | |
| world, doing this work for us, are watching us, watching to see | |
| whether or not we will give them what they need. | |
| I am pleased that the President saw fit to give us this | |
| increase. I want to just touch on some of the significant items | |
| in the increased request that we had before you, and I think | |
| the details are adequately covered in my prepared statement. In | |
| the interest of time, and knowing that you have some other | |
| distinguished witnesses following me, I will just touch on the | |
| highlights and then get right into the questions and answers. | |
| Because we have such a good turnout, I want to make sure that | |
| everybody has an opportunity, Mr. Chairman, to ask questions. | |
| As you know, the account is broken into really two parts, | |
| the Foreign Operations appropriation and then the Commerce, | |
| State and Justice. As Mr. Spratt has noted, the Andean Regional | |
| Initiative, which follows on from Plan Colombia, is the largest | |
| single account and it is part of a larger account called | |
| International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, where we give | |
| additional money to the effort to cut off the supply of drugs | |
| that are coming in to this nation, and rather than just focus | |
| on Plan Colombia as we have for the last couple of years, we | |
| are calling this now the Andean Regional Initiative because we | |
| just don't want to move the problem to other countries in the | |
| Andean region. We understand that it is not just a matter of | |
| helicopters. We have to provide alternative sources of income, | |
| alternative crops, democracy, nation building, preparation of | |
| military and police forces to handle the kind of challenges | |
| they face in the Andean region. | |
| Another major item in the foreign operations appropriation | |
| is military assistance to help Israel and our European | |
| Partnership for Peace countries, the Philippines and Latin | |
| America, take care of some of their military assistance funding | |
| needs. Multidevelopment banks have been fully funded in 2002, | |
| scheduled payments to the multilateral development banks; child | |
| survival and diseases, especially with respect to HIV and AIDS, | |
| one of the great catastrophes on the world stage right now, | |
| especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Congress has been very | |
| generous in recent years. This budget thanks the Congress for | |
| that generosity and asks for a 10 percent increase in that kind | |
| of funding for HIV/AIDS and similar infectious diseases which | |
| are such a problem in sub-Saharan Africa, in other parts of the | |
| world and here in our own hemisphere, increasingly in the | |
| Caribbean. | |
| International assistance goes up. We want to increase | |
| operating expenses for USAID so they can do a better job of | |
| delivering this aid to nations around the world. We have our | |
| allocations for peacekeeping, development assistance; increases | |
| to meet the requirements of the Korean Energy Development | |
| Organization. Heavy fuel oil is part of the agreed framework | |
| with North Korea from 1994; increases in migration and refugee | |
| assistance and increases in the Peace Corps, which is | |
| celebrating its 40th year of dedicated service not only for the | |
| Nation but to the world. | |
| The major increases in the other part of our account, | |
| Commerce, State, Justice appropriation--first and foremost, I | |
| would like to highlight what we call diplomatic readiness, the | |
| human resources that are necessary for us to do our job. We are | |
| hiring 597 new Americans into the State Department, 360 of whom | |
| will deal with the highest priority staffing needs. We have a | |
| shortage in our Foreign Service ranks. We have to begin filling | |
| that shortage. In addition just to filling shortages, we want | |
| to create a float so that we have some flexibility; so people | |
| can go away to school without leaving a job; so there are | |
| enough people around to handle the crises and emergencies that | |
| come along from time to time without always having to rob Peter | |
| to pay Paul and vice versa. | |
| We are also going to hire 186 additional security | |
| professionals as part of our commitment to making sure that we | |
| are not only protecting all of our facilities against terrorist | |
| attacks but also intelligence penetrations. | |
| The biggest single item I would like to focus on in terms | |
| of money is information technology. We know that we have got to | |
| do a better job of getting the power of the information | |
| revolution down on to the desk of every single State Department | |
| employee anywhere in the world so that they have access to the | |
| Internet, so that they can have access to each other, and so | |
| that we can start linking this altogether and just increase the | |
| leverage, the power, that the Secretary of State has and all of | |
| my colleagues have in the building to reach out and work | |
| through our embassies, work through our ambassadors, in an | |
| increasingly empowered way. The world is so complex, with so | |
| many additional countries that need to be dealt with and tended | |
| to since the end of the Cold War, that we have got to use | |
| information and technology not to centralize power and | |
| authority but to decentralize power and authority; and you do | |
| that by having information technology systems that allow you to | |
| do so. | |
| So we are increasing our investment in both classified and | |
| unclassified information technology systems. | |
| There has been a great deal of interest in security for our | |
| people overseas, and you will see $1.3 billion in the overall | |
| blueprint for new secure embassies; increasing perimeter | |
| security to posts around the world; security readiness, | |
| including guards, including the kind of equipment you need, x- | |
| ray equipment and other surveillance devices to make sure that | |
| when we send our people out on these front lines we give them | |
| all the protection that is possible without, at the same time, | |
| denying them access to the people that we are sending them out | |
| to represent us to. | |
| Also finally, overseas infrastructure, $60 million to | |
| address critical infrastructure problems to include replacing | |
| obsolete equipment, aging motor vehicles and all the other | |
| mundane things that are required to make sure that we are doing | |
| our job correctly. | |
| Mr. Chairman, I believe that this budget is a responsible | |
| budget in light of all of the other priorities that the | |
| President had to consider as he was putting the budget | |
| together. It is my first shot at what I think the Department | |
| will need in the years ahead. I am very pleased that the | |
| President has understood that the need we have is real and | |
| great and he has confidence in our ability to use this money | |
| wisely. I hope I can convince the Members of Congress of that | |
| same commitment that I make to use this money wisely. | |
| This is a time of great opportunity in the world. It is | |
| also a time of challenge, a time of risk and danger. We will | |
| deal with those risks and those dangers, but we must never lose | |
| sight of the fact that it really is a time of opportunity where | |
| our value systems ascended, where Communism is gone as a | |
| functioning ideology, where fascism and Nazism have been left | |
| behind in the dust bin of history, where it is democracy and | |
| the free enterprise system that represents the model that | |
| works. It is the model that we stand behind. It is the model | |
| that we present to the rest of the world. We present it with | |
| humility. We present it as something that they should look and | |
| see that it is the road to wealth and success for their | |
| peoples. | |
| In order to carry that message, it is going to be the State | |
| Department, as much as the military or any other part of the | |
| National Government, that will carry that message effectively. | |
| In order to do it, we have to support our people with all they | |
| need to get the job done to take advantage of the | |
| opportunities, to minimize the risks and the dangers that are | |
| out there and to serve as that insurance policy you referred to | |
| earlier, Mr. Chairman. | |
| With that, I will stop and will be more than pleased to | |
| take your questions, sir. | |
| [The prepared statement of Secretary Powell follows:] | |
| Prepared Statement of Hon. Colin L. Powell, Secretary, U.S. Department | |
| of State | |
| Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am pleased to have this | |
| opportunity to testify before you for the first time as Secretary of | |
| State, in support of President Bush's budget request for FY 2002. | |
| I recall with fondness some of the hearings I used to have with | |
| this committee when I was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. | |
| I was particularly fond of the dollars of those days. I would love | |
| to have to deal with hundreds of billions of dollars once again. | |
| I must tell you, Mr. Chairman, that the resources challenge for the | |
| State Department has become such a serious one, such a major impediment | |
| to the conduct of America's foreign policy, that I view my | |
| responsibility to appear before you here today as one of the most | |
| important responsibilities I have as Secretary of State. | |
| I believe I have responsibilities as the ``CEO'' of the State | |
| Department, as well as responsibilities as the President's principal | |
| advisor on foreign policy. | |
| And it's my CEO hat that I want to put on first. But you will see | |
| that it is sometimes difficult to wear one hat at a time because what I | |
| do under my CEO hat impacts on what I do under my foreign policy hat. | |
| Mr. Chairman, in January at my confirmation hearing I told the | |
| members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that President Bush | |
| would be a leader who faithfully represents to the world the ideas of | |
| freedom and justice and open markets. | |
| The President has many ways he can do this, many different methods | |
| through which he can show the world the values of America and the | |
| prosperity and peace those values can generate. | |
| For example, the President meets with other heads of state here in | |
| Washington, as he will do with Prime Minister Mori of Japan next week, | |
| and he travels to summits around the world such as the G-8 summit | |
| coming up in July in Genoa and the APEC summit in October in Shanghai. | |
| And, as you know, I travel for him as well. I returned 2 weeks ago | |
| from visits to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and | |
| the West Bank, as well as to Brussels on my way home to participate in | |
| a meeting of the North Atlantic Council and to talk with some of my | |
| counterparts in Europe. | |
| Such trips by his Secretary of State are another of the methods the | |
| President has at his disposal to represent American values and | |
| interests in the councils of state around the world. | |
| But the most important method by which the President presents | |
| America to the world, the most important method by far, is through the | |
| thousands of people who labor away at such representation every day of | |
| the week in almost every country in the world. | |
| I am of course speaking of our front line troops in the State | |
| Department, as well as those here in America who support them. | |
| I am talking about the Foreign Service officers, the Civil Service | |
| employees, and the Foreign Service nationals who make up the Department | |
| of State. | |
| Theirs is the daily drudgery of foreign policy, punctuated by the | |
| thrill and excitement of diplomatic success ranging from the minor to | |
| the sublime, from the courteous handling of a visa application to the | |
| inking of a treaty curtailing nuclear weapons. | |
| Mr. Chairman, there are no finer people chipping away at tyranny, | |
| loosening the bonds of poverty, pushing the cause of freedom and peace, | |
| on the US government payroll. | |
| And it is a mystery to me how they have continued to do it over the | |
| years with so little resources. | |
| Some of you may have visited Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo where our GIs | |
| are stationed. It is a superb, first-class facility put in overnight to | |
| make sure that our troops are taken care of. But if you visited some of | |
| our dilapidated embassies and other facilities in the region, you would | |
| wonder whether the same government was taking care of them. The same | |
| bald eagle is clutching the arrows and the olive branch, but in many of | |
| State's buildings that American eagle is very ill-housed. | |
| Also at Camp Bondsteel there are excellent capabilities with | |
| respect to information technology, including the capability to send | |
| unclassified e-mails. In many of State's facilities there were no such | |
| capabilities. | |
| Now since the time that construction was begun on Camp Bondsteel, | |
| with the help of Congress and with the good work of former Secretary | |
| Albright and her dedicated people, we have made great strides in our | |
| unclassified information technology at State. | |
| My hope is that, in the first year of the Bush Administration, the | |
| Congress will work with us to continue this good progress we have made, | |
| and to see that our operations and our foreign affairs are put back in | |
| balance with everything else we do in the world. | |
| For example, now that we have made such strides in our unclassified | |
| information technology, we have to continue those strides by gaining | |
| broad-based Internet access. At the same time, we have to begin work to | |
| create classified local area network capabilities, to include | |
| classified e-mail and word-processing. | |
| Mr. Chairman, as you well know, some of our embassies in addition | |
| to lacking up-to-date information technology are not as secure as they | |
| should be--and so we have people who are not as secure as they should | |
| be. | |
| But again thanks to the House and Senate's attention to this | |
| matter, we are beginning to get a handle on it. | |
| I understand that when the FY 99 emergency supplemental was being | |
| put together, we did not have the sort of robust buildings program that | |
| was needed to meet security needs. We had to prove that we could ramp | |
| up to such a program and then manage it. | |
| Let me just say that in the 2\1/2\ years since the bombings in | |
| Kenya and Tanzania, we are well on the way to doing just that. | |
| We provided an immediate stand-up of facilities in Dar Es Salaam | |
| and Nairobi and within twelve months replaced each with more secure | |
| interim facilities that will be in place until the new replacement | |
| facilities are finished. | |
| We broke ground on those permanent facilities in August. | |
| Likewise, we just completed construction in Kampala, Uganda and our | |
| people have moved in just 15 months after construction began. | |
| We will also move into a new embassy in Doha, Qatar in early June | |
| of this year. | |
| Other new construction projects where we have broken ground include | |
| Zagreb, Istanbul, and Tunis. | |
| Ground-breaking for Abu Dhabi will occur this spring. | |
| In addition, we've funded over 1200 individual perimeter security | |
| upgrades with over 50 percent now completed. | |
| But we are still not moving quickly enough nor efficiently enough. | |
| And I want to work with you and the other Members of Congress to | |
| gain your confidence so that we can move faster and eliminate some of | |
| the barriers that cost money to overcome. | |
| In that regard, we are carefully studying construction costs. | |
| I know that we can do better in adapting the best practices of | |
| industry and smart engineering techniques and technologies to embassy | |
| construction. | |
| The hundred-foot set-back, for example, can sometimes be overcome | |
| by better and smarter construction. | |
| Blast protection remains the same but the dollar costs are | |
| significantly lower because acquisition of land is exorbitantly | |
| expensive. If we can provide the same degree of security through a | |
| better built wall that has only, say, a fifty-foot set-back, then | |
| that's what we are going to do. | |
| And we believe better overall management is also achievable so that | |
| construction delays don't eat up precious more dollars. | |
| Better overall management includes bringing on board an experienced | |
| operations executive to manage the Overseas Facilities Program, as | |
| recommended by the Overseas Presence Advisory Panel. It also includes | |
| realigning the Foreign Buildings Office from within the Bureau of | |
| Administration to a stand-alone organization reporting directly to the | |
| Undersecretary for Management--requiring, of course, consultation with | |
| and the support of the Congress. | |
| The combination of strong leadership, realignment of the function, | |
| and an industry panel to assist with identifying best practices from | |
| the private sector, along with implementation of other OPAP | |
| recommendations, will greatly improve the management of the overseas | |
| buildings program. | |
| On Monday at the State Department we swore in one of the Army's | |
| finest engineers, retired Major General Charles Williams, to head this | |
| effort. He is an expert at reducing costs while delivering high quality | |
| and I've no doubt he will offer us new ways to execute and to manage | |
| our embassy construction. | |
| As a result, we may be able to reduce that hundred-million-dollar | |
| price tag on new embassy construction. I am committed to working with | |
| the Congress on this issue. | |
| Mr. Chairman, in the past we have not in all cases done the best we | |
| could to see that our overseas personnel were as secure as they should | |
| be--but together, you and I can change that. Together, we can continue | |
| this very positive effort we have begun to pull the State Department | |
| into the 21st Century. | |
| And that is what we are after in the President's budget for Fiscal | |
| Year 2002--to continue this very positive forward momentum. | |
| The President's request of about $23.9 billion, a 5-percent | |
| increase over this year, will do just that. | |
| We are providing $1.3 billion, for example, toward our steadfast | |
| commitment to the safety of our men and women serving overseas. | |
| These dollars will allow us to continue to address our | |
| infrastructure needs including the construction of new, secure | |
| facilities and the continuing refurbishment of existing ones. | |
| These dollars also provide the means to improve security operations | |
| including the hiring of additional security officers who are essential | |
| to the prevention and deterrence of terrorist attacks against our | |
| embassies, such as those that occurred in Nairobi and in Dar Es Salaam. | |
| We will not be deterred by such attacks from doing our job in the | |
| world--but we will take measures to protect our people. | |
| The President's budget also provides $270 million for modernizing | |
| and, in some cases, acquiring for the first time the required | |
| information technology for the conduct of foreign affairs. | |
| These dollars will allow us to modernize our secure local area | |
| network capability, including e-mail and word-processing. Likewise, | |
| they will allow us open access channels to the Internet so that our | |
| people can take full advantage of this enormously important new means | |
| of communication and research. This access will also increase | |
| communications and information sharing within the foreign affairs | |
| community. | |
| Mr. Chairman, this development alone has the potential to | |
| revolutionize the way we do business. | |
| Take for example the great products turned out by the Foreign | |
| Broadcast Information Service, or ``FBIS'' as we call it. | |
| No longer will an ambassador or political or economic officer in | |
| one of our embassies have to wait for the bound copies to arrive by | |
| courier or mail at his desk or office, often delaying the hottest, most | |
| recent news. | |
| Switching on the computer, accessing the Internet, and clicking on | |
| the FBIS account puts the latest news from in-country and regional | |
| newspapers and periodicals at your fingertips almost instantly. | |
| Similarly, clicking onto your e-mail account allows you to query | |
| any subject matter expert in the system as swiftly and securely as | |
| modern technology permits. | |
| When I arrived in the Transition Office at State in December of | |
| last year, the first thing I put on the table behind my desk was my | |
| computer with access to my e-mail account. | |
| I didn't want to be out of touch for an instant. | |
| And the Department of State doesn't want to be out of touch either. | |
| So our long-term investment strategy and ongoing acquisition of new | |
| technology will continue to address the many information needs of our | |
| foreign policy professionals. | |
| And we need to reinvigorate our Foreign Service--an arm of our | |
| professional public service apparatus every bit as important as the | |
| Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, or Coast Guard. | |
| To do this, we need to hire more of America's brightest and most | |
| talented young people who are committed to service. | |
| And we will only be successful if we change how we recruit, assess, | |
| and hire Foreign Service Officers. And we are doing that. We also need | |
| to be smarter about how we market the State Department if we are to win | |
| the fight for talent. | |
| Funding alone will not solve our human resource challenges. We must | |
| create a place of work that can compete with our higher paying private | |
| sector competitors for the very best young people America has to offer. | |
| And I assure you we will, by providing a career that rewards | |
| innovation, recognizes achievement, and demands accountability and | |
| excellence. With your help we will win the fight for talent and that | |
| victory will be reflected every day in America's foreign policy. | |
| The President's budget provides money to hire more than 350 new | |
| Foreign Service Officers so we can establish a training float--a group | |
| of FSOs that will begin to relieve some of the terrible pressures put | |
| on the conduct of America's foreign policy by the significant shortage | |
| of FSOs we are currently experiencing. | |
