    [House Hearing, 116 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                         AMERICA'S GLOBAL LEADERSHIP:
                      WHY DIPLOMACY AND DEVELOPMENT MATTER

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                                SUBCOMMITTEE ON
                          OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

                                     OF THE

                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                         ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION
                               FEBRUARY 27, 2019

                                   __________

                                Serial No. 116-8

                                   __________

            Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

      		[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

           Available:  http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://
                                docs.house.gov,
                           or http://www.govinfo.gov

                                   __________

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

    35-366PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2019

                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                       ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York, Chairman

    BRAD SHERMAN, California             MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Ranking
    GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York               Member
    ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey		     CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
    GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia         STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
    THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida          JOE WILSON, South Carolina
    KAREN BASS, California               SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
    WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts       TED S. YOHO, Florida
    DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island        ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
    AMI BERA, California                 LEE ZELDIN, New York
    JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas                JIM SENSENBRENNER, Wisconsin
    DINA TITUS, Nevada                   ANN WAGNER, Missouri
    ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York          BRIAN MAST, Florida
    TED LIEU, California                 FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida
    SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania             BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania
    DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota             JOHN CURTIS, Utah
    ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota                KEN BUCK, Colorado
    COLIN ALLRED, Texas                  RON WRIGHT, Texas
    ANDY LEVIN, Michigan                 GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
    ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia         TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
    CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania       GREG PENCE, Indiana
    TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey           STEVE WATKINS, Kansas
    DAVID TRONE, Maryland                MIKE GUEST, Mississippi
    JIM COSTA, California
    JUAN VARGAS, California
    VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas

                        Jason Steinbaum, Staff Director

                   Brendan Shields, Republican Staff Director

                  SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

                         Ami Bera, California, Chairman

    Ilhan Omar,Minnesota                 Lee Zeldin, New York, Ranking
    Adriano Espaillat, New York              Member
    Ted Lieu, California                 Scott Perry, Pennsylvania
    Tom Malinowski, New Jersey           Ken Buck, Colorado
    David Cicilline, Rhode Island        Guy Reschenthaler, Pennsylvania

                        Chad Obermiller, Staff Director

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page

                        OPENING STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD

    Chairman Ami Bera................................................    52

                                   WITNESSES

    Higginbottom, Honorable Heather, Chief Operating Officer, Care
      USA, Former Deputy Secretary of State, Management and Resources     9
    Natsios, Honorable Andrew S., Director of the Scowcroft Institute
      of International Affairs & Executive Professor, George H. W.
      Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M
      University, Former Administrator, United States Agency For
      International Development......................................    16

                                    APPENDIX

    Hearing Notice...................................................    49
    Hearing Minutes..................................................    50
    Hearing Attendance...............................................    51

