Marco Rubio Faces Senate on FY26 State Budget Request
SECRETARY RUBIO: Thank you. It’s an honor to be here on behalf of the National Archives and in addition to —
CHAIRMAN RISCH: Yeah. We don’t have time for you to list —
SECRETARY RUBIO: Okay. Well, we’ll focus on State today. (Laughter.)
I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. When I came here four months ago, I told you that what I wanted was a State Department that was at the heart and soul of American foreign policy, that it was the single biggest driver both of action but also of ideas, and we’re well on our way to achieving that. And the way we’ve – I’ll talk about some of the individual things we’ve accomplished during that time, but first, let me explain sort of some of the processes by which we seek to arrive at it.
The first is a reorganization of the way the State Department functions, and we have sort of previewed that with the committee and many of the individual members. Obviously, we’ll have to come – we’ve taken input and are taking input now through the notice process, and then we’ll come back to you with a formal congressional notification once – but we are taking a lot of the input, both provided by individual members and your staff but also from inside the building.
But if I could simplify, the goal is this, and that is –
(Protest utterances.)
CHAIRMAN RISCH: Yeah. All right. First —
(Protest utterances.)
CHAIRMAN RISCH: Carry on.
SECRETARY RUBIO: The goal is to drive power and action in our agency to the regional bureaus and to our embassies. On everything we do, we want our foreign policy to be holistic. So, for example, we recognize that the set of factors both in diplomacy and foreign aid in Guatemala or in Trinidad or in Jamaica are going to look different than they may somewhere in Africa, somewhere in the Indo-Pacific region. And we want those decisions, and the influence over those decisions to be made, to be driven to the regional bureaus. And so what we’ve done is we’ve taken a lot of the functional bureaus and functional processes and moved them under the purview of the regional bureaus and the career individuals that serve there and ultimately down to the embassy.
One of our first tests, Senator Shaheen, is going to be in Syria. We don’t have an embassy in Syria. It’s operating out of Türkiye. But we need to help them. We want to help that government succeed because the alternative is full-scale civil war and chaos, which would of course destabilize the entire region. And we are going to allow our people on the ground – both our embassy personnel at the Damascus embassy located in Türkiye and, for the short period of time, at least during the interim, our ambassador in Türkiye – to work with local officials there to make determinations about what kind of aid they need. Is it humanitarian? Is it improving law enforcement or governance functions? We think it’s going to be the first test of this new model, but I strongly believe that our decisions and the power to drive decisions and the decisions and the inputs that we’re taking have to be driven in many cases from the bottom up, not from the top down, and focused on the fact that there is unique sets of factors in individual parts of the world that require different priorities and attention.
And ultimately, foreign policy – mature foreign policy – requires a balancing of interests. That’s just a fact, okay? Our human rights agenda is going to look different in certain parts of the world than it will in others. That doesn’t mean that we as a people have abandoned it. That means that in a world where you need to conduct real foreign policy in a mature and structured way, there are ways you’re going to have to balance all these —
(Protest utterances.)
CHAIRMAN RISCH: Actually, Senator Rubio, there’s – we’re making progress. There’s protests in English now, so —
SECRETARY RUBIO: Oh, remember that? Yeah.
CHAIRMAN RISCH: Remember last time?
SECRETARY RUBIO: So we have to understand that, and that’s why we think it’s so important that our regional bureaus be at the core and at the heart of everything we do. And so we feel good about that part of it.
By the same token, I think critical to this are some of the reforms we’re trying to make to foreign aid. And I said, when I appeared before this committee, everything we do has to make us stronger, safer, or more prosperous. So we’ve undertaken a review of our foreign aid, and the reality is that there are many of these programs – they may – some are good programs. Some make all the sense in the world, and we wanted to pursue those programs.
(Protest utterances.)
CHAIRMAN RISCH: Go ahead.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Some of these programs make all the sense in the world, but frankly, on the priority scale, perhaps other programs are more important. Others, frankly, made no sense at all. We can talk about some of those programs today. We funded things around the world that made absolutely no sense.
I will say this: Even with the reforms we’ve put in place and what we’re suggesting as changes to our foreign aid, we still will provide more foreign aid, more humanitarian support than the next 10 countries combined, than the entire OECD, and far more than China. China doesn’t do humanitarian aid. China does predatory lending. That’s what Belt and Road Initiative is. That’s what all of their aid – they have no – zero record of doing humanitarian aid in the world, and frankly, they don’t know how to do it. They have no interest in doing it. What they’re very good at is going into some country, making you a loan, and then holding that debt over your head. And that’s what they continue to do, and by the way, you have to hire a Chinese company to do it.
So I don’t agree with this assessment that – there’s no evidence whatsoever that China has either the capacity or the will to replace the U.S. in humanitarian assistance, in food deliveries, or in developmental assistance, for that matter. We provide development assistance. They provide debt traps, and that’s a point over and over again around the world that we’ve made, and we’ve found receptive audiences to it.
Now, look, anytime you undertake reforms of this magnitude, of – that needed to be made, you’re going to have hiccups and you’re also going to have controversy. But these reforms had to happen. At USAID, 12 cents of every dollar was reaching the recipient. That means that in order for us to get aid to somebody, we had to spend all this other money supporting this foreign aid industrial complex. We’re going to find more efficient ways to deliver aid to people directly, and it’s going to be directed by our regional bureaus, and it’s going to sponsor programs that make a difference, and it’s going to be part of a holistic approach to our foreign policy. And I look forward to engaging with this committee and the appropriators as well in ensuring that we get to the right place on that.
I – my last point I would make, and this is something I am very proud of – I believe – and I’m not besmirching anyone else, but I believe that the approach we have taken at the State Department – and, frankly, at USAID, but at the State Department – to move forward reforms that involved intake from all of our partners, that required that input from people within the building – many of the reforms we’ve made were driven by people inside the building, many of whom have worked there for 20 or 30 years. And now we are engaged with Congress, both in the House and Senate, in a comment period where we’re taking many of your comments and are making changes to our organizational proposals that we look forward to bringing back to you with an official congressional notification. And even after that there’ll be an opportunity to move forward.
But the State Department had to change. I’m telling you it was no longer at the center of American foreign policy. It had often been replaced by the National Security Council or by some other agency of government when, in fact, we have these highly talented people who – many of whom have served in multiple posts around the world and have a holistic view of how foreign policy needs to be conducted that were being edged out. Because you know what? When I get a decision memo early on at the State Department and they would hand me these memos, there were 40 boxes on this piece of paper. That means 40 people had to check off yes, okay before it even got to me. That’s ridiculous. That takes too long. That’s why people said don’t use State Department. They take too long and it’s too cumbersome. And if any one of those little boxes didn’t get checked, the memo didn’t move up the chain.
That can’t continue. We can’t move at that pace in this world. Events happen quickly, and we have to be able to move at the pace of relevance. And so I hope to work with you in a productive way to make that possible. You’re not going to like all the changes, but I want you to know what the intent of the changes are. It is not to dismantle American foreign policy and it is not to withdraw us from the world, because I just hit 18 countries in 18 weeks. That doesn’t sound like much of a withdrawal. And I see some of these foreign ministers, including individuals from Ukraine, more than I’ve seen my own children, and I talk to them at least three times a week. We are engaged in the world, but we’re going to be engaged in a world that makes sense and that’s smart. And that isn’t about saving money; it is about ensuring that we are delivering to our people what they deserve: a foreign policy that makes America stronger, safer, and more prosperous.
Thank you.
https://www.state.gov/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-before-the-senate-committee-on-foreign-relations-on-the-fy26-department-of-state-budget-request/