| Moreover, the budget provides $126 million to fund American and | |
| Foreign Service national pay raises, cost of living adjustments and | |
| offsets to domestic and overseas inflation. | |
| All of these actions will help us reinvigorate our Foreign Service. | |
| Mr. Chairman, there are other areas of the President's budget that | |
| I want to highlight in addition to embassy security, construction and | |
| refurbishment; information technology; and hiring of new people for the | |
| Foreign Service. | |
| These programs require a new culture within our foreign affairs | |
| apparatus--a new public-private partnership that mobilizes the very | |
| best institutions in our country ranging from universities, to private | |
| voluntary organizations, to foundations, to the for-profit private | |
| sector companies. | |
| It requires reorienting our economic assistance to ensure that we | |
| can mobilize the expertise of others outside the government, that we | |
| can leverage our resources, and that we can integrate the efforts of | |
| those working in various disciplines such as global health. | |
| For those of us in the foreign policy community we see our role as | |
| agents of change. We cannot do it all--but with the assistance of these | |
| institutions we can further US foreign policy interests in promoting | |
| economic growth and agricultural development, global health, and | |
| conflict prevention. | |
| These are the program areas that must be funded to advance | |
| America's foreign policy interests overseas. These are programs aimed | |
| at restoring peace, building democracy and civil societies, | |
| safeguarding human rights, tackling non-proliferation and counter- | |
| terrorism challenges, addressing global health and environment issues, | |
| responding to disasters, and promoting economic reform. | |
| For example, we plan to include approximately $730 million in the | |
| budget to expand counterdrug, alternative development, and government | |
| reform programs in the Andean region. | |
| The budget includes an additional $60 million for military | |
| assistance to Israel to help meet cash flow needs for procurement of | |
| U.S. defense systems, and to demonstrate our solid commitment to | |
| Israel's security. | |
| With $1.4 billion, the budget fully funds all FY2002 scheduled | |
| payments to the Multilateral Development Banks and the U.S. commitment | |
| to the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Debt-Reduction Initiative. | |
| The budget increases funding for Migration and Refugee Assistance-- | |
| a total of $715 million--to give crucial and life-sustaining support to | |
| refugees and victims of conflict throughout the world. | |
| The budget reflects the Bush administration's leadership in | |
| promoting the protection of human rights, for example, in combating | |
| impunity for crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone. | |
| The budget increases resources for combating global HIV/AIDS and | |
| trafficking in women and children, and for basic education for | |
| children. All in all, we will increase funding for these programs by | |
| about 10 percent. | |
| The President's budget for FY2002 also provides $844 million to | |
| support UN peacekeeping operations around the world, such as those in | |
| Bosnia and in Kosovo. It also includes $150 million in voluntary | |
| peacekeeping to support ongoing operations, including efforts to bring | |
| peace and stability to key areas on the African continent. | |
| The budget also supports political and economic transitions in | |
| Africa, with emphasis on those countries, such as Nigeria and South | |
| Africa, that have a direct bearing on our national security and on | |
| those countries that have demonstrated progress in economic reform and | |
| in building democracy. | |
| Building democracy and civil societies remains a top priority of | |
| this administration, so our budget also supports short- and long-term | |
| programs to support democratic elements in countries where alternative | |
| voices are silenced. Toward this end, the budget increases funding for | |
| U.S. international broadcasting to $470 million. These funds will | |
| support the free flow of information by providing accurate information | |
| on world and local events to audiences abroad. | |
| We have devoted $40 million to sustain our efforts to remove | |
| landmines in former war-ravaged countries--landmines that kill and maim | |
| children and innocent civilians. | |
| With $247 million, the budget supports our efforts to reduce risks | |
| posed by international terrorism and to halt the spread of weapons of | |
| mass destruction by supporting stronger international safeguards on | |
| civilian nuclear activity and by helping other countries to improve | |
| their controls on exports of potentially dangerous technology. | |
| The budget includes $275 million to provide increased funding for | |
| the Peace Corps, another group of bright and talented individuals | |
| committed to service. The Peace Corps has more than 7000 currently | |
| serving volunteers addressing a variety of problems in the areas of | |
| agriculture, education, the environment, small business, and health | |
| matters. | |
| Mr. Chairman, before I conclude my prepared statement, let me call | |
| your attention to several areas upon which I want to place special | |
| emphasis. | |
| In addition to what I have already highlighted with respect to the | |
| money for the Andean region, you know that much of that money--some | |
| $400 million overall--is directed at Colombia. | |
| We are asking for money to continue and expand programs begun with | |
| the $1.3 billion emergency supplemental in FY 2000. | |
| Colombia is the source or transit point of 90 percent of the | |
| cocaine and over 50 percent of the heroin that arrives in America. | |
| Those percentages are increasing, by the way. | |
| Neighboring countries, such as Bolivia and Peru, have conducted | |
| effective coca eradication programs, but maintaining their successes | |
| will require vigilance and U.S. assistance. Therefore, we are | |
| requesting approximately $100 million for Bolivia and approximately | |
| $155 million for Peru, to support those countries' requirements for | |
| institution-building, alternative development, and interdiction. | |
| The Bush administration believes strongly that any successful | |
| counterdrug strategy in the region must include funding to bring | |
| greater economic and political stability to the region and a peaceful | |
| resolution to Colombia's internal conflict. | |
| We must capitalize on the ground work of programs funded thus far, | |
| including the expansion of Andean eradication and interdiction | |
| programs, sustained alternative development programs, and continued | |
| attention to justice and government reform initiatives. | |
| In addition, the President's budget includes approximately $75 | |
| million for Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, and Panama, to strengthen their | |
| efforts to control drug production and the drug trade. Our efforts must | |
| be regional in scope if they are to be successful. | |
| Mr. Chairman, I also want to emphasize our efforts to de-layer the | |
| bureaucracy at State to promote a more effective and efficient | |
| organization for the conduct of our foreign policy. | |
| We have begun an initiative to empower line officers--the true | |
| experts in most areas--and use their expertise to streamline decision- | |
| making and increase accountability. | |
| The current organization sometimes complicates lines of authority | |
| within the Department and hinders the development and presentation of a | |
| coherent foreign policy, and thus mars its effectiveness. So I want to | |
| carve out needless and even hurtful pieces of the current organization. | |
| I won't do it unless I am certain it is necessary, and when I do it I | |
| will look for the support of the Congress. | |
| I feel very strongly about this effort. Throughout the last 4 years | |
| I have seen up close and personal how American business has streamlined | |
| itself. This streamlining is sometimes ruthless; it is sometimes hard; | |
| it is almost always necessary. We need to do the same thing at the | |
| State Department. | |
| Mr. Chairman, consistent with the effort to reduce subsidies that | |
| primarily benefit corporations rather than individuals, our budget for | |
| international affairs will include savings in credit subsidy funding | |
| for the Export-Import Bank. | |
| As you know, the Export-Import Bank provides export credits, in the | |
| forms of direct loans or loan guarantees, to U.S. exporters who meet | |
| basic eligibility requirements and who request the Bank's help. | |
| The President's budget proposes savings of about 25 per cent in the | |
| Bank's credit subsidy requirements through policy changes that focus | |
| the Bank on U.S. exporters who truly cannot access private financing, | |
| as well as through lower estimates of international risk for 2002. | |
| These changes could include a combination of increased risk-sharing | |
| with the private sector, higher user fees, and more stringent value- | |
| added tests. | |
| These efforts at redirection anticipate that the role of the | |
| Export-Import Bank will become more focused on correcting market | |
| imperfections as the private sector's ability to bear emerging market | |
| risks becomes larger, more sophisticated, and more efficient. | |
| Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I believe we have an | |
| historic opportunity with this budget to continue--and even to speed up | |
| a little--the refurbishment of our foreign policy organization and, | |
| ultimately, of our foreign policy itself. | |
| I believe this is as it should be for what we are doing, finally, | |
| is redressing the imbalance that resulted from the long duration--and | |
| necessary diversion of funds--of the Cold War. | |
| For over half a century we found it absolutely imperative that we | |
| look to our participation in that titanic struggle for ideological | |
| leadership in the world as the first and foremost requirement of our | |
| foreign policy and our national security. | |
| Now, the Cold War is over. Now, as all of you have recognized, we | |
| are involved in spreading the fruits of our ideological triumph in that | |
| war. Now, we have need of a more sophisticated, a more efficient, a | |
| more effective foreign policy. | |
| Now is the time to provide to the principal practitioners of that | |
| foreign policy the resources they need to conduct it. | |
| Thank you, and now I welcome your questions. | |
| Chairman Nussle. Thank you so much. Let me just report to | |
| members, first of all, that the Secretary has about another | |
| hour, as I understand it--is that correct?--to spend with us | |
| today. So I will lead by example and what I would just suggest | |
| to members is that they maybe ask one question so that as many | |
| questions as can be asked by members is possible. As I say, I | |
| will lead by example, Mr. Secretary. | |
| The Washington Post recently touted this budget for the | |
| State Department as a substantial funding increase, which is | |
| interesting in the context of what Mr. Spratt was suggesting | |
| earlier, and certainly historical context aside, this is | |
| substantial over what we have seen over the last number of | |
| years. The President's budget emphasized the need to improve | |
| embassy security, and as I understand it includes $1.3 billion | |
| to address infrastructure needs, including construction and | |
| securing facilities, improving security operations, new | |
| security officers, to prevent and deter terrorist attacks. I | |
| believe the blueprint goes on to say, and rightfully so, that | |
| our continued engagement and leadership in the world will not | |
| be diminished by the actions of terrorists, and that, on the | |
| contrary, it only strengthens our resolve to advance our values | |
| and U.S. interests throughout the world. | |
| What are the estimated costs for overseas posts to bring | |
| them into compliance with the security needs that you believe | |
| are so important and we all believe are so important to keep | |
| our men and women safe that are on the front lines of providing | |
| our diplomacy? | |
| Secretary Powell. I don't know that I have a total number I | |
| can give you to bring us up to the highest standards that every | |
| embassy and other facility, to include USAID facilities around | |
| the world, but it would be in the tens of billions. | |
| Embassies are expensive to construct. We are using American | |
| contractors and American specifications. The security | |
| requirements not only to prevent intelligence penetration but | |
| also physical security requirements add to that cost. | |
| I am absolutely convinced that we have to get the best | |
| professional management of this FBO, Foreign Buildings Office | |
| Program, as we call it. In that regard, I have hired and | |
| brought on board this week a retired Army officer, Major | |
| General Chuck Williams, Corps of Engineers, who has great | |
| experience both in government and in the private sector in | |
| managing this kind of large construction program worldwide. He | |
| built Fort Drum, New York. He built the Dulles Greenway, the | |
| first private toll road in 150 years in the United States. He | |
| replaced all the roofs in the District of Columbia school | |
| system a few years ago, and he has enormous experience in | |
| handling this kind of account. | |
| He has come in and he will be reporting directly to the | |
| Under Secretary of Management. We have gotten him out from | |
| within the bureaucracy, and he is going to get on top of that | |
| kind of question you just raised. | |
| Are we doing sensible things or do we have too much | |
| security piled on our construction programs? Are we getting to | |
| the point where we are so secure we don't have the kind of | |
| access we need? Are we overspending to get that added increment | |
| of security whereas with a little more sensible approach we | |
| could get enough security at a considerably lower expense? | |
| So all of these things will be taken into consideration. | |
| But the simple answer to your question is, it is in the tens of | |
| billions of dollars. | |
| Chairman Nussle. I would ask unanimous consent that all | |
| members have 7 legislative days to provide questions in writing | |
| as well to the Secretary. | |
| With that, Mr. Spratt. | |
| Mr. Spratt. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for your testimony. | |
| And just quickly, if you wanted to maintain the real level of | |
| spending in your Department at this year's level out through | |
| the next 5 years and fund major initiatives like the Andean | |
| Initiative without having to take it out of your hide, offset | |
| it, roughly on the back of the envelope what do you need in the | |
| outyears over and above what, we call it the FYDP, provides? | |
| Secretary Powell. If it was an unconstrained environment we | |
| were living in and if I could just have my wish list met, all | |
| of my dreams realized--I am putting every possible disclaimer I | |
| can on this statement. I do not wish to be hauled before my | |
| masters before sundown. I think it would not be hard to make a | |
| case that this budget should be close to your historical | |
| histogram or higher in order to do the kind of job that I think | |
| we are going to have to do in the 21st century; closer to that | |
| real dollar value of $26 billion or higher. | |
| I think a case can be made. It is a question of how much of | |
| the taxpayer dollars given to us by your constituents in that | |
| small town in South Carolina are they willing to give for what | |
| are essentially overseas expenditures. But those overseas | |
| expenditures are not just off somewhere that have no effect on | |
| us. Increasingly, what we do overseas with trade, with the kind | |
| of information and technology explosion we have seen, affects | |
| us back here at home. We are no longer isolated. They are no | |
| longer isolated. When we are not doing what we can to solve, | |
| for example, the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa, it will affect us | |
| in due course. | |
| So all of these things are connected now, and I think that | |
| one responsibility I have, and I submit all of us in this room | |
| have, is to take that case to your constituents around the | |
| country that foreign policy is important. It is no longer | |
| foreign. It is part of the integrated world that we have become | |
| a part of. | |
| South Carolina is a great example. Some of the factories | |
| that you have there we wouldn't have dreamed about a few years | |
| ago, Mr. Chairman, and it has benefited the people of South | |
| Carolina. That is the kind of world we are in. | |
| Mr. Spratt. One short, brief, quick follow-up. The Andean | |
| Initiative is a major increment to your budget for the next | |
| year. How much longer do you see that requirement being imposed | |
| on your budget? Is it likely to be a funding requirement for | |
| the next 5 years? | |
| Secretary Powell. I assume it will be a funding requirement | |
| for a number of years into the future. I can't give you how | |
| many years, but once you start on a program like this, if there | |
| is still a need for the program you can't abandon it midstream. | |
| So I think we have to anticipate that the Andean Regional | |
| program in some form will continue into those outyears. | |
| Mr. Spratt. Thank you very much. | |
| Chairman Nussle. Mr. Thornberry. | |
| Mr. Thornberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Secretary Powell. Hello, Congressman. | |
| Mr. Thornberry. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. I | |
| don't think there is any question but that we have neglected | |
| the physical infrastructure associated with our diplomacy, | |
| including buildings and communication and security and probably | |
| salaries. I think there is also no question that diplomacy is | |
| going to be more important than ever in the future, and the | |
| folks coming after you have some things to say about what that | |
| world of the future looks like. | |
| I also believe that we have neglected the organizational | |
| structures in the State Department and, frankly, in other parts | |
| of the government, and we have probably neglected the | |
| intellectual work to think about how we need to best advance | |
| U.S. security interests in the future. Sometimes in this | |
| committee we talk about how we have to modernize Medicare to | |
| keep up with the changes in health care since 1965. It seems to | |
| me we have to modernize our national security structures, our | |
| diplomatic efforts, to keep up with the way that the world is | |
| changing in a lot of ways. | |
| I want to ask you about reform. You have made some changes | |
| already. The Hart-Rudman Commission had some specific | |
| recommendations at the headquarters level, but from my brief | |
| time in the State Department as one of those folks sitting | |
| behind Secretary Schultz I came to believe that we have to | |
| review things all the way down to the embassy level; what kind | |
| of folks we need in each embassy. I also think that your strong | |
| advocacy for more resources will need to go hand-in-hand with | |
| reform. | |
| So can you tell us a little bit about what you have in mind | |
| for reforms to make sure that we modernize in the way we need | |
| to? | |
| Secretary Powell. I agree with you totally, Congressman. | |
| The first thing I wanted to do when I took over the State | |
| Department was start leading it before I started reorganizing | |
| it. There is an old Army general order, take charge of this | |
| post and all government property in view. Well, we are in the | |
| process of doing that with a new team, and taking assessment of | |
| the Department, the strengths of the Department, the weaknesses | |
| of the Department. And what I intend to do is to use all the | |
| many studies that I found waiting for me when I walked into the | |
| Department, whether it was Senator Rudman's fine work or the | |
| Carlucci report, I even discovered a report that I had | |
| participated in 2 years ago. Shocking, you suddenly have to | |
| execute one of your own reports and the Caden report. | |
| I have no shortage of analyses and reports. My judgment is | |
| that I ought to take these issues on a one-by-one basis and | |
| solve them. So we are working on Foreign Buildings Office | |
| Program. I have just announced a new director general of the | |
| Foreign Service, Ruth Davis, a distinguished ambassador. Her | |
| charge is to be a change agent in the way we access people into | |
| the Foreign Service; how do we get them in; why does it take 27 | |
| months to recruit somebody from the day they say I want to join | |
| the Foreign Service until they get into the Foreign Service? We | |
| can speed that up. What training are we giving to our people | |
| that are going out to embassies? | |
| I asked Ambassador Felix Rohatyn, just back from Paris, to | |
| come sit with me and tell me about the exciting program that he | |
| started in France to have these little one-person mini- | |
| embassies out in cities all across France, where you have that | |
| American presence, not with a lot of barriers but a storefront | |
| operation; a storefront operation that can do work. | |
| I want to have a better relationship with Congress. I am | |
| desperately trying to find room up in Capitol Hill now so I can | |
| put a congressional liaison presence on Capitol Hill. We can | |
| take care of all of your consular constituent needs, and I can | |
| have people up here who can help the Congress understand what | |
| we are trying to do. | |
| I am going to be bringing people into the public diplomacy | |
| function of the Department who are going to change from just | |
| selling us in the old USIA way to really branding foreign | |
| policy, branding the Department, marketing the Department, | |
| marketing American values to the world and not just putting out | |
| pamphlets. | |
| So I have a number of initiatives and I am looking at, for | |
| example, how to get rid of layers without hitting myself in the | |
| head. In some of our bureaus, I think there are too many layers | |
| and we are going to experiment with which layers should go. | |
| I always credit people who came before me as being as smart | |
| as I am, in fact many most cases quite a bit of smarter. So I | |