       AMERICA'S GLOBAL LEADERSHIP: WHY DIPLOMACY AND DEVELOPMENT MATTER

                          Wednesday, February 27, 2019

                               House of Representatives
           Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
                           Committee on Foreign Affairs
                                                         Washington, DC
        The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:02 p.m., in
    Room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ami Bera
    (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
        Mr. Bera. Before I gavel in and do my opening statement--
    this is all new to me. So but in my three terms in Congress and
    now my fourth term, I really have had the desire to try to work
    in a bipartisan way, especially when we approach foreign
    policy.
        And I think we have been blessed to have the prior
    chairman, Ed Royce, as well as the current chairman, Eliot
    Engel, as our leaders and, historically this had been a
    relatively bipartisan committee looking at solving some of the
    issues and, it is certainly my desire and my intent, working
    with the ranking member, Mr. Zeldin, for us to approach this in
    a bipartisan way because, if you look at our history, America's
    soft power but America's diplomacy and development really has
    been incredibly important to how we have shaped the world and I
    would argue that we have shaped the world for the better.
        I also, when I think about the members on this committee,
    both in the majority and the minority, you look at the quality
    of the membership and the number of veterans, including the
    ranking member who currently, I believe, still serves in the
    Reserves, bringing that experience to have a senior diplomat
    like Mr. Malinowski, to have a refugee who understands that
    experience, like Ms. Omar, and to have folks that either came
    here as immigrants or are children of immigrants.
        I think that breadth of knowing what the American
    experience is and, hopefully, will bring that spirit to who we
    are on this committee. And, again, I could not be more honored
    to have the privilege of chairing what I think is going to be a
    very important committee on oversight. So----
        Mr. Zeldin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and it has been a
    privilege over the course of the first couple months here of
    the new Congress with this new subcommittee.
        In conversations and meetings with the chair I could
    certainly confirm his desire, his strong interest, in
    bipartisanship. That certainly will result in a stronger
    product coming out of this committee. It helps empower the full
    committee and I think bipartisanship is something for all of us
    to be very proud of.
        So thank you to Chairman Bera for setting the right tone,
    and with regards to his priorities coming out of the gate I am
    confident that at the end of this Congress a couple years from
    now, a year and a half from now or so, we are going to be able
    to have real product, maybe in legislative form, maybe through
    oversight, that will help strengthen America.
        So I look forward to serving with you and all the other
    members of this committee, and I yield back.
        Mr. Bera. So the hearing will come to order.
        This hearing, titled ``America's Global Leadership: Why
    Diplomacy and Development Matters,'' will focus on why the
    State Department and USAID are critical to the success of our
    country, our foreign policy, and how Congress can ensure that
    they thrive.
        Without objection, all members may have 5 days to submit
    statements, questions, extraneous materials for the record
    subject to the length limitations in the rules. I will now make
    my opening statement and then turn it over to the ranking
    member for his opening statement.
        Good afternoon. I want to welcome all the members to this
    first hearing of the Oversight and Investigations Committee.
    Chairman Engel reestablished this subcommittee to strengthen
    Congress's oversight of the executive branch and reassert our
    authority in foreign policy.
        This subcommittee will work closely with the full committee
    and other subcommittees to exercise our role, and as we heard
    this morning from Secretary Albright, it is her belief and I
    think it is all of our belief, as I listen to the questions and
    testimony of members on both sides, that foreign policy best is
    done in a bipartisan way and that the best foreign policy at
    our best is when the executive branch is working closely with
    the legislative branch in partnership, sending a singular
    message to the world so there is no ambiguity to our allies and
    others, and I think, as we mentioned earlier, that really is a
    goal and I would like to acknowledge the partnership that I
    think we will have with the ranking member, Mr. Zeldin, from
    New York.
        To begin with, as we look at Article 1 and, again,
    Secretary Albright said now is the time for Article 1 to really
    reemerge.
        It really has far too long under both Democratic and
    Republican administrations Congress has allowed oversight to
    falter and more and more of our ability, really, has shifted
    over to the executive branch both under Democratic
    administrations and Republican administrations and I think this
    is our opportunity to re-exert that oversight and start
    bringing things back to what we should be doing.
        With that, if I look at our history as the United States,
    particularly in the post-World War II history as we looked at
    the three pillars of defense but also diplomacy and
    development, our foreign policy and our approach to the rest of
    the world really did make the world a better place.
        And I know Mr. Natsios in his opening comments will talk
    about the Marshall Plan and the remarkable work that we did
    rebuilding Europe, rebuilding Japan, going and protecting Korea
    and the miracle that is the Republic of Korea today.
        And you would rightfully argue that our presence around the
    world--the American presence--leading with our values and
    leadership in the 70 years post-World War II made the world a
    better place, made the world a safer place, made the world a
    more democratic place.
        But I think we can also, as we think about the purview of
    this committee over the next 2 years, we understand that the
    world has changed. It is a different place today.
        You see it is not a given that the democratic model of our
    values will rule the 21st century. You see more autocratic
    leaderships--the rise of China, the reemergence of Russia.
        You also see the failed States, the terror States that
    are--have to be approached in a very different way than we may
