House Republicans introduced a State Department spending bill on Tuesday that withholds a significant chunk of funding until State hands over emails related to the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead.
And House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has indicated he supports the language.
Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee released their fiscal year 2016 funding bill for the department, which would withhold “15 percent of State Department operational funds until requirements related to proper management of Freedom of Information Act and electronic communications are met.”
Republicans have been asking the department for months to hand over the emails it has from Hillary Clinton’s private server. State first proposed handing them out by next January, but a federal court said those emails must be released on a rolling basis.
The funding language in the bill seems likely to pass in the House, as Boehner indicated his support for it in a tweet late Tuesday:
Time for President Obama’s State Department to stop stonewalling the #Benghazi investigation. http://t.co/Z5S8aThfdt pic.twitter.com/B1gDWTvp9b
— John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner) June 2, 2015
The House bill includes several other oversight provisions, including language that would withhold U.S. funding for the United Nations Human Rights Council unless the secretary of state finds that funding the body is in the U.S. national interest.
Elsewhere, the bill says the department must tell Congress if it agrees to aid countries that accept Guantanamo Bay detainees.
It prohibits funding for a U.S. embassy in Cuba, or a Cuban embassy in the U.S. Both are policy goals of the Obama administration.
And, it includes several aid restrictions against various countries, such as Pakistan, Egypt, Ukraine and Syria.
“The bill prohibits assistance to the government of the Russian Federation,” according to a summary.
