JUST IN: Secretary Of State Marco Rubio Testifies Before Senate Appropriations Committee

Uh, the committee will come to order. Uh, Secretary Rubio, thank you. Uh, we're probably violating the Geneva Convention doing all this in one day, but I know you've had a long day and I appreciate you coming to the committee.

Um, to the new members of the committee, welcome. I look forward to working with you and Senator Britt and Mullen. I look forward to working with our new ranking member, Senator Shots. Senator Coons and I work extremely well, and I'll try to keep that going from my end, and I know you will too.

Uh, we'll have opening statements. I'll start out, then we'll have six-minute rounds, and um, I will start, then Senator Shots, and we'll have Secretary Rubio. Um, then we'll recognize people as they come.

Uh, the deadline for submitting uh, SPOP requests is May 22nd to all the members of the committee to our audience. Uh, you're welcome to be here. If you disrupt, you'll get kicked out.

Uh, okay. So, let's start the committee meeting with a couple of ideas. Reform at the State Department is welcomed. Secretary Rubio has reorganized the place in a way that I think is long overdue. And Marco, I want to congratulate you for sitting down and getting input from people before you. How can we make the State Department work better? And I think your organizational efforts are going to pay dividends, and I support them completely, and people before you have been talking about it, but you've actually done it. So congratulations, and I think it'll be good for the country.

In terms of the uh, budget, this is 48% below the enacted level, and presidential budgets are given some consideration, and this will get some consideration. Bottom line is um, I believe that there is space to save money in this account, and I look forward to finding a way to do that.

Uh, I think Secretary Rubio is the right guy at the right time. We've had all kinds of problems with USAID, USID. Uh, we're trying to preserve functions that make sense and eliminate functions that are not in the best interest of the American taxpayer. My view about this account is pretty well-known. I would consider myself a fairly hawkish person, for lack of a better term, simply because I think the best way to stay safe is to deal with problems before they get worse and put bad guys on notice. If you screw with America, you do so at your own peril and have allies who trust us. I think we're paying a heavy price from the way we got out of Afghanistan. But this secretary, I spent the weekend with him in Turkey as he met with the foreign minister of Syria, as he met with the foreign ministers of all NATO nations. And I was very impressed with Secretary Rubio's trying to uh, make sure that America first was burden-sharing. You need to do more. You need to up your game. But we're committed to to to a world order here, and we're committed to making sure that uh, the world is a a good place to live in.

Having said that, um, Syria, we have a chance here. Secretary Rubio allowed me to be in the meetings, and I met the foreign minister of Syria. This is a very tenuous government, for lack of a better word. U, the people in charge of Syria took over by force of arms. But I've been quite frankly impressed with their willingness to engage with us, Saudi Arabia, and their commitment to rejecting Iran and moving the country in a new direction. Secretary Rubio this morning said that it could be a matter of weeks or months to this whole place collapsing in Syria. And I agree with him. Syria is designated a state sponsor of terrorism under US law since 1979. I'm looking forward to Secretary Rubio's input about whether we should change that designation. Is it worth trying? My belief is that we have a moment here to provide some capability to this new government that should be conditions-based, and I don't want that moment to pass and we have a situation in Syria that's just going to break the country up and continue regional conflicts.

Uh, Iran negotiations. Secretary Rubio has said something I completely endorse. No enrichment, 123 agreements would be available to the Iranians if they cited to dismantle the enrichment program. As Secretary Rubio indicated, I do not mind, do not mind the Iranian regime having nuclear power. I mind them having the capability to make a bomb. So right now they have about 600 pounds of highly enriched uranium at 60%. In about a month, they could go to 90%. They have one reactor, nuclear reactor, and the fuel for that reactor is provided by the Russians, and I'm okay with that. Of this 600 pounds of highly enriched uranium, not one gram has been used to run their peaceful nuclear power plant. Clearly, they're stockpiling uranium to be a threshold nuclear nation, and that is unacceptable to me and hopefully to all of us. So civilian nuclear power yes, enrichment no, I think is good policy for the country to follow.

Russia, Ukraine. Secretary Rubio explained the role the Senate and the House plays in our system to the foreign ministers of uh, NATO. But quite frankly, he's been very clear to the Russians that the Senate is a separate body with its own will. And I hope President Trump is right that Putin wants peace. Time will tell. He certainly doesn't act like a guy wanting peace. We have now 80 co-sponsors of sanctions against Russia for their invasion of Ukraine. I would like to get this war over honorably and justly. And one of the problems we have with this war is China. In case you're listening in China, which I doubt you are, you're propping up Putin. If you would stop buying their cheap Russian oil, he'd have a reason to get to the peace table. India and China are propping up Putin's war machine, and the sanctions we have are secondary in nature. They put a 500% tariff on any country that buys Russian oil, gas, uranium to prop up the Putin war machine. Uh, this body will move sooner rather than later if Putin doesn't get to the table. And to China, you want to be a normal country, act normally. Quit buying cheap oil with blood mixed in it uh, to keep a war going that you could end tomorrow if you chose to.

Um, your plate is about as full as anybody I've ever seen. You're juggling so many things at once, and I just admire you uh, and the way you've conducted yourself, and I think you're the right person at the right time. So, welcome to the committee.

Thank you, Chairman Graham. Secretary, good to see you again. It's been an hour or so.

Um, for all of the disruption of the past few months, we are still in a position to write a bipartisan bill in SOPs, but things need to change if we're going to be successful. If the goal, and I want everyone to hear this, including my Democratic colleagues, if the goal is to reform American foreign assistance so that we can do fewer things and better, then you were pushing on an open door to begin with. If the goal is to reduce overhead, make more strategic investments, and eliminate the tiny fraction of programs that you feel aren't essential to those objectives, you will have bipartisan support for that conversation. Making reforms to be smarter and more strategic with our investments while also preserving the things that were already working: PEPFAR, FMF, life-saving aid, disaster response, is still possible. And Mr. Secretary, I think you know I'm sincere in wanting to work with you to enact a bill that does just that. But we also have to have an honest conversation about what has been happening. And I want to address a few claims this morning. You said that PEPFAR is 85% functional. You've actually cut it to 70%, and by law, you are required to spend the remainder. You have said repeatedly that only 12% of assistance reaches local populations, quoting Samantha Power from a previous report. That is actually not true. The US aid report from last year found that 12% of aid is implemented by local organizations. But that's completely separate from the question of how much aid is actually reaching people. That's Catholic Charities, that's the World Food Program, that's CARE, that doesn't, that is not overhead. Those are other organizations, not local organizations, but flagship American organizations that deliver aid abroad. You have said there is waste, fraud, and abuse. I encourage you to make any referrals necessary to the inspector's general. You said sharing information and taking comments from Congress is essential, but there was only one briefing. I'm hoping all of that can change. As I said earlier, the changes that you're making are not occurring in a vacuum. They are having catastrophic outcomes in the real world. Kids are dying. Mothers are passing HIV onto newborns. We are abandoning our Indo-Pacific partners and paving the way for China to swoop in, and allies are having to beg for the FMF which they've come to rely on. Even the few programs that have been retained are having a hard time implementing effectively. Fighting HIV/AIDS, helping partners defend themselves, respond to disasters—that is not woke or leftist or radical. It is a foundation of American foreign policy, and they are all under threat. And anytime we've asked for clarity about what the administration is doing, we've gotten very little. The programs that you've repeatedly pointed to as wasteful make up less than a half a percent of the total SOPs budget. So we're talking about less than a half a percent of less than a half a percent of American discretionary spending. And if the deal was to immediately take all of those offending programs, eliminate them, and enact them, you would be pushing on an open door. But most of all, I want you to understand how important I think it is for the United States of America, for President Trump, for for you as a secretary, for us to get to some rhythm of bipartisanship where the Article One branch works with you to enact an SOPs bill. We are ready to do so, but we need some level of correspondence, interaction, transparency, and cooperation.

Thank you, Secretary Rubio.

Well, thank you. And I'm not going to give uh, the written remarks. I'm just going to sort of walk you through this a little bit. That's the way these things are supposed to work, I hope. And um, let me first start out by saying um, what is the goal here? Because I think it's important, even though we're going to talk about spending and and all of that, um, you're going to do your own appropriations process. We recognize that. Um, but I wanted to explain to you the organization. You have a chart behind you, the new organizational chart, and this is really the launchpad because that's what we're funding. That's what the appropriations bill will be funding. If you had the old one, you would struggle to see what the big difference is. I mean, they're different, but you would. There's still a lot of boxes up there. And I want you to understand the primary thing we did that I wanted to do and that I alluded to during my confirmation hearing. I want the entire toolbox of American foreign policy to reside within the Department of State, in particular within our regional bureaus that cover the different regions of the world and ultimately down to our embassy. Senator Graham mentioned a moment ago about Syria. It was going to be one of the first test cases of whether this works or not. And what I mean by that is we have an embassy. It's obviously in exile. It's outside. It's in Turkey. We are going to rely on them to tell us, okay, we're on the ground. We've gone in. We've met with the transitional authorities. Here are the things they need. These are the three, four, five things they need right now. And we need to be nimble enough to provide that, but it needs to be driven from the bottom up, not the top down.

I want you all to understand what I inherited. When I go into the State Department, I get a memo asking for a decision. Sometimes these memos have 30 to 35 boxes in them that have to be checked off. Each box has to be checked off by somebody on a desk before it even gets to me. It's that just doesn't work. It certainly doesn't work in the 21st century when events happen very quickly. And so we need to be nimble enough to make a decision, but we also have to make sure that these decisions are being made as close to the front lines as possible. What is the front lines of diplomacy? It is our embassies. It is the men and women who are deployed abroad on the ground who are hearing every single day. And so that's our number one goal. The number two goal is to have, as I said, all the tools of of foreign policy in the same toolbox. Foreign aid is a tool of our foreign policy. It is not the only tool of our foreign policy. It has to be taken in conjunction with all of these other things that we do, and they have to be intertwined. Now perhaps your experience was different. But I went to multiple countries around the world where I would go to the embassy and the embassy was upset at USID because the embassy was pursuing one route, maybe closer to a leader who was less than ideal, but we had a geopolitical interest. Why I want to get closer, why we wanted to get closer to these people, and then USAID was funding a program that made the government angry, and so it cut off our ability—now maybe we still do that—but there has to be a balance here; there can't be—if they're two separate entities arguing with each other, in some cases not even communicating; in other cases—this was my recent trip to the Caribbean—where they told me America's always been very generous at giving us things you think we need as opposed to the aid we think we need. And the aid they think they need in some of these countries is they need to build up police departments. They need to build up law enforcement so they can interdict drugs and secure the streets. And if they get that right, then they can send kids to school. Then they can attract foreign investment to their country. But they have to get that part right.

