Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans an “intentional hollowing-out” of State Department leadership, a group of House Democrats complained Thursday.
Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., led the Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats to demand a briefing on Tillerson’s plan to reorganize and cut State Department personnel, a long awaited plan that the former Exxon Mobil CEO has identified as one of his top priorities. Their letter to Tillerson builds on bipartisan Senate complaints that the reform process is behind schedule and out of touch with Congress.
“[W]e remain profoundly concerned about what appears to be the intentional hollowing-out of our senior diplomatic ranks and the entire State Department with no apparent goal,” the letter said.
The lawmakers said they’re worried about “the exodus of more than 100 senior foreign service officers” in 2017, in an echo of Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin’s warning during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday.
“While we understand that attrition of senior officials will ebb and flow in any administration, the departures at the senior levels should sound the alarm bells for you as Secretary of State and the Administration,” they wrote. “Those alarm bells are already ringing for us, the committee with responsibility for oversight of the State Department, as we imagine they would for any board-of-directors overseeing a private company.”
Tillerson wants to reduce the number of State Department personnel, through attrition and buyouts, by about eight percent, or 2,300 people. Democrats have denounced that plan, paired with the administration’s proposal to cut the department budget to George W. Bush-era levels, as a “draconian” slash of the diplomatic corps. More recently, his plan has drawn Republican fire as well.
“I don’t think they’re anywhere close to having a plan to present relative to the reforms that they want to make there,” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, who began the year as an administration ally before emerging as a sharp critic of President Trump, said Tuesday.
Those remarks followed a “very unsatisfactory” meeting between Tillerson and Corker’s respective aides, according to the Tennessee Republican. “I do think that we need to be much more focused on holding them accountable,” Corker said.
House Democrats also demanded a special briefing in Thursday’s letter.
“With the range of crises, war, and humanitarian disaster around the world, slashing our diplomatic corps is downright dangerous,” they wrote. “We therefore, urgently request a briefing immediately to explain how these cuts serve United States national security interests and make the State Department more effective.”
