House committee approves State Department restructure in marathon hearing

The House Foreign Affairs Committee has passed a set of bills that would reauthorize the State Department and put in place a new organizational structure and set of policies and priorities, including how it will focus its foreign assistance programs, if they become law. The decisions came late Thursday evening at the end of a marathon, nearly 36-hour markup hearing that kicked off Wednesday. Amid the lengthy debates, what emerged is that despite some areas of consensus among Democrats and Republicans on the committee, on the whole, they seem to have significantly different visions for the State Department and the future of U.S. foreign assistance programs and spending. The final vote was a moment of relief for members who could finally head home to get some sleep. But this won’t be the last debate about the set of proposals: Further discussion could be in store if the bills make it to the House floor for consideration and approval by the full body of representatives. Historically, State Department reauthorizations are challenging to get passed through Congress and signed into law, so passing out of committee is merely a first step. The Senate will also have its own proposal for how things should look at the State Department. If the House version is approved, it would have to be reconciled with a Senate version and then get approval in both houses of Congress. While a number of bills proposing to reconfigure the department’s organizational chart got bipartisan support, many others — including the bill shaping the leadership structure for foreign assistance at the State Department and a sprawling policy bill — passed with votes only from the Republican majority. The same was true for the reauthorization of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, which the House has decided to package with the State Department reauthorization process, even though it is an independent agency focused on development finance. The bill outlining foreign assistance at the State Department — which was approved by the committee — would create an undersecretary for foreign assistance, a director, and an Office of Foreign Assistance Oversight. It also gives the undersecretary authority over foreign assistance funds. The bill, as amended, would also give the undersecretary oversight of the Bureau of Democracy and Fundamental Freedoms, the Office of International Religious Freedom, the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, the Bureau of Migration and Disaster Assistance, the Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy, and the Office of Global Food Security. It would also create an assistant secretary for democracy and fundamental freedoms. “The administration has already showed this model delivers faster, more effective assistance while strengthening U.S. credibility abroad,” said Rep. Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, during the markup. But Democrats voted against both the bill and a related amendment from Smith. Rep. Gregory Meeks, of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, where they are in the minority, said he opposed the bill because it was “rubber-stamping the Trump administration’s illegal action to shutter USAID.” He also argued that the State Department was not sufficiently equipped to take on the former agency’s work. Meeks, who praised USAID’s workforce, introduced an amendment to authorize or re-create the U.S. Agency for International Development, but it was rejected. A ‘contentious’ policy bill The bills tackling the agency’s organizational chart were the easy part of the long markup process. As the committee started to discuss the policy bill, Rep. Brian Mast, of Florida, the Republican chair of the committee, said: “We now turn to what is undoubtedly the most contentious portion.” Meeks criticized the policy bill as a partisan piece of legislation that “replaces the work this committee should be doing as it did in prior” years, where it held markups on individual issues — rather than bundling multiple new policy provisions in one bill that he saw less than a week in advance. He criticized a lack of oversight in the bill and its rewriting of U.S. global health assistance, including a goal to wind down PEPFAR, the global U.S. HIV/AIDs program. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from Texas, said that the bill did include a few provisions he worked on, including extending the provisions in the Global Child Thrive Act that address early childhood development, and bringing back Development Innovation Ventures, a program that provides flexible funding to innovators and researchers to test and scale new ideas and was shuttered with USAID. “There is a lot to support in the bill,” but it also includes alarming provisions, he said during the markup. Taking aim at the UN A clear target of many of the amendments to the policy bill was the United Nations and its agencies, many of which sought to codify previous decisions made by the Trump administration. Added to the bill were provisions that would prohibit funding for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Paris Agreement, the U.N. Population Fund, and the World Health Organization until it regains the trust of the U.S. Amendments that were approved would also bar anyone affiliated with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees from entering the U.S; would revoke the visa of Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories; and would stop all U.S. funding to the U.N. funding if Israel is “illegally expelled from the U.N.” Another amendment targeted U.N. financial practices, including what one lawmaker said were inflated salaries above U.S. government pay scales, mandating additional reporting and allowing the U.S. to withhold funding if organizations “fail to adopt sound financial practices.” The bill, if passed, would also withdraw the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council, require better tracking of U.S. contributions to the U.N., and require reports on every peacekeeping mission prior to renewal and urge changes or withhold funding if progress had not been made. While there is clear skepticism or disdain for international organizations among some Republicans on the committee, an amendment prohibiting funding to all international organizations was considered to be overly broad by Mast and did not pass. Provisions ensuring U.S. work on basic education, maternal child health, and some democracy funding also made it into the bill, as did others prohibiting abortion funding. Working together? An undercurrent throughout the process was a dispute about the bipartisan — or not — nature of the bill and the process to create it. Mast said he had considered many Democratic members priorities, and some were included in the legislation. Meanwhile, Meeks said that the bills were developed by the Republican majority on the committee with limited input from Democrats. There was finger-pointing in both directions about how the process played out and who was allowed to speak with whom to negotiate provisions. In the end, most of the votes came down along party lines. One amendment that had support from both sides of the aisle fell apart at the last minute. Rep. Sara Jacobs, a Democrat from California, introduced a bipartisan amendment she’d worked on with Rep. Young Kim, a Republican from California, that would have encouraged the administration to pursue a model of locally led development and humanitarian response. But then Mast said it no longer had strong bipartisan support and that he had just received feedback from the White House that meant Republican support would be pulled. Jacobs was surprised, saying she had negotiated with Mast’s staff to reach a bipartisan agreement. “When we make deals, we try not to renege at the last minute publicly,” she said during the hearing, but agreed to withdraw the amendment to try and reach a new agreement. In between all the debate about the State Department, the committee also took up the reauthorization of the U.S. DFC, which finances private sector development. The committee approved its bill — which is nearly identical to the text proposed by the Trump administration — despite objections from Democrats. Meeks suggested that the House instead approve bipartisan legislation that the House had passed last year to reauthorize DFC — that effort failed. At the heart of the debate about DFC were questions about its mission — with Mast arguing that it shouldn’t be constrained in where it can invest, so long as an investment is good for the U.S. Several Democrats argued that it should maintain its development focus and invest primarily in lower-income countries that lack ready access to commercial markets. The Senate has its own version of a DFC reauthorization bill, and at some point, the two versions will need to be reconciled. But it seems increasingly unlikely that it will happen before DFC’s authorization lapses on Oct. 6. Mast said without reauthorization, DFC “would be forced to stop taking on new projects, investments, and it would send a terrible signal to the private sector.” But later in the hearing, he also indicated that he expected the package of bills to take time to move through the House. It is possible that lawmakers will pass a temporary extension of DFC’s authorization to buy more time to iron out a long-term plan.