    have approached a cold war with the Nation State and this is an
    opportune time for us to take a step back, take a deep dive
    into where America's diplomacy is today, where America's
    development is but then also come out of this thinking about
    where we need to go.
        And this committee is Oversight and Investigations and we
    will use the tools that we have available to investigate where
    we are today.
        But that would be only half the battle if we did not
    actually try to come out and present to this administration or
    the next administration and then this secretary of State or the
    next secretary of State a roadmap of where we think we could go
    to continue to lead the world both with our soft power and hard
    power and, again, there is no reason that this next century
    cannot be an American century because the last century
    certainly was an American century.
        And with that, I would like to thank both Ms. Higginbottom
    and Mr. Natsios for joining us and I will turn this over to my
    esteemed colleague, Mr. Zeldin, the ranking member.
        Mr. Zeldin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is the first
    hearing of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. I
    look forward to working with you on bipartisan priorities we
    both share.
        This hearing is, certainly, the first step. We both believe
    in American leadership and Congress's role in oversight and
    investigations.
        I wanted to extend my thanks to today's two witnesses for
    being here today to discuss the importance of American foreign
    policy, aid, and development around the world.
        There is no question that targeted and measured foreign aid
    and level-headed diplomacy further American national security,
    business, and humanitarian interests.
        Today, we are not here to question this consensus but,
    rather, examine the tools and resources used in these endeavors
    in an effort to ensure they are the most effective and
    efficient means possible.
        Too often, we have witnessed programs with good intentions
    originally established to forward American values and improve
    the lives of those around the world go off the tracks and it is
    our responsibility as the Oversight and Investigations
    Subcommittee to monitor these programs and help correct course
    when necessary.
        For example, and given the backgrounds of our two witnesses
    and I am here with Congressman Perry, who has joined us, I will
    touch on the stated mission of the previously U.S. taxpayer-
    funded United Nations Relief and Works Agency, also known as
    UNRWA, which has a mission to provide humanitarian support for
    Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West
    Bank and Gaza.
        The education of children, especially those in war-torn
    areas, is a noble mission. But over the past 6 years, UNRWA and
    the State Department have failed to provide Congress with an
    accurate picture to implement oversight measures by
    deliberately withholding information and certain reporting
    requirements and we recently found out why.
        In a recently declassified portion of a GAO report, we
    learned that the textbooks in the educational program of UNRWA
    were delegitimizing Israel and that supplementary material to
    counter this textbook content that promotes anti-Semitism, paid
    for with American tax dollars was being rejected on the ground.
        The underlying mission of foreign aid programs like UNRWA
    is critical. But holding them to that mission and ensuring its
    funding goes to furthering that goal may be even more
    important.
        U.S. foreign aid should be an investment, building a strong
    foundation with our allies. However, providing economic
    assistance to the Palestinian Authority, which supports a
    ``pay-for-slay'' program to financially reward terrorists for
    killing innocent Americans and Israelis is in direct violation
    of this ideology.
        Last Congress, the Taylor Force Act was passed and signed
    into law. It withholds economics assistance to the Palestinian
    Authority until it publicly condemns these acts of violence and
    stops inciting and rewarding the terrorists who perpetrate
    these horrific crimes, therefore protecting the innocent
    Americans and Israelis and better allocating these limited
    foreign aid resources.
        The United States must support aid programs that promote
    the interests of our Nation and, therefore, of our allies. For
    example, foreign aid that promotes good governance in a country
    like Venezuela is a proud show of what an important investment
    this funding can be.
        There are so many different examples all across the entire
    map for the entire world that this committee can get into. Just
    touching on a couple of examples there, but I am sure we will
    hear a lot more over the course of today's testimony with our
    two great witnesses.
        There should be an integrated policy approach to aid and
    diplomacy in which we leverage greater influence per aid
    dollar. We must employ greater accurate oversight and
    accountability internally within the State Department as well
    as over these foreign assistance programs ensuring those
    utilizing U.S. funding are better aligned with our Nation's
    values.
        We need to examine whether the millions of dollars we give
    to multilateral agencies serve our needs and whether they
    continue to maintain the high standards Americans would expect.
        We need to share the burden so that we can offer the
    opportunity for other regional actors to contribute as well.
    Are there administrative efficiencies we could implement to
    make our dollars go farther? How can we improve transparency
    and accountability in a manner that does not hinder development
    efforts?
        These are the questions I hope our witnesses will address.
    Thank you both again for being here and I look forward to your
    statements.
        I would like to thank our subcommittee chairman, Mr. Bera,
    full committee chairman Mr. Engel, and lead Republican, Mr.
    McCaul, for their leadership and assistance on these issues.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Bera. I will now introduce the witnesses.
        As I stated earlier, you know, Ms. Heather Higginbottom is
    the chief operating officer of CARE USA, one of the world's
    largest humanitarian organizations. She served as deputy
    secretary of State for management and resources in the Obama
    Administration.
        Andrew Natsios is currently the director of the Scowcroft
    Institute at Texas A&M. He served as the thirteenth
    administrator for the United States Agency for International
    Development.
        Thank you both for being here, and with that, Ms.
    Higginbottom.