The third dynamic that I say, and I I leave humanitarian aside because obviously natural disasters happen, and these things will recur. But the best foreign aid is foreign aid that ends. You know why it ends? The best foreign aid is foreign aid that ends because it's achieved its purpose. So take country X, and they say we want help with our law enforcement. The best foreign aid is foreign aid where at some point that country doesn't need it anymore because now they're self-sufficient. South Africa's—I'm sorry, South Korea—is a great example. South Korea was once poorer than North Korea. South Korea was once an aid-dependent nation. Today it is an aid donor and the ninth or 10th largest economy in the world. That has to be the goal of our foreign aid. It has to be that it ultimately ends because it creates self-sufficiency. There are other tools of foreign aid, by the way, whether it's the investment funds we have or millennium challenge grants. Those are outside my direct control or purview. They're not. They're under the committee's purview. And there will be efforts at reform there as well uh, and potentially even expansion in one of them. Um, although that won't be my decision solely.

So as we move forward in some of this and as you'll see some of the features of the budget we've presented before you, one of the ideas we have is having a a global health programs account. The other is having a consolidated humanitarian assistance account. And the combination of these two things will allow us to deliver aid as part of the package driven from the ground up. The—I said this at the previous hearing—one of the most important things I feel, one of the most useful things to me in my time at the department has been the cables. The cables that I get from ambassadors, we have gotten so many ideas from those cables. Will those ideas have ultimately made their way to me? Maybe, I don't know, but maybe months from now or weeks from now. I want more of that in the department, and I want to empower embassies to be able to make decisions about which programs we should be funding, where the money should be going. I want when an ambassador goes into a meeting for she or he to be able to say to them, here is a portfolio of things we can offer; which ones would make the most sense to you. So we're trying to accommodate that through these, the creation of these two funds. It's important to understand we're not walking away from foreign aid. We will still be the world's largest foreign aid donor by a lot. It won't even be close, but we want to target it more effectively.

Uh, another feature is this America First Opportunity Fund. Um, uh, wi-i which frankly will allow us to be uh, more nimble in providing funds for specific programs that arise outside the normal cycle of funding. And Syria, once again, is a great example. We don't have any money in the fiscal year's budget for Syria because, frankly, none of us thought we would be talking about helping the Syrian government six months ago or eight months ago. But now we have an opportunity to do it, and rather than have to go through reprogramming and all kinds of shuffling to have the flexibility at some level to be able to respond quickly to something like that that might be multifaceted in in the approach is an important thing to consider as well uh, as aligning it to other priorities we have as an administration. So I do look forward to working with you because frankly I have to—you pass the appropriations bills—but uh, but but also because I think it can be very constructive.

Thank you, Senator Collins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, let me say first of all, welcome Secretary Rubio. Uh, I hope that you look forward to working with us, not only because you have to, but also because you want to. And I keep wondering how it is for you to be on the other side of the DAS. Uh, but we're very happy to have you in the position that you are. I do want to follow up and talk with you about the global health programs. I obviously share the goal of evaluating programs, reforming them to root out wasteful spending and reduce overhead costs, even question whether or not a particular program has achieved its objective and is no longer needed. However, I'm also mindful that US international assistance plays a key role in helping us to respond to humanitarian crises, fight the spread of deadly diseases like Ebola, and project soft power. And that's why I'm concerned that the president's budget request proposes a cut of 62% below the enacted level of 2025 for global health programs. Are you concerned that if we cut back by that amount that China is going to step in and pick up the terminated USAID health programs, particularly in Southeast Asia?

Well, let me first say China has no history in the past or even now. I know that there's been some talk about this, but they really have demonstrated no willingness or capability to deliver humanitarian aid at scale to anyone. Their aid is largely driven by loans. Sometimes low-interest or no-interest loans, but nonetheless loans, and in other times interest, you know, traditional loans to trap nations. You—they also give you the money so that you hire their companies to do the work. But on the space of humanitarian, they are not a major player. As I said, even on humanitarian assistance, the United States dwarfs the next nine or 10 countries on the list in terms of what we provide, and we intend for that to to continue and that as part of this budget. We'll obviously work with you to find what the number needs to be to fit the need. But I can tell you that one of the reasons why the number is so stark is because we—you know, the reductions that happened at USAID transferred some of these programs over under state, and so now we have to accommodate that within our overall budget. And so we'll have to work with the committee to find out what the right number is to fit the need. But I will say that it cannot be—in no matter what—I think we are living in a time where it's essential that we recognize that this is not a time of large—s—we are going to have to, in my view, going to have to limit how much we spend in general as a government given the fact that just a few days ago we saw a downgrade to our debt. Um, these are problematic things, and other nations need to step up and do more. Uh, it is frustrating to me to see how much money we invest in certain countries, albeit on what we term humanitarian or global health. But when you look at the other side of the ledger, all the business deals, all the critical mineral deals, all the other, all their votes at the United Nations are all aligned with China or or Russia or Iran. And so I do think that has to be taken into account here. We are humanitarians. We cannot solve all of the world's humanitarian problems. There are many. We can contribute, and we'll continue to be the largest contributor in the world. But I do think how we allocate the limited resources of our government has to somehow be viewed through the lens of the benefit to the United States. Uh, certainly in the short to in the mid to long term.

The administration also included GAVI, the vaccine alliance, in its list of terminated programs. And you've always been a very strong advocate for that program, which has resulted in 1.1 billion children being immunized and averted more than 18 million deaths. And I would point out that the United States is not the largest donor. We actually rank third behind the United Kingdom and the Gates Foundation. But without the US doing what it's traditionally done in this program, GAVI will be unable to vaccinate 75 million of the 500 million children it traditionally has reached every year. And I'm really concerned that that's going to lead to preventable deaths like tuberculosis and pneumonia. So I think about how the Department of Defense always, due to our law, has each of these services give us a list of unfunded priorities. Would that be on your personal list of an unfunded priority?

Well, let me first of all, we still are doing vaccines. We are still doing vaccines for malaria, for example. We're still doing tuberculosis. We're still doing AIDS uh, uh, funding as well. What we have done is we are reviewing our relationship with a number of multinational, multilateral institutions across the board because many of them have strayed from their core purpose. The World Health Organization being one of them, which I personally view did a a very poor job in the early days of COVID as an example. So, um, we're we're also closing, working closely with HHS to identify alternatives to some of these existing multilateral organizations that we think could end up helping us provide the aid we provide, reach more people for less money, in essence, in a more efficient way. So, we're we'll clearly include that in in our work that we're doing. I'm not prepared to tell you whether we've identified today what those alternative entities would look like, but we definitely want to find one. This is the kind of aid we want to continue to provide but not through the existing mechanisms that we have found uh, wanting in many cases.

Thank you, Senator Shots.

Thank you. Just to follow up on um, Senator Collins' line of questioning, I guess the analogy is, you know, say a hospital that's running inefficiently um, and a turnaround guy comes in and says, "I got a plan for reorganizing this hospital. We're going to do delivery system reform. We're going to use technology. We're going to we're going to be aggressive. We're going to be fearless. Um, and in the meantime, we're going to lay off half of our staff because this thing doesn't work efficiently." The practical impact of that is death. And that's what we're talking about. And so every time we talk about the practical, near-term, immediate, real-world geopolitical and humanitarian impacts of what has happened, especially to US aid, you pivot very skillfully and maybe even correctly to what needs to be reformed in the State Department itself and in the interaction and relationship between aid and state. That's not what I'm asking you about. I'm asking you about why in the world we wouldn't do this in the regular order in order to put US aid under the State Department and better align it. We need a statute in order to reform all of these programs. We need an SVOPS bill. You can't just come in and light the place on fire and say, "Well, it was a mess." And so, I just want to understand what's the path forward because people really are dying. It's not as though Catholic Relief Services or CARE or the World Food Program are a bunch of, you know, leftists coming out and complaining about everything that's happening because they want to get you. This is...

Actually happening. People are vacating where they work, and then some; in some instances, the Chinese government comes in and provides the exact same service, not a similar service, but the same program. They just do it. We’ll do it. And then, in some instances, nobody does it, and as a result, people die. And so I’m just wondering, where do you think the path forward is for us to work—Article One, Article Two, former colleagues—to get this thing back on track?

Well, I think the first path is—let me just say, on the regular order part, sure, we want to do that. We’d be great to make all these things statutory and codify them. That would be ideal. I will say I was a member of this body for, I don’t know, 6, 12, 13, 14, 16 years, and we always talked about doing it by regular order. We never got to it. So now is the time to do it because we really have to do it now.

The second point I would make is the US is going to continue to be a very generous donor for—for human—I would, I would venture to guess that for the rest of our lifetime, no nation on earth—if we can still afford it—no nation on earth will continue to do more for humanitarian assistance, for food and medicine and life-saving services, and even for developmental assistance. But I also think we have to recognize this: We cannot be; we cannot continue to be the foreign aid provider for everyone on everything. We just can’t do it. We can’t do it efficiently, and we cannot afford to do it either. And if we’re going to, we have to—we do not have unlimited resources.

And so we’ve now entered an era, particularly of geopolitics, where we have to be very careful about where we invest our money, where we provide aid. Humanitarian systems aside, okay, you have a mudslide somewhere, an earthquake, a hurricane, and we’re going to help people. I don’t, I don’t know how much uh we would want uh necessarily geopolitics to play into those sorts of decisions.

What’s the, what’s the proposed budget cut in the humanitarian accounts?

