Hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee - Fiscal Year 2009 Appropriations for Agencies Under State Department Jurisdiction

Interview

SEN. LEAHY: Good morning.

Madame Secretary, we appreciate you being here. This is the last time you're going to be appearing before us. I think I heard the sigh of relief all the way up here, but I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your service to our nation. While we've had some strong disagreements with this administration's handling of foreign policy, you've always been willing to discuss those differences with all the members of this committee. And you and your staff have been helpful on issues when there's a problem, and you've also brought the added weight of your office when it's been helpful to get some of these things resolved.

I want to take this opportunity -- it would probably embarrass her to be singled out in public -- but to express on behalf of myself, my staff and this committee our gratitude to Cindy Chang in your Office of Legislative Affairs. In my 34 years here I've seen many dedicated, very capable people in this position, but Ms. Chang has set a new standard. She's been absolutely tireless, extraordinarily efficient, totally devoted, day and night, seven days a week, to her work and the people she served at the State Department, the Congress, the American people and people around the world. We've relied on her every single day, and I saw her in action when she accompanied one of our codels to the Middle East -- did an outstanding job making sure that we knew what the position of the department was at all points.

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SEN. LEAHY: Now, one concern I do have is where our international reputation is today. Every time we raise issues of democracy or human rights with Iran or Sudan or Russia or China, they want to talk about what's occurred and continues in prisons at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Each time we vote for another United Nations peacekeeping mission -- which this administration's done many times, and I applaud you for it -- but then when the president's budget comes, there's not enough money in the budget to pay for it.

Each time we challenge nations to protect the environment and reduce global warming, they ask who are we to lecture them when the United States wastes more energy than many countries even use.

The next president's going to inherit two of the most vexing foreign policy challenges in half a century in Iraq and Afghanistan. Everything -- almost everything -- predicted in Iraq has proven false, and what a terrible price we're paying for it. In Afghanistan, we've seen the resurgence of the Taliban and al Qaeda and a reconstruction program that suffers from too many problems to count.

Now, the president when he came in said he didn't believe in nation building, which of course has always been the State Department's job. And when he came in and began with nation building, the Department of Defense has taken over more and more of the job of nation building. Whether we should or should not be involved in nation building, I believe it should be the Department of State doing that, not the Department of Defense.

I know the administration sees things differently, that progress is being made, and of course there are examples that can be made of progress. But I worry that the credibility and the enduring principles, the image of this country have been and need again the resources of great strength and leadership for the United States.

I'm deeply concerned that in a few short years we have lost much of what our predecessors fought and died for.

If we were safer as a result, that might be tolerable. I don't think we are, and the budget which we're here to discuss today is a statement of our priorities. The decisions we make can show tangible opportunities, show the world another face of America.

In my notes, your fiscal year 2009 budget request has much in it that I support and much in it that you and I have worked together on for years. But it also contains some disturbing shortcomings which we need to discuss.

I'd like nothing more than to pass that bill on schedule. I think just because it's an election year to write this off would be a mistake, and I think you agree with that. You're working hard seven days a week, long hours. I don't think you expect to take a break because it's an election year, nor do we.

So to begin with that work, I will yield back the rest of my time and yield to Senator Gregg.

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SEN. LEAHY: Madame Secretary, there are six months before the November election, and I've already discussed the fact that neither you nor I want the world to come to an end while we wait for that, so we have your budget request for 2009.

Can you tell me what the most urgent challenges would face your successor or management and programmatic needs, and are those adequately addressed in this budget?

SEC. RICE: Thank you, Senator.

If I could use a -- rather than talking about specific issues, I think we know there are multiple issues in this rather turbulent world that will --

SEN. LEAHY: But there are going to be -- some issues are going to be sitting on his or her desk --

SEC. RICE: Yes.

SEN. LEAHY: -- on day one, and do we have the adequate resources to address them?

SEC. RICE: I think obviously the -- to try and have a sustainable position in Afghanistan and Iraq is going to be very critical, and we will try to use the next nine months to do that.

But I think it speaks to a larger issue, which is in fact covered in our budget, which is the ability of the State Department to exercise its role in what is a fundamentally different world now. This is not a world now in which diplomats simply report on what is going on in the capitals. It's not a world in which diplomats are mostly engaged in government-to-government relations. It's a world in which diplomats are in provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan and Iraq, literally embedded with our armed forces and on the front lines trying to help in governance, trying to help in reconstruction. It's a world in which our diplomats have to be able to go, as they did during the earthquake in Pakistan, up into the remote regions of Pakistan to help with reconstruction and relief. It's a world in which they have to go into the villages of Guatemala to help with the programs that we're running to help farmers move from subsistence.

