Hearings to examine proposed budget estimates for fiscal year 2026 for the Department of State.
Senate Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs
2025-05-20
Source: Congress.gov
Summary
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Participants
Transcript
The committee will come to order. Secretary Rubio, thank you. 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. To the new members of the committee, welcome. I look forward to working with you and Senator Britton Mullen. I look forward to working with our new ranking member, Senator Schatz. Senator Coons and I work extremely well, and I will try to keep that going from my end, and I know you will too. We'll have opening statements. I'll start out, then we'll have six-minute rounds. And I will start, then Senator Schatz, and we'll have Secretary Rubio. Then we'll recognize people as they come. The deadline for submitting SFOP requests is May 22nd to all the members of the committee. To our audience, you're welcome to be here. If you disrupt, you'll get kicked out. Okay, so let's start the committee meeting with a couple 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 will be good for the country. In terms of the budget, This is 48% below the enacted level. And presidential budgets are given some consideration, and this will get some consideration.
Bottom line is, I believe that there is space to save money in this account, and I look forward to finding a way to do that. I think Secretary Rubio's the right guy at the right time. all kind of problems with USAID. 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 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 of trying to make sure that America first was burden sharing. You need to do more. You need to up your game. But we committed to a world order here. And we're committed to making sure that the world is a good place to live in. Having said that, 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. 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 collapse in Syria, and I agree with him.
Syria is designated a state sponsor of terrorism under U.S. law since 1979. I'm looking forward to Secretary Rubio's input about should we change that designation?
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