STATE, FOREIGN OPERATIONS, AND RELATED PROGRAMS APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2016 TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2015 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in room SD–192, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Lindsey Graham (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Graham, Kirk, Blunt, Boozman, Moran, Lankford, Daines, Leahy, Durbin, Coons, Merkley, and Murphy. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN F. KERRY, SECRETARY OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM Senator GRAHAM. The committee will come to order. It is my pleasure to have Secretary Kerry with us today. We all look forward to your testimony, Mr. Secretary. I just want to ac- knowledge your hard work on behalf of our Nation. You are very energetic, traveling from one end of the globe to the other, trying to bring some calm out of chaos. As to the subcommittee itself, I am now the chairman. I appre- ciate the honor of chairing the subcommittee, but my partner, Sen- ator Leahy, we will continue to do what we have been doing since I have been here, and that is work together for the common good. This is one account that has been bipartisan. We intend to keep it that way. It represents 1 percent of the Federal budget, give or take a bit. The amount of return on investment the American tax- payer has achieved from this account I think is something we should all be proud of. There is more than one way to deal with a problem. The military options are sometimes the most talked about, and there are other ways to engage the world. This account represents ways to engage the world without the use of military force. I worry deeply about the effects of sequestration, Mr. Secretary, on this account. We are due to spend 2.3 percent of GDP, some- where in that range, on defense by the 2024 period. That will be the lowest amount we spend on our national defense in decades. (1) 2 This account, which I believe is national defense in another form, gets dramatically reduced. What does that mean? It means that all the efforts we have made to counter malaria and AIDS in Africa and throughout the world are put in jeopardy. We have made such progress. Mother- to-child AIDS transmission has been dramatically reduced. There are countries on the continent of Africa that are inside the 10-yard line in terms of eradicating their AIDS problems. We are turning the corner on malaria and almost eradicated polio. The developing world needs America now more than ever. From an American taxpayer point of view, this has been a good invest- ment to bring stability, particularly to the continent of Africa. All is in jeopardy if the Congress continues to sit on the sidelines and watch sequestration being implemented. Finally, Embassy security. The entire State Department’s budget is under the appropriation of this subcommittee. To the diplomats and the contractors who are serving in faraway places with strange sounding names, God bless you. We worry about your safety daily. I am here to say, from my point of view as chairman of the sub- committee, if sequestration is not somehow moderated or replaced, we are putting in jeopardy the ability to post people overseas in dangerous areas safely. That, to me, is not an alarmist view. It is reality. So I look forward to hearing from the Secretary about a variety of challenges throughout the world, and would love to hear your comments about the effects of sequestration on your ability to man- age the department. You have a hard stop at noon, so we will try to get through the 7-minute rounds. With that, I will turn it over to Senator Leahy. STATEMENT OF SENATOR PATRICK J. LEAHY Senator LEAHY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I congratulate you in the way your staff worked with me and my staff throughout the years. The chairman was right in saying that this is a committee where we are pretty transparent. We try to work in a bipartisan way. I remember Senators Dan Inouye and Ted Stevens doing that. I did it with Senator McConnell. We went back and forth. Part of the time, I was chairman. Part of the time, he was chairman. And then it was Senator Gregg in New Hampshire, and now Senator Graham. We did work closely together. Our bill was one of the few that came out with virtually unanimous support. We tried to check the priorities of whoever was in the White House, whether it was a Democrat or Republican as President. One of the things we tried to do also was to give the view to the rest of the world that we are a lot stronger when we work together. Mr. Secretary, you have one of the most difficult jobs in the world. We have known each other for decades. I have talked to you about your travels, your indefatigable travels. But the world seems to be on fire, sometimes literally, in so many parts of the world. We had a 14-year war in Afghanistan that set wildly optimistic goals. But today, much of that country remains under Taliban con- trol with a weak central government. The government I believe we should support struggles to function in a highly insecure and cor- 3 rupt environment. We had tens of billions of dollars in aid pro- grams implemented by U.S. contractors, very little of that can be or will be sustained by the Afghans. In Iraq, we spent hundreds of billions while dire needs in other parts of the world, including our own hemisphere, to say nothing about our own country, were neglected. But there it is, an unstable, corrupt environment. I believe the future is anything but secure. Syria is the world’s biggest disaster. Libya looks like it can be- come another Syria. Relations between Israelis and Palestinians have gone from bad to worse, and we are at a decisive point with Iran. ISIL has emerged seemingly out of nowhere. It is probably the best illustration of how naive some were to think that launching a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein meant that we were going to be created in that area as liberators. I have more of my statement that I will put in my record. But look at Central America. Decades of corrupt oligarchies, civil wars, despots. Governments there have squandered the past two decades. Now you have organized crime and corruption deeply root- ed, widespread. I do welcome a new focus in that region, but I want to make sure that the billions that are being requested are going to be spent differently than they were in the past. Then we have Ebola, HIV/AIDS, spiraling cost of U.N. peace- keeping, global warming. There is a lot going on. I do commend the administration. I have spoken to you privately and the President about this. I realized that 50 years of policy on Cuba hadn’t worked. I think of the memos sent to the President, to hold tough and those Cas- tros will be gone any day now. Of course, the first such memo was sent to President Eisenhower and then President Kennedy and President Johnson, President Nixon, and so on. PREPARED STATEMENT So I think it won’t change overnight, but the nice thing now is that the mistakes made in Cuba and the failures of their own econ- omy, the Cuban Government can no longer blame it on us because of our embargo. They are going to have to take responsibility for their own mistakes. I will put my full statement in the record. [The statement follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR PATRICK J. LEAHY Thank you Mr. Chairman. This is Senator Graham’s first hearing as chairman of this subcommittee, and I congratulate him and thank him for the way he and his staff have worked with me and my staff over the years. This subcommittee has a history of bipartisanship. I remember 30 years ago when Senators Dan Inouye and Bob Kasten worked to- gether, and myself with Senator McConnell, Senator Gregg, and since then with Senator Graham. I have served as chairman and ranking member. We have switched back and forth. But unlike some committees we have worked in a transparent, cooperative way, drafting the bills and reports together. We include the priorities of both sides, which has made it possible to report bills with strong bipartisan votes and the support of the White House—whether Repub- lican or Democrat. In a world as dangerous as today, we are far stronger when we act together. 4 Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. You have one of the most difficult jobs in the Government. The world seems to be on fire—literally or figuratively—in so many places it is hard to keep track. We appreciate that you are here requesting the resources to try to put those fires out. I think today we are reaping some of what we have sowed. After a 14 year war in Afghanistan that set wildly optimistic goals, much of that country remains under Taliban control. A weak central government—a government I believe we should sup- port—struggles to function in a highly insecure and corrupt environment. After tens of billions of dollars on aid programs implemented by U.S. contractors, very little of our investment can be sustained by the Afghans. In Iraq, where we spent hundreds of billions while dire needs in other parts of the world—including our own hemisphere—were neglected, there is a similarly un- stable, corrupt environment where the future is anything but secure.