May 29 (UPI) — The Trump administration announced plans Thursday to overhaul the Department of State, saying the federal agency has grown too big and costly while producing too few results.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that he has submitted the reorganization plan to Congress — a report that includes feedback from lawmakers, government bureaus and employees.
He first announced plans for the reorganization in April, calling his department “bloated, bureaucratic and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition.”
The report submitted to Congress, obtained by Politico, would reduce the State Department’s domestic workforce by 3,448 jobs, including recent reductions in positions and voluntary exits under the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program.
It also calls for the elimination of most offices under the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, which champions American values abroad, including the rule of law and individual rights.
Positions to be created under the plan align with the Trump administration’s conservative reshaping of the federal government, including a deputy assistant secretary of state for Democracy and Western values, as well as a so-called Natural Rights Office that will “ground the department’s values-based diplomacy in traditional Western conceptions of core freedoms,” according to an international state Department notification to lawmakers states cited by Politico.
“Over the past quarter century, the domestic operations of the State Department have grown exponentially, resulting in more bureaucracy, higher costs and fewer results for the American people,” Rubio said Wednesday.
“The reorganization plan will result in a more agile Department, better equipped to promote America’s interests and keep Americans safe across the world.”
It was unclear how Congress would react to the proposal, but House and Senate Democrats on the foreign relations committees quickly rejected the plan as being detrimental to U.S. interests abroad.
They said it “hands over” Afghan allies who worked with the U.S. military to the Taliban, guts programs to protect people who protect democracy, fires thousands of employees without cause and moves foreign assistance programs to entities with no experience with managing them.
“We welcome reforms where needed but they must be done with a scalpel, not a chainsaw,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., ranking member of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., ranking member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.
“Taken together, these moves significantly undercut America’s role in the world and open the door for adversaries to threaten our safety and prosperity,” she said.
The overhaul comes as the Trump administration seeks to reshape and downsize the federal government in an effort to consolidate more power under President Donald Trump.