| want to know why they did what they did before I start pulling | |
| everything up by the roots. But we are going to pull everything | |
| up by the roots in due course, and if it makes sense we will | |
| plant it back in the ground. If it doesn't make sense, we will | |
| get rid of it. | |
| I believe I have an obligation that was given to me by the | |
| President and has been made clear by the Congress to look at | |
| the Department organizationally, functionally and also from the | |
| standpoint of training new leaders to run the Department, and I | |
| take very much to heart what you have said. | |
| Mr. Thornberry. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Sununu [presiding]. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Secretary, I am tempted to note that you will have to | |
| negotiate with Vice President Cheney for office space on the | |
| Hill, but instead I will yield to the gentleman from Texas, Mr. | |
| Bentsen. | |
| Secretary Powell. Oh, dear. | |
| Mr. Bentsen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Secretary, very nice to have you here today. I will try | |
| to adhere to the chairman's request of one question. When we | |
| have someone of your stature and your portfolio before us, it | |
| leads a lot of us, particularly who don't sit on your regular | |
| authorizing committees, to come up with a lot of questions. | |
| I do want to make a couple of points and then I have a | |
| question for you. And I want to echo what Mr. Spratt said. As | |
| important as your portfolio is, I think you understand how | |
| politically unpalatable it is to most of our constituents, but | |
| I think you will find that most Members of the House believe | |
| what you do and what your Department does is terribly | |
| important, and as you say, it directly influences our | |
| districts. | |
| I do want to say that I am concerned with the Plan | |
| Colombia. I had problems with it last year. Ultimately we | |
| passed it in the budget, but I think the killing of two labor | |
| leaders this week in Colombia raises some questions and I hope | |
| your Department will look into that. | |
| I am curious, and I will submit questions for the record, | |
| of exactly what your budget's commitment is to the World Bank | |
| AIDS Trust Fund that the Congress established last year, and as | |
| I read in the HIPIC debt forgiveness the proposal of using | |
| unobligated funds to continue that on track, and I will submit | |
| a question for the record on that. | |
| [The information referred to follows:] | |
| Supplemental Questions Submitted to Secretary Powell by Congressman | |
| Bentsen | |
| Question No. 1. Debt forgiveness. In 1999, Congress authorized U.S. | |
| participation in five new Multilateral Development Bank (MDB) | |
| Replenishment Agreements. In 2000, we approved a $600 million U.S. | |
| contribution to the World Bank's program to help forgive debt owed by | |
| Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) and gave permission for the | |
| International Monetary Fund (IMF) to use profits from prior gold sales | |
| for the HIPC program. | |
| What is this Administration's commitment to the HIPC program? Do | |
| you plan to expand the U.S. participation in HIPC? | |
| Editor's note: No response to question No. 1 was received at presstime. | |
| Question No. 2. Plan Columbia. Late on Monday, March 12, 2001, | |
| gunmen shot, execution-style, two union leaders for the U.S. coal | |
| mining firm Drummond Ltd. in northern Colombia. The victims were the | |
| president and vice president of Drummond's union. Since 1995, 1,522 | |
| labor leaders have been killed in Colombia, mostly by paramilitary | |
| groups, according to figures by the country's leading labor | |
| organization, the Unified Labor Confederation (CUT). In 2000 alone, 116 | |
| labor leaders were killed in Colombia. The Unified Labor Confederation | |
| (CUT) asserts that paramilitary groups are primarily responsible for | |
| the killed 35,000 civilians in the last decade. | |
| Late last year, we in Congress approved the ``Plan Columbia'' aid | |
| package most of which is in the form of military aid in furtherance of | |
| efforts to disrupt cocaine production. | |
| Given the sustained level of foreign aid we provide to Colombia, | |
| what safeguards are in place to ensure that moneys are not channeled | |
| through the Columbian army to the paramilitary death squads operating | |
| in rural areas? | |
| Answer No. 2: Section 5634 of the Foreign Operations, Export Financing | |
| and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2001 (the ``Leahy Amendment'') | |
| prohibits the provision of assistance using funds appropriated under | |
| that act to any unit of a foreign country's security force if the | |
| Secretary of State has credible evidence that such unit has committed | |
| gross violations of human rights, unless the Secretary determines that | |
| the government of the country is taking effective measures to bring the | |
| responsible members of the security force unit to justice. Standing | |
| procedures are in place to ensure that counter narcotics assistance is | |
| not provided to units of Columbian security forces against whom there | |
| is credible evidence of gross violations of human rights. | |
| Columbia has a comprehensive system of controls that are designed | |
| to keep resources from being misused. The system includes the | |
| Comptroller General empowered to conduct audits, an Attorney General | |
| (Procurador) who serves as a government-wide inspector general, who can | |
| remove government officials from office, and a powerful and independent | |
| prosecutor (Fiscal). These institutions have offices at both the | |
| national and local levels. In addition, for police and military | |
| assistance items, USG agencies maintain extensive ``end use | |
| monitoring'' to prevent diversion and transferred resources. | |
| The Department believes that the mechanisms in place in connection | |
| with the Leahy Amendment and the provisions of the Columbian law | |
| provide an effective safeguard against U.S. assistance being provided | |
| to units against whom there are credible allegations of gross human | |
| rights violations. In addition, we believe these provisions have served | |
| as an incentive for the Columbian Government and military to deal with | |
| problems in security force units against which there have been credible | |
| allegations to gross human rights violations. The Department remains | |
| committed, as a matter of highest priority, to working with the | |
| Government of Columbia's human rights record. | |
| Question No. 3. AIDS. In recent years, both the Administration and | |
| Congress have devoted growing amounts to programs to control HIV/AIDS. | |
| Last year's Foreign Operations Appropriations bill (P.L. 106-429), | |
| appropriated $300 million for HIV/AIDS, $125 million for other | |
| infectious diseases, and $30 million for vulnerable children. The law | |
| also directs USAID to allocate up to $30 million for an international | |
| AIDS initiative and fund. At the same time, warfare and political | |
| unrest continue to undermine vaccination efforts and disease control in | |
| Africa. I am sure you would agree that infectious diseases, such as | |
| AIDS, pose as a national security threat. | |
| That being said, what priority will the Department of State, under | |
| your command, place on international health spending? More | |
| specifically, what is your Agency's strategy, with respect to the | |
| African AIDS crisis? | |
| Answer No. 3: HIV/AIDS in Africa, in particular, and international | |
| health overall is one of the Department's highest priorities. We are | |
| working through our diplomats at our embassies overseas, and in our | |
| bilateral assistance programs through USAID, working with the Centers | |
| for Disease Control and Prevention, DOD and others to enhance capacity | |
| around the world to address the immediate challenges posed by HIV/AIDS, | |
| malaria and tuberculosis, in part through U.S. support for Global AIDS | |
| and Health Fund. In addition to our seed contribution of $200 million, | |
| the U.S. is the leader in providing international assistance for HIV/ | |
| AIDS (providing $466 million), TB and malaria, ($110 million) last year | |
| alone. The President has proposed increases to those amounts for FY 02 | |
| bringing the HIV/AIDS bilateral assistance levels to $480 million. | |
| The bulk of this assistance will be available to Africa as the | |
| epicenter of the epidemic. Our efforts under the expanded response | |
| initiative focus on country representation in both high and low | |
| prevalence countries, to continue intensified efforts to better control | |
| the disease and get ahead of its progression. We are also focusing on | |
| new areas with increased efforts in the area of orphans, care and | |
| treatment of those infected and increasing access to interventions that | |
| reduce mother-to-child HIV transmission. There will also be a major | |
| emphasis on building critical healthcare infrastructure. Simultaneously | |
| we are looming to expand our efforts in other regions of concern, such | |
| as Asia and the Caribbean, where early interventions may help to thwart | |
| its spread. | |
| Question No. 4. EXIMBANK. As you likely know, the Export-Import | |
| Bank (EXIMBANK) is expected to be cut by nearly 25 percent under the | |
| President's budget. Congress created the EXIMBANK to promote trade with | |
| foreign nations by providing financing mechanism for U.S. businesses | |
| seeking to do business overseas. The EXIMBANK provides funding for | |
| loans, guarantees, insurance, and aid payments to foreign nations for | |
| the purchase of American-made products. In its 65 years of services, | |
| the EXIMBANK has helped to support more than $400 billion of U.S. | |
| exports worldwide. For Fiscal Year 2000, the EXIMBANK issued new loan | |
| authorizations of $12.6 billion and $15.5 billion in insurance, and was | |
| profitable for the fourth time in last 5 years. | |
| In the past decade the U.S. trade deficit has exploded from $29.5 | |
| billion in 1991 to a forecasted $450 billion in 2000. In absolute | |
| terms, the current figure is the largest trade deficit in U.S. history. | |
| I am sure we are in agreement that if we are to continue to create jobs | |
| in America, we must find new markets overseas for U.S. products. | |
| What resources does the Department of State have to address | |
| opportunities for trade, in light of the expected scaled back operation | |
| of the EXIMBANK? | |
| Answer No. 4: The Department has neither the financial resources nor | |
| the expertise needed to replace Ex-Im's export financing role. | |
| Following the Secretary of State's mandate, the Department works | |
| closely with the private sector to support its export and project | |
| finance needs through policy and project advocacy. We work in | |
| partnership with other agencies, such as Commerce, on project advocacy. | |
| We also work with Treasury to reduce subsidies and therefore budget | |
| requirements to promote a level playing field in international lending | |
| and export credit agency practices, especially related to tied aid. | |
| Our primary resource is our people-our economic and commercial | |
| officers at home and overseas-who provide advice on the best way to | |
| open markets, deal with regulatory issues, submit contract tenders for | |
| consideration, or handle investment-related problems. | |
| State Department officers from the Ambassador on down vigorously | |
| support the trade promotion activities of the US Foreign Commercial | |
| Service (FCS) around the world. In addition, State officers play an | |
| even more dynamic role in the nearly 100 Embassies and Consulates where | |
| State leads both the economic and commercial functions. | |
| Non-FCS posts may also submit competitive proposals to the | |
| Department for support from the State Department's Business | |
| Facilitation Incentive Fund (BFIF). The BFIF Program, an outgrowth of | |
| the 1993 ``Change at State'' report, provides awards of $2,000 to | |
| $15,000 for commercial training, support for improving the investment | |
| climate, and export promotion projects. The BFIF program was funded at | |
| the $4000,000 level in FY 00 and again in FY 01. | |
| Question No. 5. Terrorism. The bombings in 1998 of embassies in | |
| Kenya and Tanzania put us all on notice that American facilities abroad | |
| are targets for terrorism. In the wake of these incidents, I understand | |
| that the State Department has committed itself to improving the | |
| security of our overseas facilities. | |
| Can you speak generally about the progress of those efforts? | |
| What, in the way of resources, do you still need to ensure that | |
| overseas facilities where dedicate members of the Foreign Service and | |
| the U.S. Military live and work are less vulnerable to terrorism? | |
| I understand that four individuals are currently on trial for their | |
| roles in the Africa bombings. To your knowledge, what were the | |
| administrative and technical hurdles that had to be overcome to bring | |
| these alleged terrorists to justice? | |
| From your vantage point, does the State Department have adequate | |
| resources under the President's Budget to fund this counter-terrorism | |
| effort? I ask not only asking as a member of this Committee but as | |
| someone who has long been concerned about the lack of available | |
| remedies for American who are the victims of terrorism abroad. I would | |
| also note that I am planning to propose legislation that would give you | |
| the power to designate an existing Assistant Secretary of State to | |
| monitor the Federal Government's efforts to bring justice to U.S. | |
| victims of international terrorism. | |
| Answer No. 5: The key objectives of the Emergency Security | |
| Appropriation (ESA) were to quickly improve the security of our | |
| threatened consulates and embassies and to begin the longer-term | |
| objective of replacing those facilities that cannot be made adequately | |
| secure. Resources are still needed for the following: | |
| <bullet> The Worldwide Security Upgrade program, i.e., a | |
| coordinated effort by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and Overseas | |
| Buildings Operations to support our multi-year plan for addressing | |
| perimeter security goals; | |
| <bullet> A major capital construction effort given the security | |
| deficiencies at many posts including the fact that over 80 percent of | |
| buildings overseas do not meet the 100' setback requirement; | |
| <bullet> Maintenance of extensive security enhancements already | |
| achieved; and, | |
| <bullet> Adequate additional space for new equipment provided under | |
| the ESA, such as x-ray machines and bomb detectors. | |
| I am not aware of any administrative or technical hurdles. They | |
| were brought to the U.S. Federal Court in New United States for trial | |
| as a result of an intensive investigation, and convicted in May. | |
| Our resources are being evaluated in light of the terrorist attacks | |
| this year, including kidnappings and acts of terrorism. The | |
| difficulties in dealing with terrorism are not always U.S. Government | |
| resources, but he complexities of obtaining timely intelligence and | |
| working with governments overseas. It also is important to continue to | |
| take a coordinated and integrated approach to countering terrorism. The | |
| Department of State already has a Coordinator for Counterterrorism who | |
| is not only my right hand man in developing and implementing | |
| counterterrorim policies but also in dealing with specific incidents, | |
| among them attacks on Americans overseas. The Coordinator's Office also | |
| provides to Congress an annual report, ``Patterns of Global | |
| Terrorism,'' which among other things, discusses killed or injured in | |
| terrorist attacks overseas. | |
| Secretary Powell. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Bentsen. I do want to ask you, though, about an issue | |
| that is, in part, in your portfolio and part in the Treasury | |
| Department's, but since you are here today I will ask you about | |
| this. Either later this week or next week, the Prime Minister | |
| of Japan will be visiting the President. Granted that he is a | |
| lame duck prime minister but nonetheless he is in the position | |
| right now. | |
| With the continued demise of the Japanese economy, which | |
| has been in recession or depression for almost the last 10 | |
| years, and constantly hearing that it may come out but it still | |
| has not, now appears to be getting to very much a near | |
| deflationary situation, it would appear to me that this | |
| situation may well be worse than the 1998 Asian currency | |
| crisis. At that point in time, the Japanese economy was showing | |
| some strength. The United States economy, as you know, was | |
| extremely strong and we were able, between the two of us, to | |
| pull the rest of the Asian economies out of the tank, save for | |
| Indonesia which, as you know, has serious structural problems | |
| and political problems. | |
| But we have a situation where the Japanese economy is | |
| getting worse, just as South Korea has come back, just as | |
| Malaysia and Thailand, which are still somewhat developing | |
| economies but as they have made progress, and the Chinese | |
| economy has held somewhat stable. I am a little concerned with | |
| the new administration's approach, which is your prerogative, | |
| of this somewhat laissez-faire approach, as opposed to the | |
| previous administration, to stand back and allow things just to | |
| fall into place. | |
| While there are certainly limits as to what the United | |
| States can do to influence any other nation, including an ally | |
| like Japan, I would hope that this administration doesn't stand | |
| back and allow the Japanese economy to fall off the cliff | |
| assuming that as the cycle continues it will come back, | |
| because, as you well know, not only do we have significant | |
| security interests in that region of the world but we have | |
| significant monetary interests. Something along the line of 38 | |
| to 40 percent of our export market is in that part of the | |
| world. | |
| As the United States experiences its own slow-down, as | |
| evidenced--and the impact evidenced in the markets and the | |
| fluctuation that has occurred there, I would certainly hope | |
| that when the President meets with the Prime Minister and when | |
| you are meeting with your counterparts and Treasury meets with | |
| their counterparts, that this is something that we will take a | |
| forceful role in and in our position through the G-7 that we | |
| will also take a forceful role to try and push the Japanese | |
| economy, at least to keep it flat and not go further down. | |
| Secretary Powell. Thank you, Congressman. We are concerned | |
| about the Japanese economy, and it has been a source of | |
| meetings within the new team. I had a meeting this past | |
| Wednesday, a luncheon, with myself and Dr. Rice, Paul O'Neill, | |
| Larry Lindsey, and Don Rumsfeld, showing that there is a | |
| security connection to all of this, where we were discussing | |
| this issue and getting ready for the visit of the prime | |
| minister. | |
| The Prime Minister may be moving on in the very near | |
| future, but the very importance of this issue suggested we | |
| still ought to have this meeting in order to exchange views | |
| with him, give him the benefit of our thinking on this matter | |
| as well as hear from him what the Japanese government is | |
| planning to do. So I take your comments very much to heart. | |
| It is not a laissez-faire attitude. It is an attitude of | |
| collecting the best minds we have in the administration and | |
| outside the administration on the issue, and then being | |
| prepared to discuss this matter with the Japanese Prime | |
| Minister next week. | |
| Mr. Bentsen. Thank you. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Mr. Gutknecht. | |
| Mr. Gutknecht. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Secretary, it is a pleasure to have you here. I know | |
| that you have been very involved in NATO and our European | |
| allies. We are currently spending, here in the United States, | |
| about 3 percent of our gross domestic product on national | |
| security or national defense. The European Union, which has an | |
| economy larger than the United States now, is spending 1.5 | |
| percent. | |
| During several of the conflicts in the Balkans, it has come | |
| to our attention that the United States really has assumed a | |
| much larger role than perhaps what some might say is a fair | |
| portion of the costs. At what point are we going to be able to | |
| work with our European allies to sort of equalize the burden- | |
| sharing of some of the costs involved with policing the world? | |
| Secretary Powell. We have always encouraged our European | |
| allies to do more for our collective self-defense efforts. As | |
| long as I can remember, especially during my days as Chairman | |
| of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was something we always raised | |
| with them. | |
| With respect to some of the current peacekeeping operations | |
| either in Bosnia or Kosovo, they are providing the bulk of the | |
| troops for those peacekeeping operations, even though we are an | |
| important part of the effort. | |
| It is also important to recall that the major reason that | |
| we spend a higher percentage of our GDP than our European | |
| colleagues do is because we have different responsibilities, | |
| worldwide responsibilities, that they don't share. We have | |
| responsibilities that include responsibilities in Asia, that | |
| includes our nuclear forces, our logistic forces, our other | |
| transportation forces that are used to get us to places all | |
| across the world; whereas the Europeans have organized their | |
| forces in a different way. | |
| Interestingly, under the new European Security and Defense | |
| Initiative that they are working on and we are supporting, they | |
| want to develop their own capability to handle some of these | |
| operations strictly by the European nations themselves and the | |
| EU coming together. We are encouraging them to do that, but we | |
| are also saying make sure you don't duplicate what we are doing | |
| in NATO and, above all, make sure you are increasing | |
| capability, that you are increasing your budgets, if you are | |