And so, Senator, if I could focus on one thing, it would be making sure that we are doing  that we have a large enough diplomatic corps, USAID corps, compensated properly, dealing with the concerns about family, and I think -- and giving them safe and secure facilities in which to engage.

SEN. LEAHY: Let me talk about that. I think we do not have -- we have staff in trailers in Baghdad. There's -- that's the most expensive embassy ever, $1.5 billion just in operating costs, yet we still have staff sitting in trailers and not in the more secure area. I do agree with you that we have cut back so far -- or have not kept up the appropriate increase in the number of Foreign Service officers, and I worry about what happens.

You mentioned Afghanistan. The Taliban and al Qaeda have regrouped there. President Karzai's government effectively controls only a very small portion of the country. The "Marshall Plan" for Afghanistan that many of us supported never materialized. You have -- corruption's a huge problem. The vast bulk of our aid goes in the form of huge contracts to U.S. forprofit companies, and I would feel far more comfortable if we had our own professionals from the State Department and USAID handling it.

I mean, there has been some progress, of course. There's more boys and girls in school. The army's being rebuilt. Access to health care has increased significantly.

But when you see the Taliban and al Qaeda regrouping, I worry, should we do more? I mean, do you -- is the best way to give contracts to half a dozen companies, hundreds of millions of dollars, or would we be a lot better off if we had our own people doing that?

SEC. RICE: Well, I think it's a mix, Senator.

As I said at the beginning, I do think that, for instance, in the '90s when the numbers for USAID have gone over the last couple decades from 5,000 to 1,000 that we've just cut to the bone.

SEN. LEAHY: Well, and then you go to -- you add to there, you had international disaster. You've talked about that. And this is one of the best places to show America's face is when there is a disaster. In fiscal year 2008, including the supplemental, we appropriated $429 million for international disaster. That was more than what the president asked for, but it was still 25 percent less than fiscal 2007.

Now we're told it leaves a shortfall of about $200 million. The president is not asking for any additional funding.

The Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance said it's preparing to cut back programs by 25 percent. That's 25 percent less for emergency shelter, food and water and so on.

I mean, this has always struck me as an area where we show the best face of America.

SEC. RICE: Yes, Senator, there are competing budget priorities, but I think that we will  the president will submit both in budget and I think ultimately probably we're looking at in supplementals what we need to do in terms of the disaster relief and also the food assistance, which --

SEN. LEAHY: But --

SEC. RICE: We're suffering greatly just from the costs of food stocks. May I just 

SEN. LEAHY: Sure, go ahead.

SEC. RICE: -- just on the issue of food, one thing that would help us enormously in what are now very stressed food budgets is if we could purchase locally. And this is something the president has proposed, and that would be very, very --

SEN. LEAHY: I agree with you on that. I think that we're spending far too much money shipping food. This will probably drive some of the agricultural constituents up the wall. We're spending far too much money shipping and the way we do it. We should be doing far more to create the food and the infrastructure to raise the food locally.

But you talk about moving money around. You're asking for an additional $822 million for Iraq reconstruction programs. That doesn't include an additional $1.5 billion you're requesting to pay for operating our huge new embassy, which is already too small for the 1,100 people posted there.

Oil is at an all-time high. We're told that Iraq is taking in about $4 billion a month in oil revenues, about $50 billion a year, which is more than they have the capacity to spend. Should we try asking them to start paying for some of the share -- we don't have money.

What struck me -- and I told you about the trip I took to Minnesota this weekend and looked at the bridge that collapsed. You know, we don't have the money to look at the bridges in America. We don't have money to rebuild our infrastructure in America, but we're asking for billions more to rebuild infrastructure in Iraq. And yet they're getting huge oil revenues. Shouldn't they pay some of that themselves and not the American taxpayers?

SEC. RICE: Senator, the Iraqis do need to spend their own money. And Ryan Crocker I think yesterday talked about the fact that we are largely out of the large-scale reconstruction business now. The Iraqis are taking that on.

We are trying to help them improve their budget execution so that in fact the money gets to where it's supposed to be, and much of the money that we're spending now is for that kind of programming. It's to improve their capacity, to improve their ability to execute so that they in fact can spend their own funding.

But we are largely getting out of the large-scale reconstruction.

SEN. LEAHY: Well, you come back and ask for nearly a billion just in a supplemental above what you'd already asked for for reconstruction. Now, that's what troubles me.

