Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would reduce the salary of Victoria Nuland to $1. She is currently the Acting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

Presidents have come and gone. Victoria Nuland remains at the State Department. She last served in four administrations as a pillar of the State Department. Normally, such a long period of service would be marked with gratitude, so why propose to effectively remove her?

President Eisenhower cautioned us about people like Victoria Nuland who would put their own interest at odds with America's interests.

We have come to call them endless wars or an ``America Last'' foreign policy, but Eisenhower called it the ``military-industrial complex.''

She is exhibit A on how America could actually get in fewer wars if we cleaned house at the State Department and had a more focused foreign policy.

Officially, the State Department is supposed to promote America's interests. If anyone at the State Department has represented the neoconservative consensus that has left America less free, less safe, and more burdened by debt over this last generation, it is Secretary Nuland.

She hangs the American people out to dry while escalating tensions and pushing through regime change everywhere she can find an opportunity.

From 2003 to 2005, Nuland served as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. She championed the Iraq war and created the case for regime change and nation-building, though the official threat was weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism.

From 2005 to 2008, during President Bush's second term, Nuland served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO where she concentrated on strengthening allied support for NATO intervention in Iraq, dramatically expanding the scope of NATO.

In 2011, Nuland became the State Department's spokesperson under Hillary Clinton. Yet again, she cheered for another regime change, this time in Libya. Her campaign led to toppling the government, the murder of Muammar Gaddafi and an enormous and ongoing refugee crisis, frankly one that continues out of Iraq, as well.

Similar to the effects in Iraq, this intervention turned a once- stable Libya into a failed terrorist state.

What was Nuland and the uniparty's response?

Well, in the words of Hillary Clinton, ``We came. We saw. He died.'' They left out the part about chaos and instability.

Rather than a solution to create and promote peace, they have promoted chaos and disorder. Immediately after, her newest narrative to justify, a regime change in Syria began. We still have U.S. troops in Syria, though that is a more effective way to fight ISIS than the way we fought for nation-building in Iraq.

In 2013, Nuland was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. While she couldn't get brigades of armor deployed to Syria like she did in Iraq, she swiftly started destabilizing things in Ukraine. She used this position to meddle in Ukraine's elections, manage violent protests on the ground, facilitate a coup, and in addition, she began to campaign for NATO expansion.

In 2017, Nuland played an active role in spreading actual disinformation via the Steele dossier, whose claims had no factual basis.

Nuland has never been held responsible for any of these actions. Instead she has been elevated as the face of Washington's uniparty foreign policy agenda. Wherever she goes, war follows.

Sadly, those wars have been in conflict with America's national security interest. She spent her time in the Biden administration as an avid supporter for regime change in Russia. In addition, she has been vocal about her desire to transform NATO into an offensive treaty that projects power around the world.

Her actions have yielded disastrous results for the American people, and it is far beyond time that she is held accountable. This amendment is a great place to start.

I urge my colleagues to support it, and I urge the Biden administration to part ways with Secretary Nuland.

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Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Chair, I appreciate my colleague's comments.

Frankly, I hope that is the message that is received. If you came to serve the United States Government to advance your own interests instead of the Nation's, I hope you choose not to go into the Foreign Service.

That is exactly the message I want to send to Victoria Nuland and everyone else in the State Department.

Frankly, I hope we go far beyond this and eliminate whole sections and floors of the current staff there. This amendment is a start, not a finish line.

Mr. Chair, I urge all of my colleagues to support the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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