| going to take on these added responsibilities. | |
| So we are using the ESDI, the European Security and Defense | |
| Initiative, and policy, to encourage them to increase defense | |
| spending. It is tough for them, but they realize that if they | |
| want to play a more significant role on the world stage with | |
| the kinds of challenges we now face, they have to do it. So, | |
| yes, sir, we are encouraging them and we are getting a pretty | |
| good response with the ESDI at the moment. | |
| Mr. Gutknecht. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. | |
| Mr. McDermott. | |
| Mr. McDermott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Secretary, I would like to make a couple of comments | |
| and then ask a question. As a former FSO in the Congo, I am | |
| very pleased to hear you say some encouraging words from the | |
| top about people in the field. The Department needs it badly, | |
| and I hope that you are able to persuade the Congress to give | |
| you enough money to do what needs to be done. There are a lot | |
| of empty posts and lots of problems out there. | |
| The second thing is that the administration's early actions | |
| with respect to the AIDS advisor, suggests to me that you are | |
| going to be the last standing voice in the government about the | |
| importance of HIV/AIDS and what it means to national security. | |
| I would encourage you; I think that having been in Africa and | |
| seen all of the embassies south of the Equator and seen what | |
| has gone on in India and Brazil, I think I can support anything | |
| that you have to say about the need for our participation in | |
| this. | |
| Which brings me then to the question of your | |
| reorganization. There is some word floating around that you may | |
| do as the national security adviser has done and fold South | |
| Asia into East Asia and Central Asia and make one division. I | |
| hope you won't do that, in part because along with Ed Royce and | |
| I, we are the co-Chairs of the India Caucus and are very | |
| concerned about making India a strategic partner. I have been | |
| watching the administration say very quietly that they don't | |
| want to spend any money on earthquake relief or they want to | |
| reprogram some money in an already poorly funded department. I | |
| hope that you will support our efforts in the Congress to get | |
| $100 million for reconstruction in India. It would be a | |
| statement to the Indian people of American values, as you say, | |
| which we want to push, that the richest country in the world | |
| can make a commitment to help them. In a time when 30,000 to | |
| 100,000 people died and a million homes were flattened, it | |
| seems to me that we can make more than a $10 million | |
| contribution in the form of some kind of redistribution in the | |
| Department. I hope that you will publicly support that, because | |
| we are going to push in the Congress to see if we can make it | |
| happen. | |
| Secretary Powell. Thank you, sir. On your first point, in | |
| response to the kind of encouragement I got from Mr. | |
| Thornberry, I am constantly looking at the organization to see | |
| if we have properly divided ourselves regionally and whether | |
| the forces within the organization are deployed properly. At | |
| the moment and for the future I have no plans to merge as you | |
| suggested. In fact, I am looking at candidates right now for | |
| the South Asia post and have some pretty good ones in mind. | |
| I say that, however, reserving the right to change my mind | |
| as we get further into this reorganization, because sooner or | |
| later somebody's ox is going to get gored when I start making | |
| the kinds of changes that may be necessary, but right now don't | |
| concern yourself with that one, sir. | |
| On the earthquake relief, it was a tragedy there, also had | |
| to deal with tragedies elsewhere, El Salvador and other places. | |
| As you know, when these come along, there is just so much | |
| flexibility within the Department to move accounts around and | |
| move money around, and so we will look at what our needs are. I | |
| can't make a specific commitment to a specific supplemental | |
| right now, until we have looked at all of the requirements | |
| within the Department, but I certainly share your concern about | |
| the devastation that has taken place in India and the need to | |
| help India reconstruct the lives of so many people and | |
| reconstruct their homes and businesses that were lost, and | |
| their livelihood that was lost. So we will look at that. | |
| Mr. McDermott. Did I understand you correctly, you would | |
| consider a supplemental budget for earthquake relief? | |
| Secretary Powell. Sir, I would consider anything the | |
| Congress wishes me to consider, but I don't want you to read it | |
| as a commitment to a supplemental because I have to take a look | |
| at all of the needs and I have to, at this point, defend the | |
| President's budget without buying on to a supplemental until | |
| such time as we have given it full consideration within the | |
| administration. | |
| Mr. McDermott. We will try and give you the choice. | |
| Secretary Powell. Thank you, sir. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Thank you, Mr. McDermott. | |
| The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Portman. | |
| Mr. Portman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Secretary, we are honored to have you here today. I | |
| have to tell you, as one member, it is refreshing to see and to | |
| hear firsthand your personal commitment to your critical role | |
| as CEO of the Department. You are also the President's chief | |
| foreign policy adviser. You are also the chief diplomat for our | |
| country, and those two responsibilities alone are overwhelming | |
| and they have overwhelmed lesser men and women, but honestly I | |
| think it is very important, as you have pointed out so well, | |
| that attention be paid to the people, the systems, the | |
| organization structure, security, information technology, | |
| because that maximizes, of course, what you can do and is going | |
| to pay off handsomely for our country. | |
| I will be eager to hear also from Senator Rudman and some | |
| of the others who have studied this issue but I again am very | |
| encouraged by what I hear about your willingness to take this | |
| on, not just as a diplomatic role but one where you are really | |
| getting your hands around the organization. It is partly about | |
| funding but mostly it is about will and about political | |
| leadership that you are demonstrating. I think that is why the | |
| administration's budget request is quite generous for your | |
| Department, because you have shown that commitment and I think | |
| this committee will be very supportive of the restructuring | |
| organizations and the commitment that you have made to your | |
| diplomatic readiness, as you say. | |
| I wanted to touch on one relatively small issue but one | |
| that is important to me, and I think to our country right now, | |
| and this is an effort that I started actually with Lee Hamilton | |
| who will be speaking in a moment, and then chairman of the | |
| Budget Committee, John Kasich, and it has to do with protecting | |
| our tropical forests around the country and doing so in a | |
| market-based way. It includes the debt-for-nature swaps that | |
| actually were begun in the previous Bush administration, as I | |
| know you recall, under the Enterprise for America's Initiative, | |
| and we have now expanded on that. We now have a global program | |
| for debt-for-nature swaps, in other ways using the market | |
| forces to preserve tropical forests. | |
| As you know, we have about 30 million acres a year now | |
| being lost, larger than the State of Ohio that I represent, in | |
| fact larger than the State of Pennsylvania and larger States. | |
| Our notion here is to begin to slow that disruption and | |
| begin to protect those forests that are so important for the | |
| air we breathe here in the United States. They are obviously | |
| big carbon sinks, and there is a big concern now about global | |
| warming. Certainly we know this is one way to reduce greenhouse | |
| gases. They also regulate rainfall and coastal resources on | |
| which we depend. They also, of course, are the primary breeding | |
| ground for new medicines and foods having anywhere from 50 to | |
| 90 percent of the Earth's terrestrial biodiversity. It is, I | |
| think, a wonderful opportunity for you, having a market-based | |
| approach to governing, to take this program which frankly has | |
| languished over the past few years in the previous | |
| administration, and using the appropriation that Congress has | |
| provided, and I hope expanding on that. | |
| In the campaign, the President addressed this and you | |
| talked about it in your budget where I noticed that it was also | |
| mentioned and there was a commitment made to expand on this | |
| program. I just wondered if you had any comments on that this | |
| morning and certainly would be very interested in working with | |
| you on being sure that Congress gives you the authority you | |
| need under the Tropical Forests Conservation Act and also | |
| helping you with individual countries. We have done an | |
| agreement, as you know, with Bangladesh and there are nine | |
| other countries that have expressed official interest; there | |
| are five other countries that have expressed informal interest | |
| in proceeding with this, and I wonder if you had any comments | |
| on that this morning? | |
| Secretary Powell. It does have our support and we will be | |
| following it very closely. Commitment to heavily indebted poor | |
| countries is contained in the trust fund that is in the budget, | |
| and debt reduction for tropical forest countries would also be | |
| covered by a small amount of carryover funds that we have in | |
| the budget as well as a transfer authority that we are going to | |
| use for fiscal year 2002 funding. So, yes, sir, we will be | |
| following. It will have our priority. | |
| Mr. Portman. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Thank you, Mr. Portman. | |
| Mr. Moran. | |
| Mr. Moran. Thank you, Mr. Sununu. | |
| Mr. Secretary, my constituents are just delighted at the | |
| interest that you have taken in their personal lives and | |
| professional careers, and I thank you and I trust it is going | |
| to be sustained. | |
| We have literally a whole world of issues that we could | |
| bring before you. We are both having trouble seeing each other | |
| through Rush here, but let me just focus on the first two that | |
| you mentioned, South America and the Middle East. | |
| In terms of South America, I am looking at your budget here | |
| and there is no money for Plan Colombia. Of course, I assume | |
| that is because this is BA and outlays there is going to be a | |
| substantial amount, but I trust that this doesn't reflect a | |
| diminution of commitment. | |
| Secretary Powell. You will find the Andean Initiative right | |
| above it. | |
| Mr. Moran. All right. All right. It is all in the Andean | |
| Initiative. | |
| The other concern, of course, is the fact that | |
| international disaster assistance shows a reduction of one- | |
| third. As Jim McDermott mentioned, we have, many of us have | |
| serious concerns with what happened in India and El Salvador. | |
| In El Salvador, a substantial portion of the population, is | |
| homeless, and the amount of money that has been recommended | |
| actually is less than a fifth of the money that we were pouring | |
| in in the 1980's to support right-wing paramilitaries. Now that | |
| they have a stable society and economy, I think it behooves us | |
| to make a sufficient investment to enable them to get on their | |
| feet. Otherwise we do suffer some direct consequences, not to | |
| mention the humanitarian concerns. | |
| In terms of the Andean Trade Preferences Act, you know, it | |
| doesn't make sense, and I trust that you will agree, to be | |
| pouring money into the military if on the same hand--or at the | |
| same time we pass a CBI initiative that moves thousands of | |
| textile jobs out of Colombia to the Caribbean. The principal | |
| reasons all these farmers, of course, are involved in growing | |
| coca leaf is there is no other alternative economic | |
| opportunity. So I would hope that we are going to push for the | |
| ATPA and not just for Colombia, for Bolivia which has done such | |
| a great job. They need to export, for example, alpaca and | |
| llama. That is not competitive with us, you wouldn't think. We | |
| need a Free Trade of the Americas Act in the context of a fast | |
| track authority. If you want to say anything about that, I | |
| would be very pleased. I am going to talk real fast because I | |
| don't have a lot of time, so you can pick and choose what you | |
| want to talk about. | |
| In terms of the Middle East, I was there at the same time | |
| that you were and was struck by President Mubarak's attitude | |
| and King Abdullah, as they are our friends and they are under a | |
| great deal of stress, political, economic, social stress. They | |
| are losing the support, at least moderate leadership is losing | |
| the support of the people on the street. | |
| The anti-American attitude, what I guess I would call anti- | |
| Zionist attitude, in the Islamic countries is at a height that | |
| is of great concern, should be of great concern to us. | |
| Extremism is going to increase before it is abated. I am very | |
| much concerned that once Arafat goes, you are going to have a | |
| bunch of warlords that head the different extremist factions. | |
| But Ariel Sharon becoming minister--even with Shimon Perez as | |
| defense minister--is problematic in terms of our ability to | |
| moderate that region of the world. Not only does it have | |
| implications for the economy in terms of energy supply but also | |
| in terms of national security. | |
| I would like to get your take on what you think we can be | |
| doing to neutralize some of that extreme anti-American | |
| attitude. We talk about democracy and free enterprise being our | |
| principal objectives. I think democracy is problematic in many | |
| of the countries in the Middle East. We need to keep those | |
| leaders in power whatever it takes. Also in terms of the | |
| sanction on Iraq, reluctantly I am beginning to agree that | |
| relieving the economic sanctions but getting even tougher on | |
| the military sanctions may be a more appropriate way to go. | |
| Saddam is beating us in terms of public opinion. He is becoming | |
| the martyr; we are becoming the bad guys when it should be just | |
| the opposite. I would like to get your take on the Middle East, | |
| particularly, if you do not mind, Mr. Secretary. At this point, | |
| I probably exhausted my 5 minutes. | |
| Secretary Powell. I will start at the top and go down. As | |
| your constituent, I feel obliged to respond fully. | |
| Mr. Moran. You can also bring up the Carlucci report since | |
| Frank is a constituent too. | |
| Secretary Powell. The Carlucci report is very useful. | |
| Andean trade preferences before free trade for the Americas we | |
| are going to be pursuing at the summit next month in Canada. | |
| Trade preferences--I think we need fast track authority and we | |
| will be coming forth with that. | |
| With respect to the Middle East, because of all of the | |
| items you mentioned and all of dangers that exist in that | |
| region, that is why I made my first trip out of the country, | |
| other than the 1-day trip to Mexico, to the Middle East to | |
| consult with the outgoing prime minister in Israel, the | |
| incoming prime minister, to talk to President Mubarac and King | |
| Abdullah and King Fahad and all the other leaders in the region | |
| to stop and talk to President Assad of Syria. | |
| It is a dangerous area. In order to start stabilizing this, | |
| we have to do two things. We have to get the cycle of violence | |
| going back down in the other direction in Israel so that we can | |
| begin to see economic activity flow again, and we can bring | |
| some hope to the Palestinian people and security to the people | |
| of Israel. And only when we start going back down that | |
| escalator of violence, can we start to see the opportunity for | |
| getting negotiations started again on the peace process, which | |
| ultimately has to be the solution of the region. | |
| I agree with you with respect to Iraq. What I discovered | |
| when I became Secretary of State is the sanctions policy was | |
| beginning to collapse. What we are trying to do now is not to | |
| ease sanctions but to save sanctions from totally collapsing. | |
| That is why I have been working with our moderate Arab friends | |
| in the region and working with members of the Permanent Five in | |
| the United Nations to figure out where there is a floor that we | |
| can all rally around and bring the coalition back together. I | |
| am concerned about anti-Americanism. And you will see that the | |
| administration will devote a large part of its energy and | |
| attention to the issues involved in the Middle East and the | |
| Persian Gulf. They are increasingly linked in the minds of the | |
| Arab public, and we have to take that into account. | |
| Mr. Moran. Just on that. The Jordan trade deal is so | |
| important to Jordan, and yet I see a weakening of our resolve | |
| to get it passed. | |
| Secretary Powell. We are committed to it, and Mr. Zelleck | |
| and I have been in conversation about how to move that. And we | |
| also have the Chilean agreement and Singaporean agreement | |
| behind it, and so we are committed to it and I am working on it | |
| and I discussed it with King Abdullah just 2 weeks ago. | |
| On international disaster assistance there is really an | |
| increase over the requested level of last year. The numbers of | |
| the chart are offset by the supplemental of roughly $135 | |
| million that gives you a higher overall spending base for 2000, | |
| but it is about a $36 million increase over what was requested | |
| in 2001. | |
| Mr. Moran. That is encouraging. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Thank you. The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. | |
| LaHood. | |
| Mr. LaHood. Well, you covered about half the world there, | |
| Jim. You did a pretty good job. I will take the chairman's | |
| suggestion and ask one question. Before I do, I want to tell | |
| you I was recently in Vietnam; and while I was there, | |
| Ambassador Peterson had received a phone call from you, and I | |
| want to congratulate you and the President for asking him to | |
| stay on. He is doing a marvelous job there. The treaty between | |
| Vietnam and the United States is important, and I know you know | |
| that. | |
| I really want to pick up on what Mr. Moran had to say. | |
| During the time that I've been in Congress, I have been very, | |
| very interested in Lebanon; and I must say that I am a little | |
| disappointed on your trip to the Middle East. You visited every | |
| country but Lebanon. I have said the same thing to the previous | |
| administration. It took 7 years for Secretary Albright--7 years | |
| into that administration for her to make a trip to Lebanon. I | |
| know Lebanon is a small country and it is the stepchild in the | |
| Middle East. | |
| I have been there 5 years in a row. I know all the leaders. | |
| I have taken an interest in Lebanon. I would really encourage | |
| you to give Lebanon encouragement, to take an interest in | |
| Lebanon. They are an integral part in the peace process there, | |
| and I hope at some point your administration and you personally | |
| will take an interest in Lebanon and include them in this peace | |
| process. They have been excluded. | |
| And I want to say a word about their embassy because I | |
| visited it every time I have been there. You got a wonderful | |
| ambassador there; he's a career ambassador. He is doing a great | |
| job with a great staff. They need a new embassy there. I see in | |
| your statement here that you will be building some new | |
| embassies. I hope at some point you will put Lebanon on your | |
| list, because they are hunkered down in a bunker surrounded by | |
| barbwire. And as you know, many years ago their embassy was | |
| destroyed. The people there, as you know, are hard-working | |
| people and really dedicated people. I don't level this | |
| criticism at you, Mr. Secretary, because I talked to the | |
| previous administration about this. | |
| And I guess, finally, my question is, have you assigned | |
| someone within your administration to really work on Middle | |
| East issues? I know Dennis Ross was sort of the guy that was | |
| identified under the previous administration. I do not know if | |
| there is a Dennis Ross for your administration; but if you can | |
| comment on any of those, I would appreciate it. Thank you very | |
| much. | |
| Secretary Powell. First, on Vietnam, thank you for your | |
| comment. Ambassador Peterson does a terrific job. He was in | |
| town last week, and I met with him and I should add the Vietnam | |
| trade preference agreement to the ones we are also looking at. | |
| He is very anxious to see that happen. I plan to visit Vietnam | |
| later in the year for meetings. | |
| With respect to Lebanon, it was not an act of neglect or | |
| negligence on my part. I very much would like to have been able | |
| to visit Lebanon in addition to the other countries I visited | |
| in the region. I did not get to all of them except Lebanon. | |
| There were quite a few I missed. I have heard about that as | |
| well. But I tried to hit seven countries in three continents in | |
| 4 days. That was the most I could do. I did ask my assistant | |
| secretary, Ned Walker, to back-track for a week behind me and | |
| he was able to have conversations in Lebanon and reported on | |
| those conversations. | |
| With respect to Dennis Ross's portfolio, I have decided to | |
| take that free-standing office and move it back within the Near | |
| East and Asian bureau so that we can look at the whole area as | |
| regional and not just in terms of a peace process. All these | |
| things are linked. It suggests no lack of interest in that | |
| portfolio, but I believe it can be better handled on a regional | |
| basis as part of the bureau. As negotiations begin again and if | |
| there is need in the future for special envoys or somebody to | |
| focus on that specifically, I already have ideas on how to do | |