SEC. RICE: Senator, it's a different kind of effort that we're making now. What we're trying to do, this is part of a counterinsurgency approach, which is that when you go into an area  for instance, the provincial reconstruction team goes into an area where we're trying to build capacity outside of Baghdad, it's important that they be able to work with the governance structures. It's important that we have some programs and some funding that we can put into helping those people build capacity, helping them do small -- smaller -- quick-acting projects so that people who have thrown -- as is the case, for instance, in the Sunni heartland in Al Anbar -- who've thrown al Qaeda out of their communities can see quick-acting results. But we've always told the Iraqis that they also have to spend their money. And they've budgeted in their 2008 budget, which they did pass, $49 billion, a significant portion of which is reconstruction funding.

So I think you will see that they will take up reconstruction more and more; they will take up their security costs more and more, that our programs will be aimed at capacity building and quick-acting projects that really we're better to do.

SEN. LEAHY: Well, we may have some disagreements. I see the price of oil go up. I see them having the revenues. I don't see much being spent. Let us hope it is.

Senator Gregg.

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SEN. LEAHY: It's interesting what Senator Gregg has raised. I read in the paper about these tens of billions of dollars we've agreed to give Egypt and Israel, and that's the only place I've heard about it has been the paper; nobody from the administration has talked to me, even though this committee has to come up with that money, or where -- whether we're to cut disaster relief or maternal health in the poorest nations in the world or where we find the money to do this agreement.

You've agreed with Senator Gregg on helping Jordan. I happen to agree with that very much; there's no money in this budget for that, either. I wish just once if you're going to be agreeing with all this money to all these countries, especially 10-year agreements, that somebody would take -- I don't know, a minute, two minutes --we're talking about tens and tens of billions -- to talk to the people who actually have to find the money and appropriate it.

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SEN. LEAHY: Thank you. I might mention to Senator Brownback, I agree with him on the neglected diseases that we've increased funding sevenfold a couple of years ago on that area. We increased it again for 2008. And that's what we committed to do this, and we're going to -- we're talking about elephantitis and river blindness and those things. And we'll keep on putting money -- and I think it's extremely important. I know you agree.

SEC. RICE: Yes, Senator, if I may, I should have mentioned, the president when he was in Africa did announce an initiative on neglected tropical diseases of about $100 million, if my memory serves correctly. And so it is something that we are also very concerned about.

SEN. LEAHY: But like the initiatives we hear announced on Egypt and Israel and everywhere else, make sure the money goes in the budget, too, because often, we're --

SEC. RICE: I think it's there, Senator.

SEN. LEAHY: Well, for example, you requested $275 million in supplemental aid for the estimated 4 million Iraqis who are refugees or internally displaced. We've talked about that a bit.

The international relief agencies who are also involved in this said the needs are far greater. They say our share is more like 450 to 500 million (dollars).

I've written to the president, along with several others, asking them for a budget amendment to address this. Now, I think we have a moral obligation to these people. Are we going to get a request for the additional money?

SEC. RICE: Senator, we do have in supplemental funding requests on the Iraqi refugees. We believe that it's appropriate to the tasks that we have. We're trying to do several things. We're trying to help U.N. relief agencies. We're trying to help the countries involved. We even have some direct assistance to refugees, and of course, the Iraqi government has undertaken some obligations as well. I think our biggest problem right now is to try to increase our ability to process people.

SEN. LEAHY: Do you feel the amount of money requested is adequate?

SEC. RICE: I believe that to the needs that we see at this time, those resources are adequate -- but, of course, it's something we watch and gauge all the time, and we wouldn't be shy to ask for more if we needed it.

SEN. LEAHY: Because it worries me that we processed them very, very slowly for a while. We finally moved some consular people out into other areas where they could, but -- we can talk more about that. I've raised issues -- everything from scholar rescue to the large numbers -- I've visited the refugee camps in Jordan and elsewhere -- the Iraqis are. This is going to be a horrible and festering problem, assuming that fighting ever stops in Iraq, of what we're going to do with all these people.

Now, we spoke about aid to President Uribe and I've met with him many times; I have very high regard for him and the efforts he's made, and I've told him that. We've met both publicly and we've had many, many very private meetings. We have given him over $5 billion in aid. I think he's one of our largest aid recipients in the world, so it's not as though he's been totally neglected.

