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A top State Department official was on Capitol Hill today defending recent layoffs and the dismantling of the lead aid agency in the U.S. Some Democrats see the moves by the Trump administration as a gift to China, which is beefing up its diplomacy around the world. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Just days after he laid off 1,300 civil and foreign service officers, the Deputy Secretary of State for Management Michael Rigas explained that this was just about streamlining the bureaucracy.
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MICHAEL RIGAS: No one wants to lay someone off. I don't think we take any joy in laying people off or any kind of reduction in force. But we have to do what's best for the mission. We have to do what's best for the organization.
KELEMEN: But Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took issue with the way it was done, forcing out public servants, many with decades of experience. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey called it utterly unacceptable.
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CORY BOOKER: I know what it means to do a RIF right. But this has been chaos. It has been cruelty. And your answers, frankly, have just lacked decency.
KELEMEN: Booker pointed out that the State Department fired officers about to head out on new assignments overseas, including one who was in the process of moving to Pakistan. There were also two consular officers who were part of a rapid response team.
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BOOKER: The rapid response officers you fired were both actively deployed, leaving one stranded in Colombia and the other in Ankara without access to their emails or phones and without plane tickets home.
KELEMEN: Intelligence analysts on Russia and Ukraine were let go, he says, as was an expert on chemical weapons at a time when the U.S. is trying to help the new Syrian government locate and destroy stockpiles. This was the second day in a row that Rigas was facing such criticism from Democrats. On Tuesday, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Gregory Meeks, blasted him for not keeping Congress in the loop.
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GREGORY MEEKS: Let's be clear. You've created the largest brain drain in the State Department's modern history, occurring as China and others expand their global footprint while we shrink ours.
KELEMEN: In both the House and Senate hearings, Rigas faced questions about the demise of the U.S. Agency for International Development and how that's affected farmers and American companies that provide food aid. Congressman Gabe Amo, a Democrat from Rhode Island, says it's costing taxpayers more money to incinerate food that has expired in warehouses, food that was meant for starving children abroad.
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GABE AMO: So what's the plan?
RIGAS: We're going to make sure it doesn't happen again is what the plan is.
AMO: Well, arbitrarily firing 15% of the staff is not a plan because those people, those experts that you get rid of I am sure would have some role in making sure that your plan was viable and that you could let American leadership shine. So that's a failure.
KELEMEN: Deputy Secretary Rigas says the department succeeded in reducing staffing by 15% at headquarters. Some Republicans urged him to go further with cuts.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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