| that and names in mind, and it will be part of the NEA bureau | |
| and not a free-standing organization. | |
| Mr. LaHood. How about the embassy? | |
| Secretary Powell. I have long years of experience with that | |
| embassy situation in Lebanon, and I will take a look at it. I | |
| cannot give you a promise this day because the needs around the | |
| world are great. | |
| Mr. LaHood. Thank you very much. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Thank you, Mr. LaHood. Ms. Hooley. | |
| Ms. Hooley. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, | |
| for being here. I have actually one short question, and this | |
| goes back to Plan Colombia, again. Last year, we dedicated a | |
| billion dollars to Plan Colombia, most of that for military, | |
| and to go along with that was another $7 billion from Colombia | |
| and the international community. Obviously this was not only to | |
| eradicate their coco and poppy plants but to give them some | |
| other way to earn a living. And the Europeans have backed away | |
| from their commitment. Colombia has not put in what it was | |
| supposed to put in. | |
| How much are we going to spend this year on Colombia? Is | |
| that going to be military? Is that going to be for sustainable | |
| development? And how do we get the other European countries | |
| interested in putting in their fair share? It does not look to | |
| me like Colombia can put in their fair share. They owe money to | |
| the IMF. What is the situation? What are your intentions in | |
| that area? | |
| Secretary Powell. We are working with the European nations | |
| that made a commitment to Plan Colombia to meet those | |
| commitments. As we present this year's plan, which is part of | |
| the overall international narcotics control and law enforcement | |
| function of $948 million, a good piece of that will be for | |
| Colombia. But there will be quite a significant amount of | |
| funding for other countries in the region: Peru, Brazil, and | |
| others. | |
| As we unfold that plan this year, we will be working with | |
| the Europeans at the beginning of the process, rather than | |
| later in the process, to get their support for what we are | |
| trying to do and get them to make their commitment. The | |
| Colombians have not been able to come up with their total | |
| amount committed yet because of some of the economic | |
| difficulties you have touched on, so we are working with them. | |
| But at the same time we feel that we have to go forward with | |
| our obligation and continue the Andean Program we have in mind | |
| because principally the major source of this problem is in the | |
| United States, the streets of America where these drugs are | |
| being consumed. | |
| This is the demand that we are creating that is causing | |
| Colombia the problems that it has. So we have an obligation | |
| that we talk about all the time to drop the demand level. And | |
| if we get the demand level where it ought to be, near zero, | |
| then Colombia will not find itself in danger of losing its | |
| democracy. Colombia will not find itself fighting | |
| narcotraffickers and terrorists. So I think that we have to set | |
| the example in giving the kind of funding that this plan | |
| requires and encourage others to meet us in setting their | |
| example. | |
| Ms. Hooley. I understand the problem, like you said. Can | |
| you tell me specifically what you plan to spend and how is that | |
| going to be divided between providing arms to the police force | |
| and military there versus sustainable economic plan. | |
| Secretary Powell. For example, Colombia--every country is | |
| covered: Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, | |
| and Panama. In Colombia the actual interdiction effort will be | |
| $252 million and then alternative development, institution | |
| building and all of the other things you have an interest in is | |
| another $147 million, for a total of $399 million. | |
| Ms. Hooley. OK, so the $147 million is considerably lower | |
| than what we put in last year. Correct? | |
| Secretary Powell. Yes. Last year was the biggest | |
| expenditure for the helicopters, and we put the helicopter | |
| capability in. This is a lot less. Not $1.3 billion, but $399 | |
| million out of $731 million goes to Colombia. The rest of the | |
| money goes to the other nations in the region as part of the | |
| Andean strategy. | |
| Ms. Hooley. Are we going to get help from the European | |
| countries? | |
| Secretary Powell. We certainly intend to get help. We | |
| intend to ask them to make the commitments they made previously | |
| and to support this effort. How successful we are remains to be | |
| seen. | |
| Ms. Hooley. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Thank you, Ms. Hooley. | |
| Mr. Secretary, as you know, we will hear from Senator | |
| Rudman and Congressman Hamilton, two members of the U.S. | |
| Commission on National Security. I don't want to steal any of | |
| their thunder, but I would ask if you could address a couple of | |
| the specific recommendations that came out of the Commission's | |
| findings. First, in their report there was a quote that the | |
| Department suffers in particular from an ineffective | |
| organizational structure in which regional and functional | |
| policies do not serve integrated goals. Second, they recommend | |
| that the activities of USAID, the Agency for International | |
| Development, be integrated more completely into the State | |
| Department. | |
| Could you address these two recommendations. What kind of a | |
| process have you established for either acting on or making a | |
| counterrecommendation to their work and then maybe touch on any | |
| other specific findings of the Commission that you would hope | |
| to address early in your tenure. | |
| Secretary Powell. One finding I can touch on that I thought | |
| was very helpful and that I think that has already happened-- | |
| and it was an observation that the Commission made with respect | |
| to, not just with the State Department but the National | |
| Security Council in making sure there was a proper division of | |
| roles. The State Department is a primary actor for the | |
| President with respect to foreign policy, and the NSC is in | |
| more of a coordinating role. Some of the authorities that may | |
| have drifted from the State Department over to NSC, I think we | |
| have been successful in returning to the State Department. | |
| I think that concern that the Commission had we have done a | |
| good job of dealing with. With respect to USAID to begin with, | |
| I have gone over to USAID, I have visited with them. I started | |
| to get into the intricacies of their organization and structure | |
| and how they allocate money. They know clearly that they are a | |
| fully integrated part of the Department of State even though | |
| they are separate. I am not at a point where I think they ought | |
| to be totally folded in organizationally to the Department of | |
| State as USIA and ACDA were. Some people made that suggestion. | |
| I am not at that point. | |
| But they clearly know that they work for the Secretary of | |
| State and through me they work for the President. That is | |
| clear. I have a transition team over there now that is still | |
| coming up with organizational and other recommendations and | |
| taking also to heart some of the recommendations that have come | |
| from Senator Helms and members of Senate Foreign Relations | |
| Committee with respect to having more of USAID assets and funds | |
| being delivered through private organization and | |
| nongovernmental entities. | |
| With respect to the specific recommendation from Senator | |
| Rudman and the Commission on organization of the Department, | |
| they presented a model that is quite a departure from where we | |
| are now, and that is essentially to take the geographically | |
| oriented regional bureaus and the functional bureaus that have | |
| grown up in the last 10 or 15 years and integrate them so all | |
| of those functional activities are performed in regional | |
| bureaus. This is very controversial. We may want to get there | |
| at some point in the future, but this is a step too far for me | |
| to undertake right now. | |
| I have got a lot of work to do, a lot of studying to do; | |
| and when I spoke with Senator Rudman and the other members of | |
| the Commission, I thanked them for that game plan and that blue | |
| print. But they also recognized that if I were starting to try | |
| to do this today I would spend my whole 4 years or 2 years or 1 | |
| year or 2 months as it may be as Secretary of State, we don't | |
| know, I would spend all my time just sorting out who sits where | |
| in the organizational pieces. | |
| I am a believer in the following proposition: | |
| reorganization is not always something you do for people; it is | |
| something you do to people on occasion. And I want to do | |
| something for people. So we want to make sure that we | |
| understand what the consequences are of moving to the kind of | |
| organizations suggested by the Commission and work with the | |
| Commission in the months and years ahead to figure out where we | |
| ought to go. It is a traditional debate between regional | |
| orientation and functional orientation, and I think the answer | |
| is to have a combination of the two. | |
| Mr. Sununu. If you were to choose at some point to make | |
| modifications in the organizational structure, move more toward | |
| that integration, do you require implementing legislation to do | |
| it? | |
| Secretary Powell. I may well require implementing | |
| legislation to do it. I discovered that a lot of the | |
| organization within the State Department that I might come in | |
| tomorrow morning and say I want to get rid of it, not so fast | |
| Mr. Secretary, that is by law. That little four-person cell. | |
| When I looked at all the special envoys that we had in the | |
| Department, these are people that are doing work outside or | |
| they have additional titles, there were 55 of them. I was able | |
| to get rid of something like 22 of them just like that, but | |
| there are 7 of them in law, separate free-standing offices and | |
| I respect that the Congress had a very specific intent with | |
| each and every one of them. | |
| So I would have to get legislation if I thought it | |
| appropriate to eliminate any of those envoys, for example, or | |
| some of the other organizational bodies that are within the | |
| Department that have been put there specifically by law, for | |
| good well-intended purposes, useful legitimate purposes; but | |
| nevertheless I need legislation if I found that a change was | |
| appropriate. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Finally, could you expound very briefly on the | |
| arguments against, or your concerns about, greater integration | |
| of USAID into the Department. | |
| Secretary Powell. By greater integration if the thought | |
| is---- | |
| Mr. Sununu. Basically the Commission recommendations. | |
| Secretary Powell. If you break up USAID and move it all the | |
| way into the Department, I am not prepared to say that this is | |
| not the manner in which we should move. I am prepared to | |
| consider the idea, but I am not prepared at this stage---- | |
| Mr. Sununu. What are your concerns or what do you think the | |
| down sides are? | |
| Secretary Powell. We are still absorbing USIA and ACDA, a | |
| pretty good job of integration, but there are some issues | |
| remaining. And just dealing with the personnel dimensions of | |
| such an integration, to suddenly take on today and say oh yeah, | |
| I am going to bring USAID in the same way, there are | |
| significant challenges to my span of control; how I would deal | |
| with, how I would integrate that organization within the State | |
| Department in the way we did with USIA and ACDA, and I am not | |
| in a position yet to say that that would be a very good idea. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Ms. McCarthy. | |
| Ms. McCarthy. Thank you. Welcome, Secretary Powell. I want | |
| to go back to the budget issues. We have asked so many | |
| questions on both sides, talking about the problems that are | |
| going around this country; but I think we are missing the point | |
| because I know it is very hard sometimes when we go back to the | |
| districts and explain why we support foreign aid and everything | |
| else like that. And I am hoping while you go across this | |
| country that you can explain what the State Department actually | |
| does, because it is easier for us to work with you if people | |
| actually understand everything about it. | |
| I want to go back. Most of the questions that I wanted to | |
| ask about the Middle East have been answered, but again I think | |
| this is where you can come in on why Israel and the Middle East | |
| is so important for this country to see peace there. You know, | |
| because they are our allies. A lot of American people do not | |
| actually understand that and they do not--so they do not | |
| understand why we are always defending Israel. | |
| My concern is with the Middle East peace problems we have | |
| there--I have to talk about Ireland. We have got St. Patrick's | |
| Day coming up. I am hoping that we will be able to go over | |
| there because we see economic opportunities starting to bring | |
| peace there. It works out very well for us in America because | |
| the trade is picking up constantly. | |
| The other thing I want to bring up especially is safety in | |
| our embassies. We have seen and we have learned a great deal | |
| from the Oklahoma bombing, that as we hopefully bring safety | |
| issues and security issues up into where our men and women | |
| overseas are working, that you really look into safety glass. I | |
| know it is expensive, but the amount of lives that we have lost | |
| in Oklahoma just because of flying glass especially to the | |
| children was astronomical. So all the new buildings, everything | |
| that we look at where our men and women are working should have | |
| this facilities. | |
| And this is, again, where we can help you here on the | |
| Budget Committee. I, you know, looking at the State Department | |
| funding, I have to say that I am nervous that we are not going | |
| to have the money to be able to do the job that you have to do; | |
| and I do have concern about that, and I am hoping that you | |
| certainly will fight and work with us to make sure that you | |
| have the funding. It is really, really important. So with that, | |
| what funding needs do you predict we are going to need to | |
| promote peace in both regions, Ireland and the Middle East? | |
| Secretary Powell. We will work hard in both places. I met | |
| with a number of leaders yesterday, the Deputy Minister, and I | |
| am going to be meeting with Gerry Adams and Prime Minister | |
| Ahern and participating in all of the activities in the next 2 | |
| days. I committed to them yesterday, Mr. Trimble and Mr. | |
| Mallon, that I would be working very hard to help them move | |
| this process along. The President will make the same commitment | |
| in the next 2 days as he participates in these activities. | |
| Israel is a friend and partner and Israel's security has | |
| always been a major priority of the American people and the | |
| American government and will remain so in this administration. | |
| With respect to safety issues and safety glass, let me for | |
| the record look at the specification that we are using in light | |
| of recommendations that have been made to make sure that we are | |
| satisfying the concern that you raise, ma'am. | |
| Ms. McCarthy. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I just want to let | |
| members know that we have probably only about 10 or 15 minutes | |
| more of the Secretary's time. I have five remaining members on | |
| the questioning list: Mr. Brown, Mr. Moore, Mr. Kirk, Mr. | |
| Matheson, and Mr. Collins. I would certainly appreciate it if | |
| members can be brief in their questioning in deference to the | |
| Secretary. Mr. Brown. | |
| Mr. Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, Mr. Secretary. | |
| Secretary Powell. Thank you, sir. | |
| Mr. Brown. My question will be brief. I would like for to | |
| you expand upon the unilateral peace-keeping forces we have | |
| around the world. I know we have a lot of hot spots, and I know | |
| sometimes the missions require our efforts to be spread thin. | |
| Could you elaborate where we are on that? | |
| Secretary Powell. The two commitments that we have | |
| currently that seem to get the most attention of what we are | |
| doing are in Bosnia and Kosovo. In both instances, the number | |
| of U.S. troops committed has dropped considerably in the last | |
| number of years. In Kosovo we were getting ready to move out | |
| several hundred U.S. Troops who are no longer needed. We are | |
| bringing out some units that are currently above the level | |
| authorized. So we are starting to draw down consistent with the | |
| mission and consistent with our obligations having gone in as | |
| part of a great alliance, coming out as part of a great | |
| alliance. | |
| But there are other forces that we keep around the world | |
| that are performing peace-keeping missions that we sometimes | |
| forget about, whether it is the forces we have had in the Sinai | |
| for so many years or whether what we do in Korea on a day-to- | |
| day basis, there are 37,000 troops. They are there to deter | |
| war, and in the process they are keeping the peace. So there is | |
| a long list of such forces of Bosnia, Kosovo, Korea, the Sinai. | |
| One could argue what we are doing in the Persian Gulf area-- | |
| with the presence of troops in Kuwait, we saw the tragedy the | |
| other evening--that it can sometimes be dangerous. | |
| All of these are for the purpose of representing our | |
| interest in keeping the peace. And to that extent they are | |
| serving nobly and serving in a noble cause, for the cause of | |
| peace. Not just peace in some existential term, but a peace | |
| that benefits the United States and benefits the American | |
| people, that creates an international environment that permits | |
| trade, that permits us to have jobs in this country where we | |
| can produce goods that go across the oceans and go into nations | |
| that we have helped achieve peace and we have helped to improve | |
| their health so they can work and create wealth, and that | |
| wealth comes back to us in the form of purchases. | |
| And so peace-keeping should not just be something seen as | |
| something that we send military off to do. It is part of our | |
| overall foreign policy, and it is part of us creating | |
| circumstances around the world that benefit us trading-wise as | |
| well. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Mr. Moore. | |
| Mr. Moore. Thank you for being here, Secretary Powell. And | |
| I just want to say I think a lot of Americans believe, as I do, | |
| that your service, especially your military service, | |
| exemplifies the idea that a strong military is not about war, | |
| it is about peace as you just said and I appreciate that. | |
| I had the opportunity to be in Israel 2 years ago and met | |
| with at the time Prime Minister Barak and also Chairman Arafat; | |
| and at that time both spoke very optimistically of peace in | |
| Israel and the Middle East. Since then things have deteriorated | |
| badly. And you said just a few minutes ago that one thing that | |
| we should try to do is to try to find a way to decrease the | |
| incidents of violence in Israel and the Middle East. | |
| Number one, do you have any specific recommendations as to | |
| how that might happen? And number two, just generally with | |
| regard to sanctions, Iraq, Cuba and others, I wonders if you | |
| could talk to us just briefly about your thoughts about it--and | |
| certainly nobody here is supporting Saddam Hussein or Fidel | |
| Castro but I think a lot of people on a bipartisan-basis do | |
| share concerns about the well-being of the people in those | |
| nations who bear no responsibility for their leaders. I just | |
| want to hear your thoughts about that, if you would please. | |
| Secretary Powell. Reducing the cycle of violence, it is | |
| going to take the leaders in the region to do that. What we are | |
| doing, every way we know how, is encouraging the leaders in the | |
| region to recognize that we are not going to move forward; we | |
| are not going to find a way for these two peoples to live in | |
| peace and harmony and for them to achieve their God-given | |
| dreams and ambitions unless the cycle of violence is stopped | |
| and we go back down. And I must pass this message out at least | |
| five or ten times every day in every way I know how, as does | |
| the President. | |
| With respect to sanctions, sanctions can be useful. For | |
| example with respect to Iraq, they have been very useful in | |
| constraining Saddam Hussein's ability to build his military | |
| back-up or to develop weapons of mass destructions. Sanctions | |
| in the last 10 years really have been a constraint on him and | |
| kept him in a box. My concern is losing those sanctions and | |
| they are starting to be attacked because we are hurting the | |
| Iraqi people. So we should clear that out of the way and make | |
| sure the people see that the sanctions are directed against | |
| weapons of mass destruction. Sanctions should be targeted. | |
| Sometimes they work and sometimes they do not work, and we | |
| should always be evaluating when they work and do not work. And | |
| when we have a place like Cuba where we can find ways to help | |
| the people directly and not through the regimes which will turn | |
| any effort to help make them into a way for them to stay in | |
| power, when we can gets things directly to the people and we | |
| should examine that. In the case of Castro's Cuba that has been | |
| a difficult thing to do. We are not going to release the | |
| sanctions that we had in place, the embargo we have in place, | |
| which he uses to remain in power. And to take advantage of any | |
| opportunity someone would want to give him to benefit his | |
| people, he turns that to his own advantage. | |
| Mr. Moore. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Mr. Kirk. | |
| Mr. Kirk. Mr. Secretary, I was on the other end of the | |
| phone line with you when I was in the Navy Command Center and | |
| you were in Haiti. I remember the duty captain saying, Mr. | |
| Secretary, ``you need to leave right now.'' | |