For the ninth year in a row, the administration is requesting hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid for Colombia; this is the ninth year of requests for money on a five-year program, but we have required certifications from you that the army's respecting human rights and a perpetrator is being brought to justice. There are disturbing reports about continuing abuses by the army, and that you and the administration are providing assistance to some of these units that are involved in abuse.

I hear the 4th, 9th, 10th, 12th, 13th and 22nd Mobile Brigades, 14th, 18th and 30th Brigade have been linked to human rights abuses. Your department has vetted them to receive assistance. Of course, the United States law -- in this case the Leahy law -- requires you to stop funding such units unless they're taking effective measures to bring the individuals responsible to justice.

So can you provide for us a list of all the units that have been vetted since the beginning of Plan Colombia -- this is a five-year plan that's now in its ninth year -- a list of all units that have received U.S. assistance since the beginning of Plan Colombia, a list of unvetted units from which individual members are cleared to receive money, and if there are units of continued abuse why they're still getting money?

SEC. RICE: Senator, I'll provide it to you.

If I may just say a word about the commitment of the Colombian government to justice against those who engage in human rights abuses. I don't think you'll find a stronger one in Latin America. We have to remember that this is a country that's come out of civil war. They have demobilized 40,000 terrorists, including 32,000 paramilitaries. They're trying to reintegrate those who can be reintegrated into society. They have increased the budget for the prosecutor general's office by $40 million, allowing new investigations. I was talking with their attorney general, who told me that they sat with the labor leaders and they actually went through and they said, what are the most important cases that we should be taking on first? They're trying to prioritize those cases.

Yes, this is a very tough place and it's --

SEN. LEAHY: I know, and --

SEC. RICE: I just think we have to speak to the commitment of this government to deal with the difficult circumstances, and I think the commitment is extraordinary.

SEN. LEAHY: And one of the reasons I've supported money way beyond the five-year -- so-called five-year plan is that I believe that the president is trying to make these changes, and I'm thinking tentatively of going down there and meeting with some of these people myself. But your own Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor says impunity is the biggest problem here. There still are people given impunity. They have demobilized a number that then went and got new weapons and went right back.

I don't begin to understate the difficulties of pulling this together, but I also want us to keep the kind of pressure on. In some ways, this helps the president, doing the good cop, bad cop routine. And that's why I have not released some of the money under the Leahy law. But we should discuss this further.

Now, we've talked about U.N. peacekeeping. I mentioned that the administration votes for these missions, and I agree, I'd much rather use U.N. peacekeepers than be sending our troops all over the world. Your budget, though, assumes that each and every one of the U.N. peacekeeping missions are going to shrink in fiscal year 2009. You look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo as one to indicate that won't happen.

The picture before us of fiscal year 2008 leaves us short by $266 million, and if projections hold for fiscal year 2009, you're between 400 and 600 million (dollars) short. Have we got ourselves in a Catch-22?

SEC. RICE: Senator, I think the point that I would underscore is that we're able to meet our commitments to these peacekeeping missions. Some of it is cash flow, frankly. The funding is not required until a specific time. Sometimes the missions unfortunately don't come into full fruition, which has been, for instance, the case in the Somalia mission where we want to be able to fund it but we don't have troops to fund because they haven't been able to raise the troops. Sometimes we fund through supplemental appropriations, which has been the case with Sudan and had been the case with Lebanon.

And so I believe that we are -- and were we not, I would be concerned, because I think that peacekeeping is extremely important for us to be able to support these missions. But we have been able to meet our obligations and will continue to meet our obligations.

SEN. LEAHY: We have Uighurs -- I believe I pronounced that right --

SEC. RICE: Uighur, yes.

SEN. LEAHY: -- in Guantanamo. They were people who were sold to the U.S. forces by Pakistani bounty hunters for $5,000 each in our war against terror five years ago. Now, it's been at least a couple of years to determine they were not enemy combatants, just somebody wanted to get the bounties so they wrapped these guys up and sold them to us. Now some have been released and they're in Albania. Of course, they don't speak the language, don't know the customs and so forth. The rest are still being imprisoned. Are we just going to keep them locked up? We bought them from the bounty hunters. It turns out that they had not done anything. We still have them locked up. Is this the face we want to show the rest of the world?

SEC. RICE: Well, Senator, I'm not sure of the circumstances of each and every one, but I do know that our concern has been to get the Uighurs to places where we didn't feel that they would be subject to any kind of repression or abuse. Frankly, that's why they haven't been returned to China.

SEN. LEAHY: How about U.S.?

SEC. RICE: That's why they have not been returned to East Turkistan.

SEN. LEAHY: Sure. How about bringing them in the U.S. with our refugees?