Well, it’s not the humanitarian account right now; basically, the rest of it is reflected at over 50% in the proposed amount that you have right now before you, but we believe that we can provide these essential services while reducing some of the redundancies that were happening through this, for lack of a better term, this foreign aid industrial complex. Some of these projects—so you, I think you understand this perhaps better than most—some of these projects had a prime contractor who had a sub who had a sub who had a sub who had a sub who had a local provider. That’s crazy. That’s lunacy. Why do I need six subs to pass one to the other to ultimately get down to the ground? I think we can get it from maybe from the prime to the sub, in some cases directly to the person, the group on the ground, through our embassy. Our embassy can say, “We want to provide food in this community. Here’s the best people to do it,” and I can avoid all those layers of NGO.

Part of the problem, right, is, is our, our tolerance for risk. Um, because if we establish a bunch of criteria and requirements and pre-audit, then you increase administrative costs, right? And I’m one of these people who thinks that it’s not unreasonable to start to capitate or slowly ramp down administrative costs, but administrative costs are not 88%, right? That 12% versus the rest of it cut is what money goes to local NGOs in Africa or subs, you know, or or Asia, or or or Pacific Islands, or wherever, and we should be increasing that number, and we have been increasing that number, but it is the precipitousness with which this is all being done that is actually causing reputational damage. A lot of us are doing codells, and when we sort of go overseas and we’re we sort of, you know, temporarily take off our partisan hats, we interact with the same providers and we see kids on half rations getting smaller and smaller. We see kids getting HIV/AIDS from their parents, and nothing—you said nothing—you said, in order to implement anything that you’re talking about, is it necessary for us to allow children to die, and yet that is what’s happening. And so can we please separate these two questions: Should we reform the State Department? Should we reform the foreign aid enterprise? And should we do it in such a catastrophically, ally unlawful way that people around the world die and people come to believe that they can’t believe that America is a reliable partner anymore? And so I just—if we can please separate these questions and get to writing a bill, I think the country will be better for it. Thank you, uh, uh, to the committee members. Uh, I’m very much believe in soft power, for lack of a better term. Uh, why do we have PEPFAR? Not only it’s the right thing to do, I think it’s just smart foreign policy. If you can save a child, the parents will probably have a good view of you. So, Gabby, you know, keeping people vaccinated, that makes perfect sense. And to the people who believe that “over there” doesn’t matter to us, how do diseases start? Usually over there. I’d like to get ahead of it over there before it gets here. I’d like to have less hungry children so the Taliban and Al Qaeda and ISIS can’t recruit these people because they’re starving. What would you do if your family was starving? Almost anything. 500 bucks goes a long way for a starving family. So, this, to me, is national security in another form. And to the people who don’t get that, you’re just, you’re missing a lot. You’re missing how terrorists recruit. They love chaos. They love situations where people are starving and can’t send their kids to school and they can’t feed themselves, because they’ll fill in that vacuum. But I will say this about Secretary Rubio: He gets it better than anybody. And I will work with you to change the system to make it more logical, more effective. But I am here to tell you, if we eliminate some of these programs that create stability over there, the chaos will surely come here. And if you don’t get that, you’ve missed a lot of history.

Having said that, uh, Marco, what you’re doing at the State Department is long overdue, and we’ll find some common ground uh, through the SOPs um, process to accommodate the reforms you want, but also to make sure that our values are intact and that we’re smart with our dollars, to make sure that we’re not creating conflict where we could avoid conflict. If you’re tired of war, count me in. I think I know how most of these wars start. They start with uh terrorists being able to recruit people, and if we can take that off the table, we’re safer.

I’m going to go through a list of uh issues real quick. Uh, do you think it’s in our interest to to relieve sanctions in Syria?

Yes, incrementally.

Okay. Uh, do you have as your objective to change the um state sponsor of terrorism designation over time in Syria?

Yes. Yeah, if they meet the standard.

Is it your uh position when it comes to Iran that civilian nuclear power through 123 agreements uh is in our national interest?

I think that if it prevents them from having a nuclear weapon, that would be in our national interest.

Right. So dismantlement plus a 123 agreement. Get out of the enrichment business, and if you do that, you can have a 123 agreement. Is that a fair summary of where you’re at?

Yeah. Or something equivalent to it that allows them, if they want to have a civilian nuclear program, but not the ability to enrich.

Count me in. I think that’s very smart. You keep saying—and I was with you all weekend. Um, you were great talking about, you know, you weren’t in this war honorably and justly—and do you agree that the way we end the war in Ukraine with Russia could affect how China views what they do in Taiwan?

I think the the way we end the war could impact with chi—how China views it. I think the continuity of this war will also impact it because it’s draining resources from us and from our allies that could be spent on building up our capacities in the Indo-Pacific. So, both can be true.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. When it comes to uh Russia getting to the table, uh, do you think Putin’s ready to make peace?

I think Putin will always count—cut the deal he thinks is in its best interest for the c—for for Russia and for his view of the world. Um, I think right now, frankly, he has said, “Here’s the latest. He says he’s going—they’re going to submit a proposal that would lead to a ceasefire that would then lead to a broader negotiation.” I think we will know from the context of that proposal where their mindset is and where they stand.

You keep telling people, rightly so, that the Senate—you can’t stop. I mean, you know, we want to work with you. These sanctions were designed to help, not hurt. I’m trying to help the president, give him leverage. To my Democratic colleagues, thank you for being on board. We’re trying to get the right answer here. This is not a competition between us and the administration. It’s trying to—coordinated effort to end the war that that that President Trump is right to to want to end. I guess here’s my question: We’ll know in a couple of weeks whether or not they’re serious. Do you believe that if there were tariffs on China for buying cheap Russian oil that would make a difference toward Chinese policy regarding Russia?

At 500% tariffs.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that has an impact on uh nations.

Do I agree? Do you agree that if um China stopped buying uh oil from the shadow fleet, it would put a real dent in Putin’s war machine?

I do. I think it’s widely understood, including by our European partners, and I remind them of this all the time when we’re together with them, that there is no way that Russia could sustain its war effort without assistance from China. China has helped Russia as much as they can without getting caught.

Do you think Europe is serious about doing their part when it comes to sanctions on Russia and trying to find a solution to end this war?

Yeah, we actually saw the—we met with them this weekend in Rome, and they are on path and on—they are on route now to maybe as early as the middle part of this week applying additional sanctions on Russia.

Thank you very much. Uh, I think Senator Merke—well, I think it’s Mkeley is what I’ve got. No, Coons—there you are, Senator Coons. Senator Mkeley—pieces breaking out on the committee. Thank you, Chairman Graham. Ranking member, shots, and uh, good to be with you again, Secretary Rubio. Um, I wanted to make sure that the point’s been made, as I suspect it has been by my colleague, Um, that reform to USID and reform to some of the authorities and the spending in the legislation that we passed in the last Congress is something that could easily have been done with partnership with this committee and with Congress and should have been done that way. Uh, I wanted to touch on a few things u that you and I worked on that I think deserve continued support and that I think are important for us to sustain. Uh, Senator Graham and I worked to pass the Global Fragility Act in 2019. You were a co-sponsor. It was signed into law by President Trump, and it’s designed to save literally billions of dollars by addressing root causes of terrorism in fragile countries. uh, as you put it at the time, as the US responds to humanitarian crises, we must address the factors driving instability and violence; it’s both moral and international security to promote stable and prosperous countries. And I’m proud to introduce this legislation. I’m planning to work with Senator Graham on reauthorizing it this year. The primary implementing entity had long been the Bureau of Conflict Operations and Stabilization. Um, that’s a bureau that’s been restructured. Do you still agree it’s in our national interest to have a targeted strategy to address the root causes of terrorism? And will you work with us to sustain the capabilities we need in the State Department to continue the Global Fragility Act’s work?

Yes. And let me add to that because it’s a good example. Number one, part of the reorg—just because we got rid of an office named something doesn’t mean the function goes away. It means that we want to drive that through the regional bureau. So a great example of global fragility—I keep going back to this over and over again—is Syria.

Yep. And if we don’t—if if that fragility is not addressed, there’s going to be terror. There already is. I mean, ISIS is already growing there and potentially growing even more dangerous. If there’s a civil war in Syria, you’re going to have an ungoverned space where multiple groups are going to break out and not just threaten the region, but ultimately potentially the homeland. So, it’s a great example of how global fragility can be applied to the real world. But we have to do it very quickly. We have to be able to act quickly in this regard. uh, which is one of the things we hope to do by by being able to drive this down to the regional and local levels.

I also work closely with Chairman Graham, with Chairman McCall, with Ranking Member Meeks, and over 100 co-sponsors of both parties uh to enact the US Foundation for International Conservation. Uh, it was enacted through the NDAA. There’s funding uh allocated to it. Um, you stated in your confirmation on January 15th that this was the sort of public-private partnership um that struck you as deserving of support, um, and I would hope you would move quickly to execute uh creating it. It simply requires your signature um and obligating the funds and appointing the board. Uh, Chairman Graham and I are also working on a similar bill that would address food insecurity again through a public-private partnership, a foundation uh that would rely on as much private sector funding and philanthropy as government funding. Do you still support these foundations, and is this something you look forward to working with?

And we’ll get you an answer. I mean, we’ll get you a decision on that very quickly, which is what you’re looking for—is the US to go through and try to implement the law.

Yes, I recall the plan correctly. We’ll get to that fairly quickly. We’ve been uh we’ve had a lot going on over the last four months, but we’ll get to it, including 100 and something reports that we inherited that were overdue. We’re working through those as well, but because you raised it here today, if you give me a few days, I’ll get you an action on it.

Thank you. Um, we have spoken about the MCC. The Millennium Challenge Corporation is a a Bush-era initiative that used metrics and accountability, working against corruption and in long-term partnership with countries uh to give them an alternative to Chinese financing, as you’ve described it, and I agree—debt-trap financing. There’s current compacts active in countries like Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, Nepal, Kiribati, um, where it gives transparency um and cost sharing. Um, you are the chair of the board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Uh, I understand from our discussion this morning that you’re aware it’s in some transition. Um, can you just confirm it’s going through reform and will not be shut down wholesale?

