Media Contact 202-321-9747

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast delivered opening remarks at a full committee hearing titled, “FY26 State Department Posture: Protecting American Interests.”

Watch Here

-Remarks-

The purpose of this hearing today is to examine the progress made regarding the reorganization of the Department of State and the role that the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources is in ensuring effective management and resources and operations within the department and the role of this position relative to the undersecretary for Foreign Assistance and the Undersecretary for management. And I’m now going to recognize myself for an opening statement.

I think it’s been very clear that Secretary Rubio is leading a sweeping overhaul to give us a State Department that is efficient and accountable, which is something that it has not been. The State Department where every single dollar that goes through that agency, it puts this country, it puts our country, it puts the United States of America first above all else.

Foreign aid is not benevolence. It’s not charity. It’s a soft power that gives America a chance to get what it is that we need because of some mutual benefit that exists out there between two nations. It’s not an opportunity to push radical liberal ideas on countries that would otherwise want to be our allies.

As chairman of this committee, I’ve called out this madness for a number of years: foreign aid programs with zero benefit to America, or even to the countries that they’re supposedly helping. America in many cases would have been better off burning that money, then spending it in the ways that it had previously. In the year 2000, the State Department’s budget was $9.5 billion. Under Joe Biden, it was over 55 billion. And I don’t think that we can say our foreign policy was $45 billion more effective in those years.

This past Friday, 1300 State Department personnel were laid off. But guess what? Between 2007 and 2024, 23,000 new State Department employees had been added. More than the number of agents that Border Patrol is mandated to have by Congress. That to me is an astounding number. America did not get the return that it needed on that investment.

I could give you a number of examples that we looked at in the oversight subcommittee and on this committee over the years. But I’m going to give you just one right now. The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan left 13 U.S. service members dead at Abbey Gate. It left people literally hanging off the wings of military aircraft, left an overrun embassy in billions of dollars left behind along with millions of dollars of condoms left to the Taliban. Those were real things.

Many colleagues here tried to defend that record. The same people who said Afghanistan was a glowing success, that that withdrawal was, everything was perfect and flawless and nothing could have gone better— the same people that said that are now begging us not to fix the broken machine that let that happen. That’s not diplomacy, that’s delusion. They’ll call President Trump’s effort to eliminate 1300 duplicative State Department roles, self-sabotage, and a gift to our adversaries. What they call self-sabotage, we call accountability for the real sabotage of those who led the Afghanistan withdrawal and the funding of transgender job fairs and LGBTQ musicals and DEI operas and drag show tutorials.

Our State Department should not be more concerned with promoting DEI and giving handouts to foreign NGOs, than defending the interests of the American people. That is changing. Under Secretary Rubio, that is changing.

This isn’t disarmament. It’s a strategic realignment. America needs a focused and a mission-driven State Department where every dollar and every diplomat puts the United States of America First. A State Department that can answer, not only answer but actually takes the time to ask the questions: What does America actually need from a country or a region? What do we need from them? What does that country or region actually want from the United States of America? And does what we provide get us what we need? Or does it not? Because if the State Department can’t answer those questions, then it is not meeting the moment.

We need a State Department that isn’t afraid of removing career bureaucrats who think they’re above oversight. Many of these so-called experts oversaw two decades of failure from botched regime change to a rising China and wasteful foreign aid. That’s not expertise, that is inertia. Congress should not be using taxpayer money to fund permanent jobs programs for globalist insiders, in my opinion. We should be funding a State Department that serves Americans. That means being able to explain why $1 should go from a person’s pocket to somebody who is in another country. Somebody who is not even an American. Why should that take place? They better be able to explain that. If that rattles the career, the career bureaucrats at Foggy Bottom, then good. They need to remember who it is exactly that they work for.

Secretary Rubio is not hollowing out the State Department. He is rebuilding it to win. This is about fixing a broken system. Real reform makes the State Department stronger, not weaker. Today’s witness, Deputy Secretary Michael Rigas is helping lead that charge. With a background in discipline resource management and no nonsense approach to results, he’s the right man to guide the next generation of State Department leadership.

Mr. Rigas, thank you for being here. The American people are counting on you to make sure that our diplomats serve one interest and one interest only: The United States of America. And that, I’m now going to recognize ranking member Meeks from New York for his opening statement.

###