House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce will hold a hearing Sept. 8 to examine the National Security Council’s increasing role in foreign policy and what he argues is a lack of oversight of the White House’s foreign policy staff.
“There has been increasing bipartisan concern over the size and role of the President’s National Security Council staff,” Royce, R-Calif., said in a statement Friday. “In too many cases, its role of ‘honest broker’ has been lost to policy making — and even secret diplomatic negotiations — all out of view of Congress. This hearing is an opportunity to hear from witnesses who have direct experience with the growth of the NSC firsthand.”
Republicans on Capitol Hill have spent months sparring with the White House over the size of the NSC amid Pentagon complaints of West Wing micromanaging.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry in April, authored a bill to cut the White House’s NSC staff “well below” its current level. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has also said a downsizing is needed at the White House.
Reacting to that news, a senior administration official hit back, telling Washington Examiner at the time that some of the proposals Republicans on Capitol Hill are considering would reduce the NSC staff to less than the number of aides on the Senate Armed Services Committee, hampering the next president’s ability to form his foreign policy teams.
“Apparently, these lawmakers feel that they should have more national security staffers than the president of the United States,” the official told the Examiner. “Indeed, this effort would accomplish little beyond handicapping the next president by depriving that individual of resources needed to respond to an increasingly complex national security landscape.”
Royce’s hearing next week will feature testimony from David Miller, a former special assistant to the president on the NSC who is now a fellow at the Atlantic Council; Lincoln Bloomfield, Jr., former assistant secretary for political military affairs at the State Department who is now chairman of the Stimson Center’s Board of Directors; and Derek Chollet, a former assistant secretary for international security affairs at the State Department who is now a senior adviser at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