Yeah, I can confirm. We’re on the board. We don’t operate it obviously. We’re on the board, but it’s not a State Department function. We are one of the board members. I’ll be at the chair, and um and actually our deputy, Chris Landau, is serving in that role when when I’m not available to to be at these meetings and so forth. My understanding, as of the latest updates that I’ve gotten with the work that’s being done, is it is undergoing a reform effort um or streamline effort, but not a take-down effort. I think it would be an unforced error for us to hand away the relationships and the competition with China that our metrics-based and transparent that the MCC has put in place. So I hope to work with you on that last.

Uh, your testimony highlights an America First opportunity fund as a more flexible and responsive account um that will address waste and foreign assistance and be more agile. Um, but at least as I see it in your proposal, the account replaces 9 billion of programs with a 3 billion account to cover everything from countering the PRC, countering Russia, aiding Jordan, and others. Could you just briefly describe uh how you imagined that math working and how this fund being sufficient uh to meet a wide menu of needs?

Well, part of it is we found that some of these programs underneath it were—there were scattered, some of them were duplicative. Um, there was some inefficiencies. So we we truly believe now—what what what the right number is, obviously, that’s what we’ll have to work with you on—but we truly believe that we can deliver the same on the same goals for substantially less than what those combined pre-existing uh funds or projects would have cost. Uh, but what it’s going to enable us to do is is uh to ensure that assistance funds are directed towards the highest priority projects that we may have on any given basis, on any given moment, given global events that are happening. It provides enough, in addition to these existing programs, it provides us being nimble enough to deal with a contingency in a world that rapidly evolves as opposed to having to go back and repurpose existing funds to do it. So that’s really the goal of the fund—is to be able to move at the speed of relevance when it comes to global events and and not have to wait for the next funding cycle to come across or work through some uh reprogramming uh process uh that could take time for us to be able to respond quickly. I I do think, as a former senator, I hope you’ll agree that there has to be a modicum of consultation, review, and approval by this subcommittee and others. Um, but the target of agility, responding to world events, I suspect you’ll get bipartisan support for that. Um, but there needs to be a congressional role in oversight and accountability.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you. Uh, Senator Moran.

Mr. Chairman, I’d uh yield to the majority leader, former majority leader, Senator McConnell.

Senator McConnell. You’re up.

Welcome, Mr. Secretary. Obviously, there are two ways to prevent war and to maintain America’s position in the world: hard power, soft power. Over my years here, the people that have spoken mostly about the importance of soft power have been generals who know the cost of war. So, we’re talking about saving money, and I’m all for that. Let’s take a look at what it costs to have an actual war: 37% of our GDP in World War II spent on defense; 13% in Korea; 9% in Vietnam. The Reagan buildup—about 6% of GDP. It worked. They didn’t want to mess with us because they knew how strong we were going to be. And an equal partner, much less costly, is the soft power side. I think—I don’t care what you call it or how you reorganize—but the basic functions that soft power provides are extremely important. You get a lot of friends for not much money. And we’re being outmaneuvered, as you well know, in country after country after country by the People’s Republic of China, who are effectively playing in ways that are more effective than we are. So if you can figure out how to—way to reorganize it and call it whatever you will, um, that role is extremely important. How are foreigners looking at us right now? I think they think we’re losing interest. The previous administration didn’t have a single budget for defense that even kept up with inflation. And unfortunately, because of the uh continuing resolution this year, it looks like more of the same. So it strikes me—no matter how well the terrorists, for example, work out—that the perception at the beginning of this administration is that we want to fight with our allies and figure out some way to make it an agreement with our enemies. Which brings me to Ukraine. And um I I think the America that I believe in and most of us believe in would find no equivalence between the Russians and the Ukrainians. And so I’m hoping as this administration moves forward, it doesn’t end up not facing the actual enemies we have now: North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, Iran’s proxies—by working with our allies to stand up to them. Just to take a specific example of how soft power makes a difference: Look at a country like Burma that you’ve had an interest in and I have too over the years. Horrible place, run by despicable people. Lots of storms and problems of one kind or another. The Chinese are in there just operating effectively, and we—because of uh not honoring contracts and some of the other things that we were doing to try to be helpful—just completely getting outmaneuvered. So having had to endure that, I’d be interested in your observations about what you think about soft power and how important it is to this country’s future.

Sure. I mean, first of all, I think soft power has multi—the Department of State ultimately is a soft power entity. I mean, it’s a department of peace. The Department of War is a Department of Defense. Our job is to try to prevent them. And so I do think that the model you’ve outlined, especially during the Cold War, was quite useful because during that time, that model served to keep societies from collapsing and becoming susceptible to Marxist regimes taking them over. That was the biggest fear during the Cold War—was that governments with poor—with high levels of poverty would be attracted to a Marxist revolution that would overthrow an allied government and create another satellite state for the Soviet Union. We live in a different world today. The threats look different. In some cases, fragility is still a factor, but it is largely a factor that will lead to either a costly humanitarian crisis and in some cases operating in safe haven spaces for radical jihadists to threaten us here at home. So the concept remains true. How it’s applied is what has changed because I think the context—and in that context, no matter how much we—even with these reductions that are proposed before you, we would still be the single largest foreign aid donor on the planet by multiples. I mean, no one even comes close. I think Germany was second, if I recall the last time I checked, and it’s not even close. That remains the case. What we have to do now is apply that soft power to the places where it matters most to our national interests and to the programs that can make the biggest difference, the biggest impact and furthering our national interest. I think it’s possible to both be a humanitarian and at the same time further the national interest. And there are cases where perhaps there isn’t going to be a national interest argument; we just do it because we don’t want people to die, or we don’t want—we want to help alleviate suffering. The case of Burma, as an example, wasn’t just a reduction in aid because we had teams on the ground. It was actual local authorities that prevented us from getting involved or allowing certain uh aid to be distributed because they were in—they they were—they were in the middle of uh of their own conflicts internally in the midst of it. So some of these environments where we’re trying to deliver aid are quite challenging, even if we provide the money; we struggle to get it to the recipients because of some local impediment on the ground that uh that could include, for example, in the case of Haiti, armed gangs that will hijack humanitarian shipments and steal them, just steal them as soon as they come into the country. So, it’s not that we care less about Haiti, but I certainly don’t think foreign aid should be going into the hands of a Haitian gang uh and uh being stolen from the people that we’re intending to benefit.

Senator Mkeley.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and second chance to ask some questions of you today. Thank you for testifying in multiple uh committees. Back in March, you noted that you had revoked some 300 student visas using the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which specifically says the Secretary of State can revoke a visa if an alien’s activity in the US would have a serious adverse foreign policy consequence. And um that issue of 300. What’s the number up to now? How many visas have you revoked?

I don’t know the latest count. Uh, but we probably have more to do.

Can you give us an estimate?

Probably in the thousands at this point, depending. Not all of them are under that statute. Some are people. So there’s two visa—I don’t I don’t want to go into—seis. It’s a separate issue.

No, no, no. They’re related, but we can’t conflate them because they’re two different—one is the one—

You've decided national interest, United States. Some of the visa revocations are happening because somebody violated the terms of their visa. They dropped out of school, or they got convicted of a crime, or some criminal investigation. Those are separate from what you've said. So, 300 in March, and but now a thousand. How many under this 1922 act? I'd have to get you a good answer, but probably under a thousand. Uh, but I'd have to get you the right. I don't want to speculate about the exact number.

And I'll tell you the um, this particular thing um, I does bother me. Um, and you testified in Louisiana immigration court in a pretty expansive interpretation of that 52 law, saying that it could be for citizens. It extends to any non-citizen for past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or association. And that "expected" really caught my eye. That's this power rests solely, this 1950 law rests solely with you. And your interpretation sounds like you're saying if you, the Secretary of State, think you expect someone's beliefs or statements past, current or future, then then you can toss their visa. The visa is not a right. It's a privilege. All right. So I will just say, and then I'm going to go on to another topic. I profoundly disagree. Uh, the fifth amendment is very powerful in protecting citizens and non-citizens alike with due process. I know this will be adjudicated in court, but the idea that one individual could could on their opinion of someone's future activity or expected activity—that opinion being our Secretary of State—can toss somebody's visa, seems to me an extraordinary uh violation of due process. I won't ask you to defend it now. I'm happy to put it in writing for you to give us a followup and explain it better. But um, I I do think it's a an a fundamental attack on freedom because due process is the guardian of the gate to keep a government from from uh taking away people's life or liberty, and liberty is what happens when you take away a visa without due process.

I want to turn to the issue my colleagues have mentioned, and that is there is a legal way to restructure the Secretary of State's um department uh and USAID specifically. But what we saw on February 3rd was Elon Musk say over the weekend, "I tossed USAID into the wood chipper." That's a pretty profound weekend. It didn't involve consultation with Congress over the consequences. Uh, there was no rewriting of the law. There was no discussion of what funds could be delayed, frozen, redirected. And the result is different groups have estimated how many people have died to date and will die over the course of a year or a prolonged period as a result of the destruction of the weekend of February 1st and 2nd. Did Elon Musk have your support in putting USAID into the wood chipper? Well, I don't think that's that's a a ex post, or I guess you're imagining a social media post is not a government. Not at all. That's a quote. That's what he said. Yeah, that's okay. That's what he said. But that's not ultimately what happened. As acting director, all these decisions, his actions, have your full support? The ones that I signed off on. Yes. Which is the ones that did with USAID? No. No. But understand these are contracts. All these contracts without or with your support. That's what I'm trying to understand. Well, his team, his Doge team, did a lot of cancellations very very quickly and it fired a lot of people. I just wasn't clear to me whether that had your No, his the Doge team didn't do anything. I did it. I I was the one that made the decisions. I went through contracts, literally spreadsheets, line by line. I remember being in a hotel, I believe in Guatemala, going through line by line on spreadsheets of contracts that were cancelled, contracts that were approved, contracts that were either that were amended. These are all contracts. So in that case, I'll put the responsibility with you since you're taking credit for it rather than with Elon Musk.

