Tillerson slaps back at critics
CNNStory highlights Tillerson has been slammed for allegedly hollowing out America's oldest government agency "I'm offended on their behalf when people say somehow we don't have a State Department that functions. “Can we really keep this up?” Outlining his thinking behind the cuts and agency reorganization, Tillerson noted that the State Department budget was at a record high of $55 billion in 2016. And the truth of the matter is it would be very difficult to keep it up and do it well.” Two recently retired senior US diplomats were the latest to criticize the administration’s management of the State Department, writing in a New York Times op-ed Tuesday, “President Trump’s draconian budget cuts for the State Department and his dismissive attitude toward our diplomats and diplomacy itself threaten to dismantle a great foreign service just when we need it most.” Lawmakers from both parties have written to Tillerson in recent weeks to express concern about his reorganization, about plummeting morale at the State Department, and about the large number of senior positions that remain vacant. Democratic members of the House Foreign Relations Committee wrote to ask him about the departure since January of more than 100 senior foreign service officers, raising their alarm about “what appears to be the intentional hollowing-out of our senior diplomatic ranks.” Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat who serves on that committee as well as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, penned their own letter to Tillerson pointing to the fact that the State Department’s diplomatic power is “being weakened internally as complex global crises are growing externally.” Tillerson vehemently disagreed and said he found the criticisms personally offensive. They’re wrong.” Citing his admiration for career foreign service officers who are working in acting capacities to fill the senior positions needed to run regional bureaus, Tillerson said that he felt the criticisms ignored the work they had done to help him craft policies on Russia, Iran, South Asia and North Korea, among other challenges.
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