| Secretary Powell. Yes. Somebody forgot to tell us an | |
| invasion was under way at the moment. | |
| Mr. Kirk. I remember he said you must leave the | |
| Commandarcia because H hour was about an hour later, and you | |
| said, ``I am not leaving;'' and you completed the deal with | |
| Haiti about an hour later. It was a tour de force. | |
| Secretary Powell. It was a very dicey afternoon. Some day I | |
| will tell what it was like to run out of the top floor of that | |
| building, President Carter going one way and I went another | |
| way, and I suddenly discovered I was in the back of a Land | |
| Rover with hand grenades rolling around on the floor; AK-47's | |
| and M-16's in every corner and I am all alone with my new | |
| friends. | |
| Mr. Kirk. Let me put it this way, we were watching you. | |
| Secretary Powell. Yes, sir. | |
| Mr. Kirk. Mr. Secretary, I am a total supporter of the | |
| International Affairs Budget Function 150 and will be working | |
| in this committee to get it up. But I am a little concerned | |
| that your Management ``M'' bureau is eating your Security | |
| Assistance ``T'' bureau alive and let me be very specific. This | |
| is what your State Department funding looks like (chart shown) | |
| and you have got to check with your budgeteers because your | |
| Machine-Readable Visa Fees are going through the roof, a number | |
| that the State Department generally does not like to advertise | |
| to its budgeteers up here. | |
| And as these State Department numbers go up, this security | |
| assistance number (chart shown), which is the number upon which | |
| Israel depends for funding the Arrow Missile and the Ground | |
| Base Laser. We have an increasing overall $60 million | |
| commitment, but that account is in a sharp decline. So the | |
| diplomats are getting the cookies and our allies and the | |
| security-assistance needs are suffering. So that is one concern | |
| I want to raise with you. | |
| The second concern in an entirely different area. We have | |
| 500,000 Korean-Americans here separated from their North-Korean | |
| families. The reunification of South-Korean families with their | |
| North-Korean families is uppermost in Seoul's mind. But it has | |
| never been raised on the U.S. and the North Korean DPRK agenda. | |
| I am wondering if you can raise that with the DPRK next time | |
| because we have a lot of Korean-American families that would | |
| like to be a part of the unification dialogue. | |
| Secretary Powell. I would like to take that aboard. As you | |
| know, we are still formulating our approach to North Korea and | |
| we have had good discussions with the South Korean president, | |
| Kim Dae Jung ,when he was here last week; and I would like to | |
| take that aboard as one of the items that we will put on the | |
| agenda. With respect to this very impressive chart, allow me to | |
| go to work on it. There are a lot of things in that regular | |
| State Department funding that really do help us deliver the | |
| services to those countries that you made reference to. And so | |
| I understand the point you are making, sir, and give me time to | |
| work on it. | |
| Mr. Kirk. We have got a commitment to increase security | |
| assistance to Israel by $60 million a year so we want to make | |
| sure they are not on a sinking-budget ship. | |
| Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Thank you very much, Mr. Kirk. Mr. Price. | |
| Mr. Price. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for | |
| being here, Mr. Secretary. We have covered a lot of ground this | |
| morning; and you have been very adept at doing so and I am | |
| encouraged to hear what you have to say about embassy security, | |
| your commitment to making up for some lost time in providing | |
| that funding, information technology. As well as your | |
| commitment to seek more adequate funding for Function 150 in | |
| future years, which I think has been repeatedly demonstrated to | |
| be inadequate as the budget documents now stand. | |
| I am interested and encouraged by your comments on the | |
| Middle East and the Middle East peace process. I understand | |
| your decision to back off, at least for now, from intense day- | |
| to-day involvement in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations; but I | |
| must say that I do not believe we will make much progress on | |
| the broader front as long as that conflict festers and the | |
| provocations and the retaliations escalate on both sides. | |
| Moreover, our friends in the region, as has been stressed to | |
| the leaders of these moderate Arab states, are placed in the | |
| greatest political jeopardy and are going to continue to be as | |
| long as that violence continues and a just settlement is | |
| deferred. So it is an explosive situation. | |
| The parties, of course, came heartbreakingly close to | |
| agreement and that, in some ways, has contributed to the high | |
| level of frustration and recrimination now. It has intensified. | |
| But I think how close we came demonstrates both the possibility | |
| and the necessity of a long-term settlement that is fair and | |
| can be effectively defended by all of our friends in the | |
| region. | |
| I am encouraged that that is where you took your first trip | |
| and that is where you are placing so much emphasis. I do think | |
| that challenge will remain and must remain on the front burner. | |
| Secretary Powell. We were ready to engage, sir, but the | |
| process came to a stand still. It came very close. I would like | |
| to say it was about there. But it is not there any longer. It | |
| is now separated and different levels. And we have to give Mr. | |
| Sharon time to put his government together, which he now has, | |
| and give him time to formulate a negotiating position which he | |
| feels he can support and sell to the Israeli people. It will be | |
| hard for him to do that in this current situation of intense | |
| violence. But when we get that violence down--and I think | |
| ultimately all sides will see it is in their interest to do or | |
| else we cannot move forward when we are ready to move forward-- | |
| you will find that the United States will be ready to play in | |
| the traditional leadership role it has played in Middle East | |
| peace. | |
| Mr. Price. I am encouraged by that. I do think a reduction | |
| in violence is a precondition for progress. I also think that | |
| the temptation to violence and the provocations to violence do | |
| depend also on some hope and some signs of progress in getting | |
| the larger issues settled. | |
| In terms of specific questions, let me turn very quickly, | |
| and I think very precisely, to the Peace Corps and the future | |
| of that program. You touched on it briefly in your testimony. | |
| You were looking, though, in terms of dollars at a, rather | |
| modest increase, in the 4 percent range in nominal terms and | |
| probably about even funding in current services terms. What is | |
| the future of that program in your view? Do you foresee any | |
| major or significant changes in the scale of the program, and | |
| the focus of the program, the level of volunteers that are | |
| supported by your budget numbers? Could you just give us a | |
| snapshot of your thinking about the Peace Corps? | |
| Secretary Powell. I think the Peace Corps has done a | |
| marvelous job. In fact, I just received invitations to the 40th | |
| anniversary celebration this September, and I look forward to | |
| that. It will enjoy support from me, from the State Department | |
| in the President's budget, and I suspect the future President's | |
| budget as well. Will there be an enormous growth in the Corps? | |
| I do not anticipate that. I do not anticipate that it will be | |
| cut in any way as well. We are funding it. There will be a | |
| modest increase, and it will continue to do the fine job that | |
| it has done in the past. | |
| Mr. Price. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Thank you. We have two remaining questioners, | |
| Mr. Collins and then Mr. Holt. | |
| Mr. Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, Japan | |
| was mentioned earlier. I recall in 1997 prior to traveling to | |
| Japan with several Members of the House we had contacted the | |
| State Department to inquire as to what information we needed to | |
| know prior to our arrival in Japan and then also if we had a | |
| message that we needed to deliver on the part of the State | |
| Department. The knowledge that we received, the information was | |
| that the economy in Japan was in serious trouble, that banks | |
| were facing substantial outstanding loans, and a lot of it was | |
| due to the fact that the Japanese people were hoarding their | |
| money, saving their money rather than spending it in the | |
| domestic marketplace. Our message from our State Department in | |
| 1997 was to encourage the Japanese government to reduce | |
| taxation, to encourage the people of Japan to spend their funds | |
| in the domestic market place. The response was tax reduction in | |
| Japan is difficult due to social spending requirements and the | |
| threat of political fall out. Sound familiar? | |
| Secretary Powell. Yes, sir. | |
| Mr. Collins. My question, Plan Colombia or the Andean | |
| region, the Congress is appropriating and will continue to | |
| appropriate billions of dollars, a substantial amount of money, | |
| taxpayer money, to interdict and eradicate drugs in the region. | |
| Are you comfortable and what assurances can you give us that | |
| the leadership in the region has the will to sustain the | |
| initiative once the well-financed and heavy-armed drug cartel | |
| is engaged? | |
| Secretary Powell. With respect to Colombia, there is no | |
| doubt in my mind that President Pastrana does have the will and | |
| is committed to it and is taking chances for democracy. He | |
| knows his country is at risk if he is not successful. He also | |
| knows it cannot be a one-time shot. If he is successful, he has | |
| to continue to build on that success and not step back from it. | |
| I also believe, in any conversations with foreign ministers who | |
| come from other armies of the region, that there is a similar | |
| commitment. | |
| And when we have met with President Fox of Mexico at the | |
| summit, President Bush's first summit, I found a similar | |
| commitment with respect to drug supply and eradication and | |
| interdiction efforts. They all know that they have to help us | |
| with this problem because it is putting their nations at risk. | |
| And so I am confident that kind of political commitment and | |
| support will be there. | |
| Mr. Collins. Thank you and welcome, sir. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Thank you, Mr. Collins. Mr. Holt. | |
| Mr. Holt. Thank you, Mr. Sununu; and, Mr. Secretary, thank | |
| you for giving us your time and thank you for giving the | |
| American people your experience. Like Mr. Thornberry and Mr. | |
| McDermott, I too worked in the State Department; and I am a big | |
| promoter of Function 150. Like Mr. McDermott, I would also urge | |
| you to give every consideration to $100 million or something on | |
| that order for reconstruction aid in India. | |
| But the question I would like to turn to comes from my | |
| reading of the budget. As I see it, the conduct of the foreign | |
| affairs, that category meaning maintaining embassies and | |
| consulates and activities in Washington and payments to the | |
| U.N. and so forth, appears to be increasing while actual | |
| foreign aid has been dropping. Now recognizing that diplomatic | |
| activities and aid help, to use the words of the Carlucci task | |
| force to avoid, manage, and resolve crises and to deter | |
| aggression, how can we see to it that Function 150 funding | |
| especially foreign aid is considered in the strategic review | |
| that Secretary Rumsfeld is conducting in the Department of | |
| Defense? | |
| I am not suggesting that you cede any of your budgetary | |
| authority to him or that we cede any of our budgetary authority | |
| to balance the needs of the two departments. But it seems to me | |
| we should be taking a look at that. | |
| Secretary Powell. We have had serious conversations on this | |
| subject within the administration, as you might expect, and I | |
| think Secretary Rumsfeld would be the first to agree with you | |
| and me that Function 150 is an essential part of our national | |
| security activity as is the Army, Navy, Air Force Marine Corps. | |
| So I have received support from my fellow cabinet officers from | |
| the national security world and national security advisors and | |
| others within the administration that we have to do a better | |
| job within this functional area. | |
| There is a slight increase in the foreign aid account. It | |
| is not as much as we would like to see it, but I think the | |
| President was generous in allowing us to take this first step. | |
| There is a higher increase in the Commerce-State-Justice piece | |
| of it because I had a very great need there, which is being | |
| recognized. And I hope in future years as we move forward you | |
| will see both accounts as part of overall Function 150 growing | |
| and that is the case I intend to make to OMB and to the | |
| President, the thoughts of my fellow cabinet officers. | |
| Mr. Holt. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. | |
| Mr. Sununu. Mr. Secretary, I want to thank you for your | |
| time, for your testimony. I wish you good luck in your service | |
| and thank you for past service. I apologize to those members | |
| who did not get an opportunity to question, but thank those | |
| that did for their brevity. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. | |
| Secretary Powell. Thank you, Mr. Sununu. | |
| Mr. Sununu. As we bring the next panel forward and have | |
| them take their seats, I wanted to welcome both Senator Rudman | |
| and Congressman Lee Hamilton. We will have them take their | |
| seats and offer their opening testimony. We do have a 15-minute | |
| vote on the floor. Once we have taken their initial testimony, | |
| we will if necessary recess briefly so that members can vote. | |
| But it is my hope that we can continue the questioning through | |
| the vote and thereby not interrupt the proceedings or delay the | |
| Senator or the Congressman. | |
| STATEMENT OF HON. WARREN B. RUDMAN, CO-CHAIRMAN, AND HON. LEE | |
| H. HAMILTON, MEMBER, U.S. COMMISSION ON NATIONAL SECURITY/21ST | |
| CENTURY | |
| Mr. Sununu. I want to welcome both our panelists, Senator | |
| Rudman and Congressman Hamilton. They both have outstanding | |
| records; and you know if there were a contest to find two | |
| people that were more highly respected by members of both sides | |
| of the aisle in their respective bodies, it would be difficult | |
| to find two better examples. I would of course have to side | |
| with Senator Rudman for regional and personal factors. And I | |
| want to welcome them both. | |
| I do not have lengthy introductions for you, but your work | |
| is well known. Congressman Hamilton is the director of the | |
| Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies. Senator Rudman | |
| most recently served as the President's Chairman on his Foreign | |
| Intelligence Advisory Board. They have worked long and hard to | |
| produce an assessment of the United States national security | |
| needs and needs of the State Department in areas of | |
| international affairs. We could not have two better witnesses | |
| prepared to talk in depth about their work and about some of | |
| the proposed changes or reforms, modifications to the way we | |
| conduct our national security affairs in the United States. | |
| They have prepared a joint statement, but I wanted to offer | |
| them both whatever time they might consume to elaborate on that | |
| joint statement, to offer personal observations, and to | |
| highlight what they think the most important elements of their | |
| findings were. And with that we will begin testimony from | |
| Senator Rudman. Welcome, Senator. | |
| STATEMENT OF HON. WARREN B. RUDMAN | |
| Senator Rudman. Mr. Chairman, thank you. It is a particular | |
| pleasure to appear before you, Congressman Sununu, for obvious | |
| reasons. Our families go back a very long time. I also find it | |
| interesting that my Congressman, Congressman Charlie Bass, is | |
| also on the committee and I had a chance to talk with him this | |
| morning. I am personally delighted to be here. I am pleased to | |
| appear with Lee Hamilton. We have collaborated together over a | |
| long period of time when we both served in the Congress. You | |
| have my statement. I am not going to read the statement. The | |
| statement is there. It is a short statement, and it emphasizes | |
| what I think the Commission believes is important. | |
| Let me simply say the Commission, for those who are not | |
| familiar with it, was a congressional initiative, essentially | |
| established by then Speaker Gingrich and then President Clinton | |
| and supported by the Department of Defense to study America's | |
| national security needs in the 21st century. We took a broad | |
| view of our mandate, and we looked at national security not | |
| only in terms of DOD, of course, and the intelligence | |
| community, but Treasury, economics, education, science, and, of | |
| course, the State Department. Let me just highlight three or | |
| four points which you discussed in your questioning | |
| collectively with the Secretary this morning. We have met with | |
| the Secretary, and we will continue to meet with him to | |
| highlight the issues that we have brought to his attention. | |
| Of course, the Commission was bipartisan and broadly based. | |
| We had a former commander of NATO, a former commander of the | |
| American Atlantic Fleet, heads of industry, people from the | |
| news media, people from the foreign service; and it went over a | |
| 3-year period. So we received a broad spectrum of testimony. | |
| What was fascinating was the unanimity of the testimony as it | |
| related to the dysfunctionality of the State Department in the | |
| view of those who worked there and work there presently. Let me | |
| just hit four or five points, turn it over to Lee and take your | |
| questions. | |
| First, I think the words we heard were crippled, | |
| dysfunctional; but they were really mild in terms of what we | |
| heard in private testimony from people that have served as | |
| ambassadors and foreign officers and to hear their | |
| frustrations. One thing that Secretary Powell said--and I am | |
| glad he said and I want to repeat it--we met, in the course of | |
| our inquiry, extraordinary people. | |
| We are not saying that the people are dysfunctional or | |
| crippled. We are saying the structure has not been put together | |
| in a way to deliver services in a rational way. Secondly, we | |
| felt that there has been a spiral of decline in the efficiency | |
| of the Department which has led to a disconnect between the | |
| Department and the Congress. You only have to look at what has | |
| happened to appropriations which was on that chart there this | |
| morning, which shows definitely that there has been a lack of | |
| confidence by the Congress in a bipartisan way in the | |
| effectiveness of the Department. The result has been a transfer | |
| of many responsibilities of the State Department into the | |
| National Security Council. I am glad to say that this | |
| administration has now reversed that: one of our key | |
| recommendations is that the State Department is where diplomacy | |
| should take place and policy will be created, and the DSC | |
| becomes a coordinating board for the President. | |
| Third, we believe that the amount of resources that have | |
| been allocated to the Department have been inadequate. And you | |
| have talked about that, so I will not go on. But we will say | |
| finally this, Mr. Chairman. We believe if there is going to be | |
| a major change in resources, there ought to be a quid pro quo, | |
| and the quid pro quo that we set forth that I think you alluded | |
| to in your series of questions asking the Secretary is that in | |
| return for those increased resources there has to be a definite | |
| commitment to a gradual reorganization of this Department. | |
| The Secretary is right. He cannot do it all overnight; he | |
| cannot do it all this year. It has to be a long-term commitment | |
| for that kind of restructuring. And you might have to leave for | |
| the vote, and we can wait until you return. | |
| Mr. Sununu. We will hang on a few more minutes. I | |
| appreciate your testimony. And I will offer the time to | |
| Congressman Hamilton. Welcome and thank you for your work. | |
| STATEMENT OF HON. LEE H. HAMILTON | |
| Mr. Hamilton. Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to be before | |
| you and the Budget Committee. I am getting a little worried | |
| about your making that vote too, so do not hesitate to leave at | |
| any point. I want to make two very simple points. The first | |
| point is that the State Department is a department of | |
| government that desperately needs major reform so that it can | |
| formulate and implement American foreign policy. The second | |
| point is that it needs more resources for foreign affairs so | |
| that the United States can successfully advance and protect its | |
| interests around the world. | |
| I worked under the very able leadership of Senator Rudman | |
| on the U.S. Commission on National Security. I will not repeat | |
| any of his comments. I also served on the Carlucci Commission, | |
| whose report I am sure is available to you and the staff. I | |
| take the view that the renewal of our foreign policy machinery | |
| is urgently needed in this country. It has to be a priority. We | |
| have to ensure that machinery and the people that make it up | |
| are fully prepared for the tasks that are necessary to deal | |
| with the kinds of challenges that we confront in the newly | |
| emerging world. | |
| Now it just happens that the State Departments falls short, | |
| I believe, or has fallen short, for a period of years in its | |
| mission, in its skills, and in its organization. Let me just | |
| review a few of those for you, if I may. On personnel matters, | |
| the Department has a very serious problem today recruiting and | |
| retaining top-flight people. You can talk all you want to about | |
| shuffling the boxes around in the State Department, but all of | |
| us know enough about organizations to know that that does not | |