But the um, the Boston School of uh public health has a kind of a website where they post their estimated deaths as a result of the actions that were taken to dismantle USAID. And they're updating it continuously. So you go to it, the numbers keep changing. They have a one-year estimate, but they also have what they estimate has happened to today. And as of today, they estimate that the actions taken in putting USAID in the wood chipper: child malnutrition, 53,500 more deaths. And I'm rounding off because the numbers continuously changing. Child diarrhea, 45,400 more deaths. Child pneumonia, 59,200 more deaths. Malaria, 25,100 more deaths. So what happened that weekend has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of children, and the estimate for the end of this year is much much uh higher. This happened because the law was not followed for consultation with Congress, analysis, bringing in experts, holding hearings. How do you how do you kind of accept what you just put forward that it was your action to cancel these contracts? Your contracts in this fashion, freezing funds, firing individuals, has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of children. That's false. That's fake. That's just not true. That's that's a study based on if we cancelled every one of these programs permanently. Okay? And I'm reading it right here because I'm glad you brought it up. It assumes a near total freeze in US foreign aid for HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other diseases. There is not a total freeze. 85% of PEPFAR recipients are receiving their care right now. But the numbers you're saying, just those aren't real numbers. I understand that's what the school said in the worst case dramatic scenario. And even then, I think it's exaggerated, but there's just no evidence of the fact that I don't remember what the numbers are. 100,000 children have starved to death in the last four months because the United States made reductions to USAID. Well, that that first of all is pretty atrocious. That would mean that nobody else in the world is doing anything. We're taking care of the entire planet. Well, I must say I think your response does not fit with what the published results were. But there's other groups that have done this as well. There was a study in Nature with healthcare experts from a whole number of leading universities and they said basically if you shut down USAID—and it may not be fully shut down, but my colleagues who follow this closely say you know it's 80, 90% shutdown—and the Nature study or published in Nature said, look uh, because of what has happened we will see some 15 million additional deaths over 15 years just from you, HIV producing 14 million orphans and another 10 million people, children and adults, dying from malnutrition, tuberculosis, diarrhea, malaria, and other diseases. And there's even higher numbers from the Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS. I think it's this this rash shutdown without due process of law that is not coming and doing it uh in collaboration with rewriting the law, freezing funds, cancelling these contracts without consultation that you have exacted enormous harm on the world. Again, those numbers you're saying are staggering and unrealistic. The reality of it is if what you're saying is that unless the United States funds foreign aid at these levels in perpetuity, the world's going to suffer 50 million, 15 million deaths in 15 years, and every country should be voting for the number. The number was 15 because we're basically funding and feeding 15 million in the study of Nature. Yes. From the shutdown of of these these programs. Thank you.

Senator Moran, Chairman, thank you. Uh, Secretary Rubio, uh welcome welcome back to Capitol Hill. Um, let me ask you uh to to tell us uh as the State Department prepares to undertake restructuring of its humanitarian and aid operations, where does food assistance fit in within the department's strategic priorities and in which office will State place those programs? Well, it'll be under our director uh the new directorate that will oversee both human rights and and humanitarian affairs and foreign aid. Uh, the only ones that's going to be separated from that is military sales and military financing. But the primary driver of our humanitarian assistance, food assistance, medicine will be through the the the new bureau that will handle that. Uh, it'll be a Senate confirmed position as well that will respond and answer to that that that they will answer to, and it will be a priority, but it will be structured in a way to deliver the most amount of money or the most amount of aid at the least amount of cost in the most effective way. Do you have a person in mind as there this position is in the process of being filled? It that will require Senate confirmation that my I have to I don't believe that that position has been filled yet. There's someone acting in a temporary capacity and an acting capacity at the moment, but we will have to come back to you to find a nominee that will run that.

Uh, let me highlight a couple of food programs. Uh, Food for Peace and the what we call Dole-McGovern uh nutrition program are two longstanding initiatives with deep roots uh in my home state of Kansas. These programs, in my view, are critical tools in the fight against global hunger, the moral aspect of that, but also vital to Kansas farmers, to American agriculture producers who help deliver. And this these this program started with a Kansas farmer who felt uh compelled to to do something with excess grain piled on the ground uh at a time when people across the globe were still starving and and hungry. Um, I understand there were findings of mismanagement at USAID. I look forward to working with you and this subcommittee to make sure that mismanagement is something that stays out of uh our delivery of food aid. I did join with Senator Hovind and Senator Marshall in legislation that would tr uh transfer the administration of Food for Peace to the uh US Department of Agriculture. I have some sense that you are supportive of that concept. I have some sense that the Secretary of Agriculture is supportive of that concept. I have some sense that Office of Manage office of management and budget is supportive of that concept. Uh, this is my first opportunity to have a conversation with you. Tell me how I can be helpful to you and to the department in the cause of Food for Peace and its future. Well, again, um that's still a obviously there's legislation out there that's pending on it, but I would argue that it is what you have described as the new arrangement under the Department of Agriculture would generally align with the idea that we want to because no matter what, we still have to work with them on this program. It would align towards removing one more layer of government that allow us to both identify recipients and delivery mechanisms quicker and more effectively. So, generally, your perceptions are correct. We're very open to that transition being done. Obviously, whether it's done statutorily or otherwise, uh it's something something would be open to because we think it has the potential to deliver assistance much quicker, much faster, much more efficiently, and perhaps to a broader set of people.

U Mr. Secretary, Food, Food for Peace, uh the Dole-McGovern, let me let me ask about uh McGovern-Dole. Any observations in regard to that program? Uh, we haven't made any determinations, but I would imagine it would fold under if it was under our responsibilities, it would it would fold under the same bureau that's handling what we call the life-saving assistance or humanitarian assistance. Um, my take from your answer is that there is a role for food aid programs to continue to exist, to be administered. The goal is to figure out how to reduce the bureaucracy and how to deliver more aid for the same bigger bang for the buck. We're not stopping foreign aid. I mean, we're going to continue foreign aid and at levels as generous more generous than any other country in the world and most countries in the world combined. The question is how can we deliver it more effectively and ensure that it is aligned with our foreign policy priorities. But in the case of food aid as an example, there's no goal to end it or to be to stop doing this kind of work. It is more about how can we deliver it more efficiently and effectively and quickly um and um and in ways that are aligned with our broader foreign policy and to empower again I keep going back to this point because it's really important to make empowering our regional bureaus to drive these programs to identify chronic or critical needs whether whether they're acute or chronic and allow us to quickly operationalize it as opposed to having a standoff bureau that views the whole entire world uh holistically. We are able to drive this at the local and regional level where they know what the priorities are and can drive this aid quickly. Uh Mr. Secretary, among the many things that you've said in this hearing this afternoon, that's one that certainly caught my attention as having merit, get the the process where it's closest to the the crisis, the emergency, the the facts are better known and implemented more closely uh to home uh in a foreign country.

Let me highlight one more feeding program, and this one's about the future. There's a program called Feed the Future uh in which research is done in agriculture designed to figure out how to produce more food. In other words, greater efficiency and a food that's needed in countries that u have different kinds of opportunities to feed themselves. What how can we use the powerhouse of American agricultural research to find ways to better uh allow uh other countries not only receive food from food aid from us but also to grow their own. I think it's imagine if you're an ambassador in a country that has a chronic food shortage and you're somehow able to provide them American ingenuity that allows them to to produce more food at a lower cost using less land or less facility. That's an extraordinary thing to offer as part of our toolbox. But that would that would those are unique opportunities that probably exist in some places and not in others. And the ability to identify from the ground level have an ambassador, an embassy or a regional bureau identify that as both a need and an opportunity and then us to operationalize it is exactly the kind of nimble programming that we want to be able to do. But I see great benefit in in the ability of us to ali and and it's also by the way the kind of foreign aid that ends because once they have acquired the capacity to do it it's helped our companies to find a place where they can deploy it. It's helped them to develop independence and it creates good faith among the nations in the future. That is part of the soft power that Senator McConnell was talking about a moment ago. Uh Mr. Secretary, I think it's the components that I've outlined are three three circumstances. You meet the needs of someone in a crisis today, but the long-term goal is to help people around the globe be self-sufficient, countries to care for themselves and reduce the role perhaps of United States in that effort. I would highlight for what you just said the program that provides the agricultural research to accomplish what you described as a positive development is a program called Food for Peace. I said that wrong. Is a program called Feed the Future. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh Senator Murray, thank you very much, Chair Graham. Senator Chutz, welcome to your new role. I look forward to working with both of you. Secretary Rubio, I am deeply concerned that you have overseen a systemic campaign to dismantle USAID, impound billions of dollars that this committee actually provided, and unilaterally remake the Department of State without the slightest bit of concern that you lack the authority to do that without Congress. It has created chaos. It's caused preventable deaths across the globe, and it has undermined American leadership. As Ranking Member Schatz noted, what you've done is outright illegal, a complete violation of bipartisan appropriation laws, the Empowerment Control Act, and the Anti-Deficiency Act. Within hours of taking office, President Trump halted all foreign aid in flagrant defiance of the law. Now, under your watch, Secretary Rubio, that freeze was implemented with chaos and cruelty. And then you illegally shut shuttered USAID, placing everyone on leave, halting life-saving work, literally locking people out of the building and out of their devices, even in dangerous corners of our world. You paid people not to work, abandoned our partners across the globe, and chaotically recalled global staff, putting more than 1600 Americans who served our country abroad in limbo. And when you shut down the USAID payment system, you even refused to pay for services provided before the illegal freeze. You fought all the way to the Supreme Court paying for against against paying for services US businesses um already rendered with funding that Congress already provided. And I know you know, Mr. Secretary, but you lost. And I assume you need the reminder because to this day, you have not made all the payments that are required by our nation's highest court. And as a result, American companies continue to lay off American workers. And by the way, you do continue to lose in court, including just yesterday over your move to illegally replace the US Institute of Peace leadership and in recent cases over international broadcasting. Now, eventually, Mr. Secretary, you sent Congress notice of your intent to collapse the USAID into State. Only, you didn't consult with this committee. That's required by law. It came without justification, also required by law. And it came long after USAID was reduced to rubble. So sadly, disregard for our laws and values to me has sort of become a pattern of your tenure. Revoking visas when someone writes an op-ed you don't like or reaching a secret deal to use taxpayer dollars to jail US residents in a notorious foreign prison. No due process or pointlessly leaving food assistance to rotten sto in storage. Actually, in Dubai, we now have 500 tons of high-energy biscuits that expire in July. They're bought, they're shipped, they're stored, all at taxpayer expense. But you've condemned them to waste, and that is one example of many. Now, another pattern that I'm deeply worried about is transparency. We have pressed you for information. Our staffs have sent you countless emails and briefing requests so we can do our job here. Um, there are hundreds of unanswered requests and no effort to address them. And Mr. Secretary, that's got to change. Even your plan to reorganize the State Department came with no information on the 270 offices you are moving to eliminate, the proposed layoffs, or how USAID would be merged into State. I won't ask you whether impounding billions of dollars is legal. It is not. I won't ask you whether it's efficient to pay people not to work or fire them without determining staffing needs. But uh, and I won't ask you if cutting 91% of our counter-narcotic and law enforcement programs make us safer. Abruptly abandoning agreements with allies makes us stronger or seeding our global leadership to China makes us more prosperous. Of course not. We know that we have worked together for years in a bipartisan way to advance US interests and fund those programs. So with respect to my colleagues, how long are we going to sit here and watch this silently? Are we going to roll over as Trump tramples our laws and undermines our US leadership, burns down what we have spent decades building and let millions of people across our globe suffer and die? Or are we going to stand up, push back, assert our constitutional power of the purse? And to my colleagues on both sides, this is the moment to decide whether this committee continues to be a powerful bipartisan force, a force that I think we've all been proud of for a very long time. A force that is focused on safety and economic strength and national security. Focused on leading the world in research and development and countering China and others with our soft power and our military power. Every single member of this committee knows what we are risking by letting this administration tear down so much on USAID and other programs. We can always talk about how we can make things work better and other reforms. I don't think any of us are opposed to any of those considerations. We have been doing that in a bipartisan way for a long time. But that's not actually what Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget proposes. Mr. Secretary, I know you would like to give a five-minute speech back to me, but I only have a few seconds left and I do need some information from you. As I said, we have asked and have not gotten. Can you tell me, will you share the text and details with my staff um of your agreement with El Salvador and any other similar arrangements, including the funding details that we need to have?