SEC. RICE: Senator, we have some concerns, and you know that I also have a partner in DHS, in law enforcement, that has concerns about the admittance of certain people with certain kinds of records to the United States, given the circumstances that we face on terrorism. And we've not done this as a group. We've tried to get people to places that we think they might be able to survive. But we do have to be careful when we release them to the United States.

SEN. LEAHY: It's okay to send them to Albania, though.

SEC. RICE: Well, we believe that there are reasons that they might be -- less difficulty in Albania than here. But we -- the main thing is to get them to places where they're not going to be subject to repression, and we think that sending them back to China would not be a good idea.

SEN. LEAHY: I think we're talking around the problem, but maybe we should talk further because you say you don't want to talk about them collectively, but in fact you are, and there are a whole lot of these people who do not (pose ?) a threat to anybody --

SEC. RICE: But not every case of the Uighurs is like that.

SEN. LEAHY: Not every case, but there are a whole lot that are being locked up that are locked up simply because somebody sold them to us.

Senator Gregg?

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SEN. LEAHY: I agree with Senator Gregg on this. It is the face that we give. Sometimes there are things -- long before you were in, there were -- you look at them and you wonder, what were they thinking? The eagle in London, you know, the beautiful buildings around and this monstrosity that we placed in the middle of the Grosvenor Square or something.

SEN. GREGG: (Off mike.)

SEN. LEAHY: It's scary, but it's ugly as heck. And you compare that with the -- I mean, it's --

SEN. GREGG: It would be a gift to the English people if we tore that down. (Laughter.)

SEN. LEAHY: Oh God, would it ever. I'd vote for that in a nanosecond, but they -- then you look at the beautiful one that we built in Ottawa, the U.S. embassy. The Canadians gave us a perfect spot, as we did them on Pennsylvania Avenue here, and it's an absolutely beautiful place, and it's very open, and yet with all the various security things built in. I remember being in New Zealand once years ago and they'd just built a new embassy there. Again, I don't even remember who was president at the time, but there's just massive fortifications around it as though somehow there's going to be bands of crazed New Zealanders marching on -- in front of the most low-key country you could be in -- (laughs) -- marching on our embassy.

I would hope that we would work on it, because it's bad enough that foreigners come to this country and so often at the point of entry they're treated like they're criminals until they prove themselves innocent. I mean, I've seen some very, very -- this is not you -- but the very, very rude way they're treated at the port of entry, going through immigration and so on, and it's -- especially if a foreign accent is heard. These are the same people, when they get a few hundred yards beyond the airport or wherever it is, they find the American people to be very, very friendly, and they have a very good thing there.

But we're a great and good nation and sometimes it's simple things that -- incidentally, I wrote and we passed legislation that bans the exporting of cluster munitions that are going to be used by any country against civilian targets and those that don't have a 99 percent fail-safe rate, which would pretty well preclude most of the cluster munitions being exported from this country. We saw Israel use hundreds of thousands of these bomblets in Lebanon, many supplied by the United States -- innocent civilians hurt. I'm not going into question obviously outrageous, unprovoked attacks against Israel, but then as this escalated our cluster munitions badly damaging, killing, maiming Lebanese civilians. So they were used in a manner that violated the export agreement on them. Am I correct in that? Was the agreement violated?

SEC. RICE: Senator, I should probably get an answer to you. I remember that we investigated this matter. We talked to the Israelis about it. But I will need to get back to you on the conclusion. I --

SEN. LEAHY: I understand the department issued a finding. It may have occurred; they're looking at it further.

SEC. RICE: That's right. It's a may have --

SEN. LEAHY: That's part of the --

SEC. RICE: I don't know where it is, but I will get to you as to where we are in those discussions.

SEN. LEAHY: Is this one of those things that the "may" is a good way of slipping it into the wastebasket and --

SEC. RICE: I think that --

SEN. LEAHY: -- I'll get back to you, the check's in the mail?

SEC. RICE: No, we actually continue to have discussions with the Israelis about this, and I know they've done a number of internal looks and investigations. I just don't know where it is, what the status is. So I'll get back to you about it.

SEN. LEAHY: All right. Senator Cochran?

SEN. COCHRAN: (Off mike.)

SEN. LEAHY: Senator Gregg?

SEN. GREGG: I thank the secretary for --

SEN. LEAHY: Thank you.

SEN. GREGG: -- extraordinary service to the country.

SEC. RICE: Thank you very much.

SEN. LEAHY: Thank you.

SEC. RICE: Thank you.

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