| count for a thing unless you have got quality people to move | |
| the enterprise forward. You look at their promotion systems; | |
| you look at their recruitment process; you look at their | |
| professional training opportunities; you look at the | |
| inattention they pay to family needs; you look at the grievance | |
| procedures in the State Department, and I think any reasonable | |
| person comes to the conclusion that they are woefully short. | |
| The facilities of the Department are dilapidated and | |
| insecure. Eighty-eight percent of the embassies do not meet | |
| current security standards; nearly 25 percent of our posts | |
| overseas are overcrowded. The communications and information | |
| infrastructure is just plain deplorable. We have overseas posts | |
| today that are so obsolete that personnel cannot send e-mail | |
| back and forth to one another. Twenty-nine percent of our | |
| overseas posts are equipped with obsolete classified networks. | |
| If you look at the internal integration in the State | |
| Department--the Secretary was commenting on this a few minutes | |
| ago, and I think he was absolutely right about it--it is just | |
| too confusing. There is no chief operating officer with | |
| authority over the administration and the budget of the State | |
| Department today. There is insufficient integration among | |
| regional and functional activities in the Department. There is | |
| a very complex division of responsibility in the Department | |
| today. Moreover, it is not just a matter of internal | |
| coordination of the Department, it is also the external | |
| communication and relationship of the State Department with the | |
| other branches of government, like the National Security | |
| Council and the Defense Department, that have responsibility in | |
| foreign affairs. So if you look at all of these problems--and I | |
| have touched on them very, very quickly--every single one of | |
| them, I think, needs major reform and attention. | |
| Now the good news here is that we have an opportunity, a | |
| very rare opportunity, to attack these problems. You have got a | |
| new administration here. It does not have the baggage that the | |
| past administration had. You have a Secretary that has unusual | |
| stature. We all appreciate that, and I think the opportunity | |
| for genuine reform in the State Department is encouraging at | |
| this point; and I want to add the strongest possible | |
| endorsement of efforts for reform in the Department. | |
| So that is the first point. The idea that Senator Rudman | |
| put forward, and has been put forward in several of these | |
| Commission reports, is that the State Department has to improve | |
| its effectiveness, its competency. It has to pledge to make a | |
| thoroughgoing reform of the way it does business. | |
| At the same time, the Congress of the United States has to | |
| step forward and say we are prepared to increase the resources | |
| necessary to carry out the Nation's foreign policy. That brings | |
| me to my second and final point, and that is that we need more | |
| resources for the Department of State, and I hope that the | |
| Congress will respond generously to the request of the | |
| administration. | |
| I am encouraged by the increase that President Bush has | |
| asked for in his budget for the State Department, but from my | |
| point of view, frankly, if you look out over the longer term, | |
| over the four or five projected periods for the budget figures, | |
| I don't think you have got sufficient resources there. Even if | |
| you focus on the year 2002, where there is a substantial | |
| increase, and I think it is one of the three departments of | |
| government that does get a substantial increase in its budget | |
| from the President so it is in a strong position in the | |
| administration's point of view. But if you look at the request, | |
| a very large portion of that increase that is requested is | |
| going to be directed toward Colombia and the Andean situation. | |
| So a lot of it will be swallowed up there. | |
| I think President Bush's increase for the year 2002 is | |
| reduced significantly if you take into consideration the amount | |
| of money that will go to Colombia. But the major concern, I | |
| think, is not the year 2002, but it is the outyears. In short, | |
| there--if you measure it in constant dollars, the funding for | |
| international affairs, it peaks in the year 2002 and then | |
| declines in real terms by about a billion dollars a year for | |
| the next few years, I think until the year 2006. | |
| So I think it is going to take a lot more resources to meet | |
| the international affairs requirements of the United States. | |
| Secretary Powell has indicated he is prepared to make | |
| efficiencies and changes in the Department. I applaud that. I | |
| think there will be some economies there. There will be some | |
| efficiencies. Money will be saved. He commented this morning | |
| about reducing the number of special ambassadors or emissaries, | |
| and I think that is a step in the right direction. But I doubt | |
| very much if those changes for efficiency are going to be | |
| sufficient to free up enough money to meet the major demands | |
| and the needs of the Department in the years ahead. | |
| So to sum up, the State Department surely needs a number of | |
| reforms to develop and carry out U.S. foreign policy | |
| effectively. It must make those reforms. It is a matter of | |
| urgent national security, in my view. | |
| Secondly, the Congress, I hope, will provide additional | |
| resources for the Department, which it so urgently needs. | |
| Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. | |
| [The prepared statement of Senator Rudman and Mr. Hamilton | |
| follows:] | |
| Prepared Statement of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st | |
| Century | |
| Mr. Chairman, thank you for your invitation to testify before your | |
| committee and the opportunity it gives our Commission on National | |
| Security/21st Century to lend our support to Secretary Powell's call | |
| for a significant increase in the resources for the Department of | |
| State. | |
| Our Commission focused on this century's remarkable opportunities | |
| for increasing economic growth, spreading freedom, and ending conflict. | |
| But serious threats are also on the horizon from growing economic | |
| disparities, the spread of crime and violence, and the proliferation of | |
| dangerous weapons. The State Department and U.S. embassies overseas | |
| will be key to this nation's ability to respond to both the | |
| opportunities and dangers. Especially important will be funds to | |
| undertake preventive diplomacy, provide for the security of American | |
| officials abroad, remove the shortfalls in personnel and operating | |
| expenses, and install ``state of the art'' information technologies. | |
| The problem is that today the State Department is a crippled | |
| institution. It suffers, in particular, from an ineffective | |
| organizational structure where leadership and sound management are | |
| difficult to exercise. Responsibility and accountability are lacking. | |
| Foreign assistance programs and crisis response capabilities are | |
| dispersed among multiple State and AID officials. Strategic planning is | |
| divorced from the allocation of resources. | |
| As a result of these deficiencies, confidence in the Department is | |
| at an all-time low. A spiral of decay has unfolded over many years in | |
| which those in the Congress, reacting to inefficiencies with the | |
| Department, have consistently underfunded the nation's needs in the | |
| areas of representation overseas and foreign assistance. That | |
| underfunding, in turn, has deepened the State Department's | |
| inadequacies. The Commission believes strongly that this spiral must be | |
| reversed. | |
| Our Commission, in consultation with a wide variety of experts, | |
| came to the conclusion that what is needed is a fundamental | |
| restructuring of the Department. Only with such a complete overhaul can | |
| you in the Congress have confidence that the resources provided will be | |
| used effectively to carry out the nation's foreign policy in the 21st | |
| century. | |
| Mr. Bass. Thank you very much. The vote is still underway | |
| and I apologize for it. I think both of you are familiar with | |
| this. | |
| Senator Rudman. We are. | |
| Mr. Hamilton. We are, indeed. No apologies necessary. | |
| Mr. Bass. I have a couple of questions. First of all, I | |
| want to welcome my former Senator, Warren Rudman, who has not | |
| only been a great Senator but has continued to serve our | |
| country in many, many different ways, some of which I have had | |
| the pleasure of associating with him on, and I am glad to see | |
| you here today. | |
| Senator, I did not hear your testimony. Is, what is it 23 | |
| and change, $23 billion, enough for fiscal year 2002 for | |
| Function 150? | |
| Senator Rudman. Well, of course, we do not believe it is. | |
| However, as I said, I think as you were coming in to switch | |
| chairs with the other Congressman from New Hampshire--I think | |
| it is rather unique having the two New Hampshire congressmen | |
| chairing this committee this morning. | |
| Mr. Bass. Let's do a little business right now . | |
| Senator Rudman. I guess so. The gentleman from Texas has | |
| arrived. If you get the gentleman from Texas to work it out, | |
| you never know what you might accomplish. Right? | |
| I would say to you that it is not enough. However, we make | |
| it very clear in our report, which for anyone who would like to | |
| read the report, it is phase three of the report, there are two | |
| prior phases, we do have a Web site. I believe that we have had | |
| better than a million hits on that? | |
| Mr. Boyd. No, two and a half million. | |
| Senator Rudman. Two and a half million. According to Chuck | |
| Boyd, who was a four-star general, retired Air Force General, | |
| who has been our executive director, we have had two and a half | |
| million hits on that Web site. | |
| For anyone who is interested, it is www.NSSG.gov. The | |
| report is there and all of the recommendations. The curious | |
| thing, Mr. Chairman, is that there are roughly 50 | |
| recommendations. They are unanimously agreed on by a panel as | |
| diverse as Newt Gingrich and Andrew Young. So you have to | |
| understand that we have developed a strong consensus. | |
| Yes, we believe there are more resources needed but it | |
| seems to us that this should give the Secretary a chance, as we | |
| are coming into 2003 and 2004, to do the kind of reform that he | |
| is looking at, and in return for that reform the resources can | |
| be increased. | |
| There is no question, if you look at the diplomatic | |
| security requirements alone overseas, there is enormous | |
| additional funding that is needed. You can't do it all at once, | |
| but you certainly can do a lot of it over the next 4 years, | |
| assuming you get the reorganization or the restructuring that | |
| not only we have recommended but the Carlucci Commission has | |
| recommended as well. | |
| Lee may want to comment on that. | |
| Mr. Hamilton. No. | |
| Senator Rudman. Does that cover it? | |
| Mr. Bass. Is USAID consolidation basically the cornerstone | |
| of that reorganization? | |
| Senator Rudman. It is not the cornerstone, Mr. Chairman, | |
| but it is certainly important. I heard the Secretary's answer | |
| and I was not surprised at the answer. You come in as a new | |
| Secretary to a Department as complex as State and you are up to | |
| your eyeballs with a lot of problems. To take on a whole set of | |
| major reorganizations up front is going to divert you from your | |
| diplomatic responsibilities. | |
| Having said that, we believe the AID shift is important. We | |
| think it is overdue. We are not the first people to recommend | |
| it. We believe that it should be done and we believe the | |
| Secretary ought to be given the time he needs to sort all that | |
| out. | |
| Mr. Bass. One last question. As you well know, the Colombia | |
| Initiative is quasi-foreign relations, quasi-intelligence. It | |
| is transnational. What are your observations about that | |
| initiative and where it is and what you think we should be | |
| doing about it? It is not exactly germane to this hearing but I | |
| am curious to know, because I know that you have been chairing | |
| PFIAB for awhile. | |
| Senator Rudman. Correct. | |
| Mr. Bass. And have as good an understanding of the | |
| parameters of this issue as anybody. What are your observations | |
| about it and what do you think we should be doing? What is | |
| going well? What isn't? | |
| Senator Rudman. To be perfectly blunt about it, I don't | |
| think we know. We have put an enormous amount of money in that | |
| initiative and we just don't have the metrics to determine | |
| whether or not it is delivering what we want it to deliver. | |
| Having said that, I will tell you what I said privately to | |
| Congressman Hamilton as we were listening to the testimony this | |
| morning. I have long felt that with all the emphasis on | |
| attacking the supply side of the drug problem facing America, | |
| it is long overdue that this Congress take a strong look at the | |
| demand side. If it were not for all the Americans who want to | |
| use cocaine, we wouldn't have this problem. If we could attack | |
| the demand side, and I am not saying ignore the supply side, we | |
| ought to do it, all the helicopters and all of the troops and | |
| all of the intelligence in the world is not going to prevent | |
| this stuff from coming across our borders if the demand | |
| continues to escalate. | |
| Mr. Chairman, let me just say one other thing, which I | |
| should have said originally. No one has been more supportive of | |
| our work, particularly in the homeland defense area, than | |
| Congressman Mac Thornberry, and I want to thank him publicly | |
| for that. | |
| Mr. Bass. I have no further questions. | |
| Mr. Spratt. | |
| Mr. Spratt. I didn't have the advantage of hearing all of | |
| your testimony, but I have heard and read what you have had to | |
| say and it is very grim, very dramatic. You use the words like | |
| dysfunctional, ineffectual, a disconnect between strategic | |
| planning and actual funding. | |
| Given that diagnosis that you have both rendered, both of | |
| you sitting on different task forces and taking somewhat | |
| different perspectives but coming to the same conclusions, do | |
| you think we are looking at a budget that is adequate to the | |
| needs of the Department? Now, I know you are saying you have | |
| got to restructure, but can we do it with this kind of | |
| increase? | |
| Senator Rudman. Well, obviously, Congressman Spratt, what | |
| we have both said is the answer to that is no, but you have to | |
| start someplace and this is a significant increase, although it | |
| could be higher. But what I said, and I think Congressman | |
| Hamilton agrees, and I think the entire task force agrees, | |
| there is going to be a quid pro quo for the increases that the | |
| Congress is going to put into the State Department budget that | |
| ought to be--it doesn't have to be our organizational plan or | |
| the Carlucci plan, and, of course, Congressman Hamilton served | |
| on both the Carlucci panel and on NSSG. What we say is there | |
| has to be some functional reorganization that has rationality | |
| to it. | |
| We have met with the Secretary, and there is no question in | |
| my mind with his background he recognizes this very clearly, | |
| but you have to walk before you run. Thankfully, he is someone | |
| who is enormously respected. I believe he has captured the | |
| hearts and minds of the employees of the Department, from what | |
| I have been told. I think they want to help him get it done. | |
| There are also some embedded bureaucracies that are hard to | |
| budge. We can't expect the Secretary to do that overnight, but | |
| we do believe that reorganization ought to be one of the | |
| demands of the Congress, particularly the authorizing | |
| committees, as you proceed. | |
| Mr. Spratt. Lee, would you care to comment on that? | |
| Mr. Hamilton. Well, I am impressed, of course, by the fact | |
| that the Budget Committee has the toughest job in government, | |
| which is to try to establish priorities among hundreds of | |
| worthy and competing claims. | |
| We, Senator Rudman and I and the fellow commissioners, | |
| looked at this problem from the standpoint of whether there | |
| were adequate resources for the State Department. The answer to | |
| that is no; clearly, no. I really don't think reasonable people | |
| would disagree on that. | |
| Now, that doesn't solve your problem, because you have got | |
| a lot of other demands to consider. | |
| Let me give you two--I think there is today an absolute | |
| urgent need for hundreds of millions of dollars to improve the | |
| communication network of the State Department. We have a | |
| situation today that you would not tolerate in your | |
| congressional office; you would not tolerate it. You would be | |
| on the floor within 10 minutes to get more resources if you | |
| confronted the kind of problems they have in the State | |
| Department. They can't even communicate with one another by e- | |
| mail often in the same embassy. Hundreds of millions of dollars | |
| are needed there; not all in 1 year but over a period of time. | |
| The thing that Senator Rudman mentioned, I think Admiral | |
| Crowe, when he served on that Commission, recommended $1.3 | |
| billion a year for a multi-year period for embassy security. | |
| You take those two things alone, quite apart from the personnel | |
| and the decrepit state of many of the facilities, and I just | |
| think you need more resources. | |
| Mr. Spratt. What is the cost of upgrading the communication | |
| system? | |
| Mr. Hamilton. I have seen the figure of $330 million over a | |
| several-year period. I can't vouch for that, John. | |
| Mr. Spratt. Spread over several years or every year? | |
| Mr. Hamilton. No, spread over--you can't do it all in 1 | |
| year, but you are talking multimillion dollars, $300 million or | |
| $400 million over a 3- or 4-year period, a lot of money. | |
| Mr. Spratt. Well, you heard our just back-of-the-envelope | |
| break-down of this budget in the statement that I made in the | |
| opening hearing. They are asking for an increase of $1.3 | |
| billion, and that is not trivial. It is an increase of over 5 | |
| percent, but when you back out inflation, the CBO says that is | |
| $565 million. A lot of this money goes to salaries. They have | |
| COLAs attached to their salaries. In real terms, there is about | |
| $700 million left. When you back out a new initiative, | |
| expanding the Plan Colombia to several other Andean countries, | |
| you are down to about $300 million. | |
| Next year, when you are looking at outyears, you say well | |
| that is something; that is a start; you have to walk before you | |
| run, but when you look in the outyears, the very next year | |
| there is actually a cut of $100 million in the overall level of | |
| funding. In no year after that does the increasing reach 1 | |
| percent. | |
| Mr. Hamilton. Well, I think there will be some gains in | |
| efficiencies that the Secretary has emphasized, but I don't | |
| think those gains are going to be sufficient to meet the needs. | |
| My guess is they will be back in here requesting more money. | |
| They are going to need more money for Plan Colombia. They are | |
| not going to get by on the amount of money that is available | |
| today. They are going to see a substantial request for | |
| increases for Plan Colombia, I can almost bet on it, and I | |
| think you could, too. That has, of course, nothing to do with | |
| the fundamental infrastructure of the Department. | |
| Mr. Spratt. The point I was making to Secretary Powell, | |
| while he was here at the witness table and before the hearing, | |
| is that this is one of these pivotal years in the budget. The | |
| year 1990 was when we did the budget summit with President | |
| Bush; 1993 when President Clinton did his 5-year budget; 1997, | |
| the Balanced Budget Agreement. | |
| Well, we are in the 5th year of the BBA, the Balanced | |
| Budget Agreement. We need a new budget agreement and we are | |
| going to have substantial tax cuts, sizable tax cuts, and some | |
| major commitments made that will be multiyear for the budget. | |
| This is the time to register reality in Function 150. If you | |
| don't do it this year, you are going to be in competition in | |
| the outyears with other things, and there will be less | |
| resources to deal with the problem. | |
| Mr. Hamilton. If I read those figures right that I saw, by | |
| the year 2006 the international affairs budget will be the | |
| lowest it has been in 25 years; constant dollars, of course. | |
| Mr. Spratt. Thank you very much for your testimony. | |
| Mr. Bass. Mr. Thornberry. | |
| Mr. Thornberry. I thank the witnesses and appreciate the | |
| work that they have done so far, and the work that you all will | |
| continue to do, in pushing the ideas that are contained in your | |
| reports. | |
| Mr. Chairman, I think that the reports by this Commission | |
| should be required reading for nearly every Member of Congress, | |
| not just the recommendations that we are focusing on today but | |
| the two previous reports that talk about the ways the world is | |
| changing and the way that U.S. strategy ought to change or the | |
| way our thinking ought to change to be ready for it. | |
| I think it is very important work. As they say, on a | |
| bipartisan basis, which is pretty unusual to get all of this | |
| diverse group of very strong individuals together with the | |
| recommendations they come up with, I think we have to treat it | |
| very seriously. | |
| As I mentioned to Secretary Powell, I think there is no | |
| question that we are underfunded with the diplomatic efforts. | |
| But I also believe if we are going to substantially put more | |
| money into them, there has to be an assurance that those funds | |
| are used well, and that is why I believe that the point about | |
| more funding going hand-in-hand with reform is going to be | |
| critical, not just because it is the right thing to do, but | |
| because it is necessary to get it passed around here. I don't | |
| need to tell you all that. | |
| Could you elaborate a little bit on the rationale for your | |