Well, first of I'd like to respond to your seven-minute speech, which is primarily I disagree like 99% of it. It's just not true. We've done nothing that's illegal. We've been in comm over 600 briefings to Congress. We've asked questions. We've answered questions repeatedly. We get hundreds of questions a day. We respond them as quickly as possible. And your characterization of the moves that we made, Mr. Secretary, I would just tell you we are here because we need the information so that we can write our budget and in a bipartisan Well, you'll have the information you need to write a budget. Okay. So, will we get the uh the details on the El Salvador arrangement? Yes or no? Which Salvador arrangement? Uh your agreement um that you've made with them about What agreement? The President of El Salvador agreed to take in 250 gangbangers. The funding details we have not gotten. We need to see what the costs are in that. Well, we haven't funded that. We we we've provided them law enforcement assistance. I know you just claimed that we cut all this law enforcement assistance. We provided El Salvador and other countries law enforcement assistance. They have the right to spend that money any way they wish. But they did us a big favor. That took 250 dangerous train. We didn't deport any US residents. No US residents were not going to argue with you in that. Well, not an argument, but don't say we deported US residents cuz we didn't. I don't deport anybody. I'm not asking, but we didn't deport US. I'm asking you whether we can see the details of the arrangements including the funding details. I'm giving you the details. The arrangements are we provide law enforcement funding to El Salvador among other countries. How they choose to spend that money internally is up to them. But I can tell you, can you give me the um details on the 200 plus offices you're proposing to Sure. We provided that. We we need that. Can I get your commitment to give us those? But it's part of our reorg. How about the details and justifications of your proposed recisions from programs you claim are out of alignment with administration priorities? Are we going to get the details of that funding priorities on recisions and empowerment and things of this nature? That's obviously an OMB function and I would talk to them about that in regard to what's going to go on with that money. I can tell you the contracts we canceled and I can list to you the contracts we canceled and the rationale why because I went through them. Can you get those to us like today so make? Yes. And the funding arrangements that you've made. That's what I'm asking for. Funding arrangements with who? For for any of the recisions for any of the funding for any of the multiple congressional congressional directives um that you have given out so that we as an appropriations committee can make our funding decisions. Sure. You're going to have all that information when you put together a budget. Thank you. Uh I enjoyed that. Um so to my friends on the other side, I've been very supportive of this account, but USAID is collapsed and if you're looking for somebody to blame, look in the mirror. Look at you, Samantha Powers. I've taken political fire like most of us have on our side for trying to be involved in the world. But here's what USAID did that's led to what he's doing. $70,000 grant for DEI musical production in Ireland. $69,000 for dance classes in Wuhan, China. $47,000 grant for transgender opera in Colombia. You screwed it up. You took the goodwill of people over here and you pissed it away because you turned over the keys to the kingdom to a bunch of crazy liberals. I can go on. $202.5 million for electric vehicles in Vietnam. $2 million for Moroccan pottery classes and promotion. $2 million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala. No more from you. None. The reason this thing is dead and never come back is because what you did. The Democratic Party did. You want me to follow that? As you wish. Yeah. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. Um, you know, during your confirmation hearing, you you stated preventing crisis is a lot cheaper and a lot better than dealing with a crisis after the fact. Uh, which I agree wholeheartedly. Uh, in 21, the State Department's budget was roughly 41 billion. Uh, today, 2025, the budget

Has almost doubled to 81.67 billion.

Is our world safer uh under over the last four years than it was uh when Trump was first in office? Is it safer today than it was? No. No. Before Trump came back, the last four years under Biden's administration, the the State Department almost doubled in in in their uh appropriated funds.

Well, I think over those four years, did we become a safer nation? Did the world become safer? Oh, I I don't think during the I think the last four years have become more destabilizing, right? Assign blame where one may want to, but we the world is less stable. We have an all-out conflict that at any given moment threatens to spiral into a broader one in the Middle East. We have uh the Russia Ukraine war that started in 2022 and has continued to this present day. We've shown uh Russia, I'm sorry, China is becoming increasingly aggressive in the Indoacific, particularly in the South China Sea against both the Philippines, Taiwan, and other claimants in the region. So, um, yeah, I mean, and and by the way, we experienced a mass migration crisis, not just here in the Western Hemisphere, but also because of what's happened in Africa and the Middle East and Europe. So, for all those reasons, no, we're not safer. So, it's safe to say that we threw money at it and it didn't help.

And so now that we're trying to get it back under control, for some reason the Democrats are throwing an absolute, as I would say, a ringtail fit because we're doing better with the money we sent. There's no room to cut. We've doubled their budget in four years. And we have wars upon wars and rumors on rumors of wars. We have Haiti that's absolutely a crap show. We have China that has increased their influence all around our borders. uh and all I mean literally if you start looking at their influence in Canada and Mexico and all over Central and South America it hasn't worked. Uh we have Africa that is a complete mess. We have a war going on in Ukraine. I'm sure that you know that wouldn't have happened if we actually had strong leadership there. We have a war going on in Israel. And what have we done? We've thrown money at what? Going back to the chairman's point of view about USA um USA aid. $73 million spent on DEI. $73 million spent on DEI last year because it made us safer. Are we serious? I mean, we have a $37 trillion debt. When are we going to start cutting? At what area are we going to start cutting? And now all of a sudden we're trying to actually make changes and be refocused on mission statement.

Sir, I appreciate what you're trying to do. Can you kind of walk me through what your end goal is?

Well, first of all, on the aid portion of it, these are some of the contracts we canceled. I can't go through all of them, and people would say what they want, but some of them make no sense to me. I mean, I say a lot of them make no sense. Well, I mean, for example, um $32 million to the Prague Civil Society Center. I don't I don't know what that is. I mean, obviously, we looked at the contract and we didn't approve it, but it didn't make a lot of sense to me. $14 million for improving public procurement in Serbia. I'm sure that improving public procurement in Serbia is not maybe it's a really good thing, but I don't know if that's in our national interest to put that kind of money into that. And that's the kinds of programs that we're talking about. It's not all the outrageous things. There are other things that are involved in this that you look at and say, "Okay, well, maybe this is a worthy program, but not for us. It's not something that we should be." 1.5 million for voter confidence in Liberia, 14 million for social cohesion in Mali, 2.5 million for inclusive democracies in Southern Africa, 47 million for something called improving learning outcomes in Asia. Again, these things sound really good, I guess. I mean, as noble causes, but can we continue to afford to prioritize these sorts of projects when we have so many other needs both domestically and abroad? And so, our hope is to bring about some sanity to how this money is spent. So, when people say we're still spending more money than anybody in the world on foreign aid, but it is being directed in a way that makes sense, that's actually furthering our national interest. And that's what we hope to be able to do. And that that's really the end goal here. It's not so much a cutting exercise. There may be savings involved, but the more important thing is that we get better outcomes from it. that we feel like our foreign aid and our giving is aligned with our foreign policy objectives in a specific region in a specific country. I think you said it best. National security interest and words that maybe my colleagues from the other side wouldn't like to hear, but America first. Is it in our interest or is it not in our interest? And we're throwing so much wasteful taxpayer dollars out the door that even the taxpayers want accountability and which they should. And that is what this administration is bringing. And that's what you're bringing now.

You know, my actually I don't know if my time's almost up or not because everybody's been going way over. It is. No, everybody else has been going way over. And so I I I I just want to say what's the difference between a visa and LPR? An LPR is someone who's admitted into the country, legal permanent resident. A guest, right? They treat it they're treated a little bit different underneath. Well, they're actually treated different from the very beginning because you we deny visas every day all over the world for all kinds of reasons. But I guess there's this attitude that once you get a visa now, you've you've got you've been enshrined with some sort of privilege that is unrevocable. And uh the truth of the matter is we should be able we we will continue to if there if you were going to do things that if we knew you were going to do it, we wouldn't let you into this country. If you do it once you're here, we're going to take away the visa. You're a guest. That's right.

