State Department official defends layoffs and the dismantling of foreign aid agency : NPR

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A senior State Department official was today in Capitol Hill to defend the recent layoffs and the dismantling of the lead agency in the United States, some Democrats see the movements of the Trump administration as a gift to China, which strengthens its diplomacy in the world. NPR Michele Kelemen’s reports.

Michele Kelemen, Byline: Only a few days after having dismissed 1,300 civil and external services agents, the assistant secretary of state for management Michael Rigas explained that it was a question of rationalizing the bureaucracy.

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Michael Rigas: No one wants to drop someone. I don’t think we are taking joy to dismiss people or any kind of reduction in force. But we have to do what is best for the mission. We have to do what is best for the organization.

Kelemen: But the Democrats of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have challenged the way it was done, forcing civil servants, a lot with decades of experience. New Jersey Cory Booker Senator called her completely unacceptable.

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Cory Booker: I know what it means to make a Rif right. But it was chaos. It was cruelty. And your answers, frankly, lacked decency.

Kelemen: Booker stressed that the State Department had dismissed officers about to embark on new assignments abroad, one of which was moving to Pakistan. There were also two consular officers who were part of a quick response team.

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Booker: The quick response officers you have drawn were both actively deployed, leaving one blocked in Colombia and the other in Ankara without access to their emails or phones and without plane tickets.

Kelemen: Intelligence analysts on Russia and Ukraine have been released, he says, just like a chemical arms expert at a time when the United States tries to help the new Syrian government locate and destroy stocks. It was the second consecutive day that Rigas was facing such criticism from Democrats. On Tuesday, the classification member of the Chamber’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Gregory Meeks, castigated him for not keeping the congress in the loop.

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Gregory Meeks: Let’s be clear. You have created the greatest brains’s brains in the modern history of the State Department, which occurring while China and others widen their global footprint while we shrink ours.

Kelemen: In the hearings of the Chamber and the Senate, Rigas faced questions on the disappearance of the American agency for international development and how it affected farmers and American companies who provide food aid. The member of the Gabe AMO Congress, a democrat of Rhode Island, says that it costs taxpayers more money to incinerate food that has expired in warehouses, foods intended for hungry children abroad.

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Gabe Amo: So what’s the plan?

Rigas: We will make sure that this will not happen again, that’s what the plan is.

AMO: Well, the delicately 15% dismissal is not a plan because these people, these experts you get rid of, I am sure you would have a role to make sure that your plan was viable and that you could let American leadership shine. It is therefore a failure.

Kelemen: Deputy Secretary Rigas says that the department has managed to reduce staff by 15% to headquarters. Some Republicans have urged her to go further with cuts.

Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.

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