| specific organizational suggestions within the Department of | |
| State, changing the way the bureaus report, because it is | |
| fairly significant? Did you look at whether we ought to make | |
| organizational changes all the way down to the embassy level; | |
| looking again at what officers we place in embassies and | |
| whether that reflects the realities of the 21st Century or | |
| whether they are there because of inertia? | |
| Senator Rudman. Let me take just a brief cut at that, and | |
| then let Lee respond as well. | |
| This organizational structure did not come out of the blue. | |
| Nor did it come out of the collective intellects of the | |
| commissioners and the staff. We had a working group, the names | |
| of whom are all available, of some of the great experts in all | |
| of these areas in this country, academic, retired folks, many | |
| Foreign Service people, people who had served at all levels of | |
| the Department. It was the unanimous feeling of almost everyone | |
| that there had to be a structural change in order to get | |
| accountability and deliverability of services from that | |
| Department, from its present structure. And, thus, the dialogue | |
| that one of you had with Secretary Powell in which he quite | |
| properly said that obviously he has got to study that and | |
| decide how and in what schedule and whether that is the change | |
| he wishes to make. | |
| Whether it is that precise structure or one that is | |
| different but meets the same level of efficiency compared to | |
| where we are now is what we are saying has to be done. | |
| I can imagine coming in to a new Department as Secretary of | |
| State is going to be a daunting task, and General Powell has | |
| enormous responsibilities. Having said that, one of the things | |
| we said in our meeting was that we do not believe the Congress | |
| collectively, and it was reflected in some of the comments of | |
| the members this morning, that Congress collectively will not | |
| do the kind of increase in funding that, for instance, | |
| Congressman Spratt is talking about, unless there is a sense on | |
| the part of the Congress that the criticisms of the Department | |
| structure by not only this Commission but many others are met | |
| in a direct way. One of the best places to look, in our view, | |
| is AID. That may take a lot of time, but we believe, and I can | |
| tell you from my own experience as Chairman of the Commerce, | |
| State, Justice Committee of the Senate Appropriations | |
| Committee, for a long stretch of time that I felt that back in | |
| the 1980's, let alone now. | |
| It is such a powerful lobby in some way that you just can't | |
| get it done, but the time to do it in our view is now. | |
| Now, the Secretary has got to come around to that point of | |
| view and obviously if he doesn't then you have a problem, but | |
| our view is that that is a good example. | |
| Finally, if you look at the whole report, the way the | |
| individual embassies are structured. In fact, the ambassadors | |
| do have some problems. The ambassadors, they get a lot of folks | |
| who really don't feel like they report to them. But I think | |
| General Powell, from his whole theory of leadership, is going | |
| to change that. | |
| Mr. Hamilton. Mac, we really do appreciate the interest you | |
| have taken in the report, and we thank you for it. Your | |
| leadership has been very important to the Commission. I think | |
| the Commission, unique so far as I know among other | |
| commissions, made very specific recommendations on reform of | |
| the structure of the Department. You may have seen the charts. | |
| We actually drew organizational charts there. | |
| We had the support of very good staff, including, for | |
| example, Lynn Davis, who was the staff director for phase three | |
| of the report. She served as an Under Secretary in the State | |
| Department for a period of time. | |
| Secretary Powell said while he was here that he had reduced | |
| some of the layers of bureaucracy, cutting out 22, 23 positions | |
| of the so-called special envoys. So he is moving in the right | |
| direction. That is an important step. | |
| Our fundamental recommendation on the Commission, I think, | |
| was that we needed to integrate policy more in the regional | |
| bureaus. We think the Department's functional and regional | |
| divisions have to be integrated more tightly so that there is | |
| less overlap, less duplication, a clear line of responsibility. | |
| I think you would get a more coherent mechanism for making | |
| policy with that kind of a change. | |
| Now, as Secretary Powell correctly said, it is a highly | |
| controversial proposal, and we were well aware of that when we | |
| made it. We put it out there as one way we think the Department | |
| ought to go. It is not the only way by any means, but quite | |
| frankly our major interest is in getting serious attention to | |
| the issue of organizing this Department so that it can become | |
| more effective. | |
| May I also say that one thing appealing to me in what | |
| Secretary Powell has said is his very heavy emphasis on using | |
| existing staff, the existing Foreign Service officers and | |
| people. I think he is correct on that, because they are, as a | |
| group, a very capable group of people. | |
| Mr. Thornberry. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Bass. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Price. | |
| Mr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Let me add my word of welcome, Senator, and Lee Hamilton. | |
| Glad to see you back here. | |
| Mr. Hamilton. Thank you. | |
| Mr. Price. I appreciate the work you have done on this | |
| Commission and the contribution you have made to our | |
| discussions here today. | |
| Senator, I want to especially commend you, too, on your | |
| service often through your leadership in the Concord Coalition | |
| in offering a reality check that we very much need these days | |
| as we debate the desirability and the feasibility of a $2 | |
| trillion tax cut and what the implications of that would be for | |
| our long-term action. | |
| Senator Rudman. If you ask me about that this morning, I am | |
| going to take the Fifth before this committee. | |
| Mr. Price. That is right. Therefore, I am going to register | |
| my appreciation and move on. I know you are not here for that | |
| purpose. | |
| I would like to take advantage of your presence here today | |
| to move beyond the report a bit and ask you to talk more | |
| generally about foreign affairs funding and foreign aid | |
| funding, in particular, as it relates to other aspects of | |
| Function 150. | |
| I don't know how useful these overall statistics are. I am | |
| sure you are familiar with them. The U.S. ranks 22nd in the | |
| world in foreign aid as a percent of GNP; and our level of aid | |
| as a percentage of GNP is a quarter of the average percentage | |
| among developed countries. | |
| I suppose those overall statistics are interesting, but I | |
| suspect the truly significant questions have to do with the | |
| purposes and the direction of foreign aid and what it achieves | |
| for our country and the directions we ought to take and what | |
| the budget implications of that are. | |
| It actually was surprising to me to learn, and this comes | |
| from a recent CRS memorandum, that while Function 150 overall | |
| is below the historical average of the last 25 years, measured | |
| in constant dollars, funding for what is known as the conduct | |
| of foreign affairs such as the State Department, our embassies | |
| and consulates, our payments to the U.N., has actually has | |
| increased over time. You have highlighted, I think quite | |
| appropriately, the inadequacy of those expenditures. Goodness | |
| knows, we do not always deal with them up here in the most | |
| orderly fashion. | |
| We have, of course, Function 150 split, for starters, | |
| between two appropriations subcommittees, and then the | |
| diplomatic spending for the most part is part of an omnibus | |
| Commerce, Justice, State bill where there are all kinds of | |
| trade-offs against unrelated functions. It is hard to focus | |
| sometimes in the way that we should. | |
| I am very much encouraged by Secretary Powell's emphasis on | |
| embassy security, on information technology, on the kinds of | |
| investments it is going to take to make our overseas | |
| establishment work in the way that it should. I think that is | |
| long overdue. | |
| What about the rest of that Function 150 spending? We spend | |
| considerably less for true foreign aid than we historically | |
| have over the last 25 years, and if you are going to increase | |
| funding for embassy security and improving the State | |
| Department's information infrastructure, it appears inevitable | |
| that this trend of decreased foreign aid, will in fact | |
| continue. At least that is the anticipation in this budget | |
| outline that we have now. | |
| So I don't know if you want to speak in quantitative or | |
| qualitative terms. I would welcome your reflection on either | |
| level, the aggregate amounts that we are devoting to this | |
| purpose or the kinds of recommendations that come out of your | |
| deliberations as to what the purpose and the direction of this | |
| aid should be. I would welcome your reflections on both the | |
| quantity and the quality of our foreign aid spending as we look | |
| into the next 5 years. | |
| Senator Rudman. Well, Congressman, one of the real | |
| problems, and you have referred to it is something that we are | |
| probably not going to be able to change, and that is the split | |
| jurisdiction over 150. I will tell you that I don't think that | |
| is helpful in terms of taking an integrated approach to how you | |
| deliver 150 funds. | |
| I chaired, as I said earlier, the Commerce, State--we then | |
| called it the State, Commerce, Justice Subcommittee of the | |
| Senate Appropriations Committee. Of course, we had another | |
| subcommittee which is called the Foreign Operations | |
| Subcommittee. We divided those numbers, but there were | |
| sometimes questions as to where something might belong. | |
| The foreign aid issue is historically, I think, the | |
| toughest one for Members of Congress. My take on it is fairly | |
| straightforward, and I don't want to deal in quantitative terms | |
| because I frankly haven't looked at those numbers in the last | |
| couple of years. Qualitatively, the only approach that you can | |
| take as a Member, it seems to me, and as a committee, is to | |
| look at the two parts which really are linked in many ways. | |
| One, purely humanitarian United States foreign aid, of which | |
| there has been a lot in the last few years; and secondly, that | |
| foreign aid which may even be humanitarian but in other ways is | |
| very much in America's own interest. | |
| I can tell you, coming from New Hampshire, which is a | |
| fairly educated and informed State, that it is a hard sell from | |
| the town meetings that I held. Yet, I think Members of Congress | |
| have to take the lead in this area because obviously there are | |
| places in this world that if America does not use its influence | |
| through aid of various kinds, much of which, by the way, is | |
| furnished in U.S. goods rather than money, then I think it is | |
| going to hurt us severely over the long-term. | |
| I have been concerned about the fall-off in some of the | |
| foreign aid accounts, not these last couple of years, I haven't | |
| looked at them, but in the early to mid-1990's where I thought | |
| we were doing ourselves a disservice. So the only answer I can | |
| give you is that it is one of those things where Members of | |
| Congress cannot expect their constituents to necessarily tell | |
| them what they want done because they don't necessarily have | |
| the information of what they want done and it is up to Members | |
| of Congress who understand the issue to lead. I would like to | |
| see more foreign aid in certain areas of this world that I | |
| think would come back to benefit the United States by the | |
| creation of jobs and by the creating of democracies which would | |
| be supportive of American values. | |
| That is a qualitative look. I am not going to get involved | |
| in numbers this morning. I am just not that close to them | |
| anymore. | |
| Mr. Price. Thank you. | |
| Senator Rudman. I hope that is the answer. I hope that is | |
| responsive to your question. | |
| Mr. Price. That is helpful. I am certainly not about to try | |
| to change the appropriations jurisdictions that we are dealing | |
| with here. I do think, though, given the way those | |
| jurisdictions are set up, it does require a special effort and | |
| a special emphasis to give the State Department in particular | |
| the kind of attention and priority that it deserves. I also | |
| appreciate your political observations. That is one area where | |
| I think there has been way too much political heat and not | |
| enough light. Most of our constituents vastly overestimate the | |
| money that goes into foreign assistance. If there is any area | |
| where our interpretation and our leadership is required, I | |
| think it is that one. | |
| Senator Rudman. I would respond with one further thing that | |
| comes to mind. At a town meeting I held in New Hampshire toward | |
| the end of my service, I asked them how they thought we ought | |
| to balance the budget, what we ought to cut. The three items | |
| that were unanimous in this town, it was a very well-educated | |
| town, were, number one, foreign aid and, number two, | |
| congressional travel; and I forgot what the third one was but I | |
| did some calculation. Foreign aid was one half of 1 percent of | |
| the budget that year, if not less. Congressional travel was not | |
| even measurable to the fifth decimal point. So there is some | |
| educating that has to be done. | |
| Mr. Price. Yes, indeed. | |
| Mr. Hamilton. | |
| Mr. Hamilton. I think a President of the United States, | |
| when he conducts American foreign policy, has very few tools | |
| available to him. He has the diplomatic tool. He has the | |
| military tool. He has economic power. Foreign aid is one of the | |
| tools that is available to a President. By no means is it the | |
| most important tool available to him, but I think it is a very | |
| important tool in the conduct of American foreign policy. | |
| There are all kinds of situations a President confronts | |
| where he sees the need for American resources to help deal with | |
| problems abroad. Just think of the things that we want to try | |
| to accomplish in our foreign policy. We want to promote | |
| democracy and human rights. How do you do that without | |
| assistance to the right people and the right places? | |
| We want to support economic development around the world. | |
| We think there is a national interest in that. How do you do | |
| that if you don't have some kind of economic reform assistance | |
| in areas of the world that need it? | |
| We want to meet a whole array of transnational challenges, | |
| such as proliferation of weapons. If you ask me where should we | |
| devote the largest increase of money for national security, I | |
| would tell you we need to spend it on reducing the nuclear | |
| weapons and nuclear technology and capabilities in Russia | |
| today. I think the largest payoff for the national security of | |
| the United States for a dollar spent would be in reduction of | |
| those nuclear capabilities in Russia. That is foreign aid. | |
| We want to deal with drugs. We want to deal with | |
| international crime. We want to deal with the environmental | |
| problems. All of these things require some foreign aid. | |
| Now, Senator Rudman is exactly right. It has no | |
| constituency. As a politician, you have got to take on the | |
| burden to fight for it, and an increase is very tough to do. | |
| But on the other hand, I don't think there are very many | |
| Members who were defeated, that I can recall, just because they | |
| voted for foreign aid or even voted for an increase in foreign | |
| aid. | |
| One of the reasons I think the AID ought to be brought in | |
| to the State Department is because you need more coordination | |
| of your foreign assistance. It is a tool that the President | |
| requires to conduct American foreign policy, and he ought to be | |
| able to coordinate it through a Secretary of State, I believe. | |
| So I think that organizational change we recommend is | |
| important. | |
| So, David, in terms of specifics, I am prepared, as I did | |
| throughout any career, I am prepared to vote for increases in | |
| foreign aid because I am committed to it and I think it is an | |
| important part of American foreign policy. I know that is not | |
| the accepted view in Congress but I think some voices have to | |
| come out in support of it because it is desperately needed. | |
| Now, it should be spent effectively. It should be spent | |
| efficiently. You have to target it. There are plenty of | |
| problems in the foreign assistance program. I am much aware of | |
| that. But if you ask me do you need additional resources today | |
| in foreign assistance, I come down solidly on the side that you | |
| do. | |
| Mr. Price. Thank you very much. I do think you have | |
| underscored some considerations that really very much need to | |
| be factored in as we look at this Function 150 down the road | |
| and try to repair its inadequacies. Thank you very much. Thanks | |
| to both of you. | |
| Mr. Bass. Mr. Gutknecht. | |
| Mr. Gutknecht. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| I want to thank our distinguished panelists for coming | |
| today and for sharing. We apologize we have votes and a lot of | |
| other meetings going on. That does not mean that what you are | |
| here for and what you are working on is not extremely | |
| important, and we thank you for that. | |
| It did strike me, Senator Rudman, something that you said | |
| about congressional travel. I do have to say that that is | |
| always a sore subject, but I also will tell you, as a member of | |
| the Congressional Study Group on Germans, the Germans come over | |
| here quite frequently, members of the Budestag. It is | |
| interesting, one of the questions they asked me one time when | |
| they were over here, they said is it true that only a third of | |
| your Members have passports? And when I said, yes, I think that | |
| is true, they were just amazed. | |
| So I do think that there certainly probably are some | |
| excesses but the truth of the matter is when we are making | |
| decisions that have worldwide impact, there is some benefit for | |
| Members having some idea what really is happening in some of | |
| these foreign countries we are involved with. | |
| I do want to come to a fairly, I think, important question | |
| relative to the whole idea of foreign aid, and I think one of | |
| the ways that it makes it much more palatable to the folks back | |
| home if they begin to see some benefits. I have been a strong | |
| supporter of the Food for Peace Program and some of the other | |
| things, because at the end some of our farmers can see some of | |
| that benefit. It strikes me that people like you can be | |
| extremely helpful to us of at least demonstrating to the folks | |
| back home once in awhile that it isn't just always pouring | |
| money into corrupt dictators that use it to ingratiate | |
| themselves but that many times the money that we give foreign | |
| countries is used to buy products produced here in the United | |
| States. | |
| At some point, I think we have to do a better job of | |
| explaining that side of the story. More of a comment than a | |
| question, but people like you could be extremely helpful in | |
| making that case to the farmers and folks back home. | |
| Senator Rudman. Well, the numbers are overwhelming, as you | |
| know, Congressman. The money is spent mainly in U.S. groups, | |
| and FMS, foreign military sales, is 100 percent; or at least it | |
| has been in the past. | |
| Mr. Gutknecht. I yield back. | |
| Chairman Nussle [presiding]. Mr. Spratt. | |
| Mr. Spratt. Just to wrap it up, one of the reasons we have | |
| been critical of the budget request this morning is that the | |
| kind of support for foreign aid and foreign operations you are | |
| talking about has to start at the top; both parties, both the | |
| executive branch and the Congress, that is traditionally the | |
| way this account has been protected in the past. You know the | |
| 302(b) allocation process, being part of it as an appropriator, | |
| and this was one of the ways that this Function 150 is always | |
| protected from any kind of devastating cuts and basically | |
| plussed up each year, not by grand amounts but the leadership | |
| looked after it. | |
| You are not going to get big increases percolating up from | |
| the back benches of the House or, I think for that matter, from | |
| junior Senators. It has to be supported by the leadership and | |
| it has to start with the President and the Secretary of State | |
| who have to tell the people emphatically this is in our | |
| interest. It is a lot easier for them to do it than it is for | |
| those of us who come from small communities to go back and | |
| explain it to our constituents. We will stand our ground but | |
| they have to lead the way, and I think that is the kind of | |
| message I have been trying to deliver today. | |
| Senator Rudman, I was going to ask for a unanimous consent | |
| to put your Concord Coalition statement in the record, but out | |
| of respect to your Fifth Amendment rights I will decline to do | |
| that. | |
| Senator Rudman. That is for another time, Congressman. We | |
| do appreciate all of your support for the Coalition. | |
| Mr. Spratt. Thank you, sir. | |
| Chairman Nussle. Gentlemen, thank you so much for coming. I | |
| wish I could have been here to hear the testimony. I know of | |
| both of your work, both here in Congress as well as with regard | |
| to your recommendations. We really appreciate all the work that | |
| you are doing and just want to thank you also for coming to | |
| testify before the committee today and giving us your | |
| recommendations. | |
| Senator Rudman. Thank you. We are honored to be here. | |
| Mr. Hamilton. Thank you, sir. Pleasure to be here. | |
| Chairman Nussle. The hearing is adjourned. | |
| [Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] | |
| <all> | |
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