One thing I want to add is uh I have a special special interest in in u Haiti. Uh my family and our companies be prior to me getting into Congress and after coming into Congress uh have it invested a lot into missions throughout Haiti and it's it's becoming a failed state. Uh, I would really like to work with your office and seeing how we can assist uh through individuals that we have uh contacts with with ways that we might be able to assist on going forward and putting hopefully the right people in place. I've literally spent years um dealing with Haiti and uh and I hate to say it's a failed state, but it will be. And who's going to backfill that is going to be China. And so we'd uh really like to work with you moving forward on that, sir. Absolutely. Thank you. And I agree, Senator Mullen. We don't talk enough about Haiti. It's in our backyard and it really it's not becoming a fail state. It is a fail state. Uh Senator Durban. Thank you, Senator Graham. Let me personally thank you for your leadership on this subcommittee. We may disagree on some things and some projects, but uh I believe you've been honest in working with us in the past and I look forward to that continuing.

Mr. Secretary, it's good to see you. 99 to nothing. It's pretty good score coming out of the Senate. Uh I'd like to ask you about Gaza if I can. They anticipate a a famine is underway in Gaza in the next few days days. They anticipate 14,000 infants and children will die. Israel has decided to change its policy to release baby food into Gaza. I just have to ask you as you must see the same pictures I do. You can't escape them. of these kids with pencil thin arms with ribs you can count, spiddly legs, wide eyes, who are just on the cusp of death because of the policy of Israel in dealing with Hamas. Now, let me make it clear for the record. I support Israel. I believe what happened October 7th was an act of terrorism, unforgivable act of terrorism, and they have a right to defend themselves. Period. Number two, I believe Hamas is a terrorist organization. I do not believe that every Palestinian in Gaza territory is a member of Hamas or sympathetic with that band of terrorists, but many of them are. So today, three countries, France, United Kingdom, and Canada made a statement which I'd like to summarize. You probably know this already. They said the resumption of aid into Gaza by Israel wholly inadequate. The United Kingdom paused free trade talks with Israel and sanctioned Israeli settlers. And then this statement, joint message by these three countries, allies of the United States. If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete action in response. Mr. Secretary, are we on the wrong side of history and watching this unfold and not responding as these three countries have?

Well, we're we're not prepared to respond the way these three countries have, but we are prepared to say as we have and I think the Israelis in their statements today acknowledged have engaged with our Israeli partners over the weekend and the last few days about the need to resume humanitarian aid. Um, we anticipate that those that those flows will increase uh over the next few days and weeks. Uh, it's important that that be achieved. I actually had an opportunity when I was in Rome um on Sunday or Saturday to see Cindy McCain as you know was involved with the world food program discussed their distribution systems. She outlined for me exactly how they would distribute food and how the program would work if it were to be restarted. So uh suffice it to say that we support 100% the fact that there can be no future in Gaza for the people of Gaza as long as Hamas is around. And by the way, in your comments that you made, I know you've many of you have noticed there's been growing number of anti-Hamas protests and demonstrations as well. So there are people on there that understand that this is a root cause of it. That said, you have this you have this acute immediate challenge of food and aid not reaching people and you have existing distribution systems that could get them there. So, we have and continue to work even though I've been here in hearings all week uh all day, but continued to work with our Israeli partners to and as I think they've acknowledged in the statement today that we've that they've heard from us to allow more aid in because I I believe they can achieve their objective of defeating Hamas without still allowing aid to enter in sufficient quantities.

I can I I agree with you. I think what you just said should be our policy, but I don't think we should use these people, these Palestinians, particularly these children, as just a casualty of war. This is a designed attack by Israel into Gaza. This is a designed decision by Israel not to provide humanitarian aid, food, medicine, water, and we provide quite a bit of money to Israel for its own defense and for other purposes. Shouldn't we be more forthcoming to speak out about this humanitarian crisis?

Yeah, I I think two there's two things that Israel has expressed and I don't want to speak for them because they they speak for often on this topic. The first is their complaints that humanitarian aid is often stolen and siphoned off by Hamas elements. Well, it has. There's no doubt that there has happened. That said, the question is whether it has to the question is is there a way to reliably reach as many people as possible and and and um prevent the humanitarian crisis you're describing while not enriching Hamas or providing Hamas relief. And we believe there is a way to do it and we we want to be supportive of that way to do it and we've encouraged them to do it in that way and we think we've made progress.

Did you ask Senator McCain whether Hamas was diverting food supplies from the people in Gaza?

We we didn't discuss that. We we we talked mostly about I wanted to get a description of what the distribution points look like. How can you get assistance to the most number of people as quickly as possible in an orderly way based on where they live and where they are in different an emergency humanitarian situation in your view?

Yeah. I mean ultimately I think we all see the same images. The question that I had in my mind in meeting with her and discussing is do we have the mechanisms in place to quickly start if in fact an agreement could be reached to allow humanitarian aid to flow? Do we have did we have the mechanics in place to allow the World Food Program and their contractors to go in and immediately begin to provide it? And she assured me that they do that they could because one of the arguments or one of the concerns that existed is that the organizations that could do the distribution were not on the ground or were not capable of starting so quickly. She assured us that they were.

If we have this in place, what are we waiting for? These children are dying.

Well, it's my understanding, again, I've been here all day, but it's my understanding that starting yesterday and moving through the next few days, aid will increasingly flow in, and hopefully that will allow these programs to work. I certainly hope so, too. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Senator Durban. Um, Senator Boseman. Oh, by the way, today is Cindy's birthday. Happy birthday, Cindy, wherever you may be.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's good to have you, uh, Mr. Secretary. We're very proud of you, but we do miss having you around very much. Uh, I want to follow up a little bit about uh some of the the the path that uh uh Senator Moran was going down about food aid uh in the process of reworking the programs. Could you speak to how the State Department is coordinating with other agencies like USDA uh regarding setting up a new foreign assistance framework? And can you also speak I know you've been very very supportive of the American farmer as is the president how that this can enhance uh uh American farmers markets.

Well first of all and it's uh I think this committee probably understands it but others perhaps don't fully appreciate. We actually do foreign aid across multiple other agencies as well. So USAD does some, HHS does some. So there are other agencies that do. So we we're that's a process we intend to look at and see if there's some duplication there that we can avoid and and perhaps increase our efficiency in regards to delivering services. In the case of food aid in particular, we you know Secretary Rollins, we've been in touch with her team and obviously we've been we've done a lot of reform and a lot of change over the last few months. So this is one that we is a little further behind. But I think the intent is to find a way though that we can leverage what USAD is already doing, U USDA is already doing to enhance how we provide food assistance around the world in a way that benefits the American farmer but also fulfills um our desire to provide assistance around the world where needed and where it furthers our national interest.

Good. Very good. Uh let me talk to you a little bit about the Fulbright program and the Fulbright alumni. 44 Fulbright alumni have served as heads of state government. 89 foreign governments contribute over $90 million annually. I know in my travels and and you're traveling so extensively now and have been for many many years. It seems like every time that you're in a foreign country and you're visiting with the cabinet ministers, you know, half of them are Fulbright scholars and they're very very proud of it. Uh 49 governments match or exceed the US government's annual contribution. Um, I guess the question is, would you be willing to work with us to find a solution that strengthens the program uh and yet fits into today's challenges which are different than they have been in the past. But the opportunity uh for the leadership of these other countries uh across the ranks uh to have them such that they're very very familiar with uh the United States in that way I think is is really invaluable.

Well, and I think that's most certainly going to be a part of our process. As you know, we're the beginning of this appropriations process going into the new year. We have a submission we've made to you, a preliminary submission. Obviously, um I served here long enough to know that you'll have your own set of ideas about uh what the priorities should be and what we should be looking to do and we understand that and we'll work very closely with you on those priorities because in the end we'll tell you what we need in order to run our agency and then you'll tell us what we need as well. Um that's the way it worked in the 15 years I was here 16 I imagine that's the way it'll continue to work. I I I do think ultimately we want to do is share the same goal and we we owe you that document as a starting point and I wanted to interlace it with the ORC chart. Again, I know some people don't want to talk about reorganization, but I do think they're intertwined and they're deeply important that not that they don't want to talk about it, but they don't they want to separate one from the other. But look, we're we're going to be engaged with you in this appropriations process because I think it's beneficial to us, but also because we have to because ultimately you will write that and and I think that the department will be stronger if you can pass an appropriations bill and get it through the other house and have it signed by the president. I mean, we want you to be able to pass an appropriations bill.

Yeah, very much. One of the things in in traveling, you know, you're you're there, you get the in-country team briefing and stuff and you just wonder, you know, what the State Department's doing to further US economic interest, uh, including advocating for US businesses abroad. Can you tell us kind of what your ideas are in that regard?

Well, it's a it's a it's a mission that we have in this reorganization. the economics team will really focus on it. But but the it is a mission we have to try to connect American companies to business opportunities abroad and in many of the countries around the world that you go to particularly those that are developing maybe not underdeveloped but developing countries they seek American expertise where we have seen barriers to entry in some countries manifest in one of two ways. The first is frankly there are a lot of countries that are open to American investment but they don't have strong rule of law. By that I mean you can sign a contract with them, but if a month later someone else's cousin gets elected judge or mayor, someone will come knocking on your door and saying this business no longer belongs to you. It belongs to us. So there's there's that sense. In some cases, it's security. The they just feel that there's not enough security in the country for them to make long-term investments. And in other cases, frankly, there are things are, you know, we have competitors that bribe foreign officials. We lose business opportunities because someone shows up with a bag of cash and that's unlawful and illegal for an American business to do. That said, we are constantly looking for opportunities for that where American expertise can provide resources. One of the areas we're seeing a lot of that now is in the mining of rare earth minerals where multiple countries are lining up to invite American companies to come in and do that sort of mining in an ecologically responsible way, not in a destructive way to their natural environment. We think that's a huge opportunity as well for the US. Um and and again we want that going back as it's a broken record but these are the kinds of opportunities that are driven from the local level up. When you get these cables saying the local government or local economy is looking for greater US investment in this sector it allows us to partner with companies here that are looking for expansion abroad and and hopefully create those opportunities for them.

Very good. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you. Thank you Senator Sheen. Um, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I ask my questions, I want to go back to your um characterization of USAID and the Democrats responsibility for what happened um with that program. I think you've heard from virtually every um person who has talked today and we certainly heard this this morning in terms of the foreign relations committee that if there were improprieties in USAD then we were on board with addressing those and we were on board with making changes to make sure that didn't happen again but the concern is the wholesale throwing out of the foreign assistance programs for the .3% of grants that we um agree maybe should never have been made. A number of them are things that never happened. They've been made up. Just like President Trump's reference to transgender um mice in his in state of the state address, that's not what happened. He was talking about transgenic mice which are used in cancer experiments, not transgender mice. So I I think we would all be better served if we tried to work together to address the challenges of providing foreign assistance in a way that as Secretary Rubio has said and I think most of us have agreed with makes it more effective and better. And I'm not sure that the chainsaw that Elon Musk took to USID makes it better on its face. Um, and we can disagree about that and I'm sure we will because we may have different views and and I for one don't appreciate Senator Mullen suggesting that because I may have a different view on how USA foreign assistance should be operated that I'm less of a patriot and don't believe in the security of this country. So, Mr. Chairman, I would hope that we could dispense with the name calling in the future. And I agree. You've been a great defender of foreign assistance programs. I feel like I have, too. So, we should agree on that. You have. And I guess the only reason I did this, you've accused this man of killing 15 million people. I didn't accuse him. Well, I I think they quoted a report that suggested that because of changes to foreign assistance that there would be significant numbers of people killed. I don't blame Senator Rubio for that. Um, I think but I do blame the policy changes for the devastating impact they will have on people across the world and I hope that we can fix those and that we are all committed to doing that. I'll give you another minute because I interrupted you.

Okay. Um, well, let me go back to the question that I asked this morning, Senator Rubio, which has to do with Ukraine. Um because we were talking about sanctions and one of the things you pointed out is that um the Trump administration has left in place the sanctions on Russia. Today the EU and the UK impose sweeping new sanctions on Russia, including targeting close to 200 vessels in Moscow's shadow fleet. Um, but we haven't seen our sanctions change to address the changes that Moscow has been able to make in response to the sanctions regime that we've put on. So, the question is, and I asked you this this morning, um, Senator Graham and Blumenthal have a bill that has 80 Senate sponsors on it that would put in place secondary sanctions on Russia because of its continued failure to come to the negotiating table to really look at how to end the war in Ukraine. Is this legislation that you or the Trump administration or the White House would support?

Well, it's legislation we're most certainly aware of. Um I I am not today in a position to tell you we're going to endorse it or support it at this time. Um that and I'll have to explain why. Um we are in we want to continue to play the role where we can speak to both sides of this conflict and get them to the table to end this war once and for all. We the president is fully aware as he has reminded on numerous occasions both in posts on social media and in public statements. He fully recognizes that he has options at his disposal. I can also tell you and I believe you're personally aware along with Senator Graham that um we have warned the Russians for the better part of two months that the Senate is working on a package which is far more severe than anything the president could impose under his own authority in many cases and that eventually if progress isn't made people are going to give us some time to work this.

Out. But if that didn't work out after a while, there was nothing that was it was going to happen. This was going to come. So, we're aware of that.

Suffice it to say that um we are still hopeful, although at the same time realistic, but hopeful with our eyes wide open that we can reach a point here where we can begin even the process of negotiating this. We we spent a lot of time on this. We've met with both sides, far more with the Ukrainians than with the Russians. We've had two technical talks with the Russians in the past, one high-level engagement. The president's spoken to President Putin three times. We've spoken to the Ukrainians far more.

So what we're expecting now based on the president's phone conversation yesterday and my conversations over the weekend with Mr. Lavrov is that at some point here fairly soon, maybe in a number of days, maybe this week hopefully, the Russian side is going to present terms that they would want to see, just broad terms that would allow us to move towards a ceasefire. And that ceasefire would then allow us to enter into they to enter into detailed negotiations to bring about an end to the conflict. We are hoping that will happen. We believe that the term sheet that the Russians produce will tell us a lot about their true intentions. If it's a term sheet that's realistic and you can work off of it, that's one thing. If it makes demands that we know are unrealistic, I think that will be indicative. And what the president will decide to do at that point, I can't speak for them at this moment. I'm not prepared to say, but I think we all know he is aware of both his authorities to sanction and he is well aware of the fact that this bill is moving in the Senate. And um and it's one of the reasons why I asked Senator Graham to join me in Turkey Turkey to to when we engaged the night you arrived with our Ukrainian partners as well.

Um I appreciate that. I appreciate the fact that you have talked more to the Ukrainians. Um and yet this morning when we talked about continued assistance to Ukraine, um you said that nothing had been done to cut that assistance. But you have cut energy assistance that's necessary for repairing their grid, electric grid after missile attacks and keeping electricity flowing. I've visited that those some of those electric grids, so I know how critical they are. You've cut assistance to help Ukrainians document, verify, and report on war crimes to allow them to one day hold perpetrators accountable. Again, I've had the opportunity to meet with some of those folks who were um in the process of documenting the atrocities that have been occurred that have occurred. You've cut cost-free cooperation with international bodies that are tracking kidnapped Ukrainian children. You've cut assistance to strengthen security sector oversight, um which is helpful to us as we make sure that the Ukrainians are spending funds that we have um provided them appropriately. So I I in my mind that doesn't mean that uh this administration has continued assistance to Ukraine. It means that you've cut assistance to Ukraine and in many areas, the ones I just outlined. Um and so again, if we're going to see a dynamic change in these negotiations, um and to get legitimate peace negotiations going on, then we've got to put more pressure on Russia. And so far the administration has not been willing to do that.

Well, I I don't agree we haven't put pressure on Russia as we continue to insist upon them coming to the table. For example, they agreed albeit less than ideal direct talks for the first time in three years occurred this weekend in Turkey. Um for the first time in multiple years of the the since at least 2022, the Russians have agreed to produce documentation. Now, it may not lead to anything and at some point we may wind up right at the point you're you're pointing to. The president is just not prepared to close the door on that yet because he still hopes to achieve

Let me just clarify. My understanding is that President Trump offered to go to Turkey um to meet with President Zalinski and with Vladimir Putin. President Zalinski went Vladimir Putin refused to go and basically dissed the president's invit willingness to go to meet with them in person. I think the president that was certainly what was reported.

Yeah, but I was on that trip. I think the president expressed, yes, if there's going to be a meeting between Zalinsky and Putin, I'm more than willing to go. But there wasn't going to be one. Putin never agreed to a meeting with Zalinsky, right? So, the president was willing to go, but Vladimir Putin wasn't. If that that in my mind means that Putin while the president may be willing to negotiate and may be willing to sit at the table, Vladimir Putin is not because it's in his interest, he believes it's in Russia's interest to carry this out this war out as long as possible because he thinks that Russia benefits from that until we change the dynamic. That's what he's going to continue to do.

Well, again, that may very well be what he believes. At some point, time will and his actions will tell, but I think the president wants to exhaust every opportunity to bring about a peaceful negotiation here, an end to this conflict as soon as possible. And I think we should be happy that we have a president that wants to end a war, and that he's, you know, it's it's it's taxing on the patience, and it's taken a long time, but four months has been dedicated to this. But ultimately, I think it's a good thing that we have a president that's trying to end this war. He wants to give it every available chance possible uh and doesn't want to foreclose anything too early. If there's still a chance to achieve peace, he wants to make that happen.

I I'm not disagreeing with that. I think I agree. I think we should try and end this war. I'm just questioning his tactics and whether he's really being successful in the way he's doing this.

Mr. Chairman, I I'd like to enter for the record a fact sheet that um it's called the PRC supporting international assistance as US withdraws. It's dated April 29th, 2025. And what it lays out is specific um examples of where the PRC has come in and taken over US assistance programs as we've withdrawn.

Without objection. Thank you. Uh Senator Brit's on our way. If you can just hang in there a few more minutes. Um it's been a long day. You've done a terrific job in my view. Um let me just what you said the last five or six minutes has been really I think put a fine point on what we're trying to do here. Count me in for ending the war peacefully, honorably, and justly. And I think President Trump, above all others, has the ability to do that because quite frankly, I think he's the one guy that Putin probably does not want to cross. Senator Shaheen's point, I share her concerns in this regard. President Trump called for a ceasefire. Ukraine said yes. Putin's making excuses. He said, "Go to Istanbul." Zalinsky went. Putin did. Having said all that, you've described a process that's very clear to me. In the coming days, not weeks, um, Russia will give us a term sheet of what they need to get to ceasefire and we'll have some indication of how serious they are. Um, I think that's a good thing, uh, Marco, that we're now getting them to put up their terms for a ceasefire. And, um, after they do that, I'll be glad to talk to you and get your view of what this means and I'll share my view. The fact that you invited me to Turkey, I think the committee should be that was really I appreciated that you you took a member of the Senate and I was at every meeting and Secretary Rubio wanted people to hear the way our system works and you quite frankly, my friend, have really gone the extra mile of trying to bring this coalition together. Give Russia the space it needs to get to Yes. I'm not out to humiliate Putin. I'm no fan of his. I understand that we want to get this war over, but in the next few days we'll have some indication of how serious he is, and I promise you we're over 80 now. If the next few days is like the last months, then you can just count on us moving because I think it's our job to to try to help the world end this war. Um, the Chinese are watching. This is a dress rehearsal for Taiwan. How this ends, I think, will determine greatly what happens to the future of Taiwan. And I want this war to end in a way that she thinks, "Well, that didn't work out too well for Putin." Again, I'm not out to humiliate Russia, but I am out to make sure the war ends in a way not to start new wars. Afghanistan was a disaster. If we do not get this right and Ukraine and the world perceives that Putin got away with it, that will be even worse. That will be worse than Afghanistan. So, I have every confidence we're not going to let that happen. I have every confidence in Secretary Rubio. I have seen him in action and I I tell you, the way he interacted with his colleagues in NATO was just masterful. And I appreciate u being part of that trip and what you're doing in Syria. We don't talk enough about it could be a game-changer because you're right if we don't do something in a matter of weeks or months the place will become ungoverned and we'll have another al Qaeda ISIS recruiting camp in our in in the M East. So count count me in for wanting to help you on sanctions. Do we know where Senator Brit's at? All right. She had her chance. She's great. She's working hard. You've been here all day. Thank you so much.