     STATEMENT OF MS. HIGGINBOTTOM, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, CARE
    USA, FORMER DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE, MANAGEMENT AND RESOURCES

        Ms. Higginbottom. Chairman Bera, Ranking Member Zeldin, and
    distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the
    opportunity to testify as you work to make the State Department
    and USAID more effective and more efficient. I have edited my
    remarks for time and ask that my full statement be included in
    the record.
        Mr. Bera. And without objection, your full statement--
    written statement will be part of the record. Thank you for
    reminding me that I was supposed to do that.
        Ms. Higginbottom. For the last 6 years, first as deputy
    secretary of State for management and resources and currently
    as CARE chief operating officer, I have had the privilege of
    seeing American diplomacy and development in action and the
    responsibility of thinking about how to strengthen it.
        With just about 1 percent of the Federal budget, the United
    States gets no better return on its investment than the work of
    our diplomats and development professionals which saves
    millions of lives, builds stronger economies, and creates a
    safer world.
        Mr. Chairman, I know that it has never been popular to
    invest money overseas. President Reagan acknowledged that,
    quote, ``Foreign aid suffers from a lack of a domestic
    constituency.''
        The very DNA of care is a daily reminder that Americans
    have always stepped up to address global challenges. Seventy-
    three years ago, a small group of Americans joined forces to
    create the first ever CARE packages for starving survivors of
    World War II.
        Today, instead of delivering aid in a box, CARE works to
    address the roots of poverty using proven tools to empower
    women and girls and help entire communities create long-term
    prosperity, stability, and resiliency.
        We are here today to focus on what we can do better. But we
    should not lose sight of what the U.S. already does so well and
    I saw it firsthand in 2014 as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa
    threatened whole countries.
        American leadership made the difference. Working with
    partners in a coordinated, rapid, innovative way, we brought
    every tool we had to bear from deploying civilian health and
    development experts to engaging our military and Border Patrol
    agents.
        We work with Congress to provide resources, pharmaceutical
    companies to develop a vaccine, manufacturing companies to make
    protection suits for health workers, and we galvanize partners
    to build an aircraft to evacuate patients with infectious
    diseases.
        As a result, Ebola was contained in West Africa and in our
    interconnected world where a disease knows no boundaries we
    should be building upon, not weakening, instruments of
    diplomacy and development.
        The U.S. is a catalytic leader and what we do encourages
    other countries to act, and it is why over the past 25 years
    the number of people worldwide living in extreme poverty has
    been halved as has the number of women dying during pregnancy
    and the number of children dying before their fifth birthday,
    and this has been a bipartisan effort across Republican and
    Democratic administrations.
        Despite these clear results, the president's budgets for
    Fiscal Year 2018 and 2019, and we fear once again in Fiscal
    Year 2020, have proposed slashing foreign assistance by 30
    percent, jeopardizing countless lifesaving programs.
        We appreciate that Congress has rejected these cuts, but
    there has been damage done due to uncertain funding levels and
    time lines, the threat of recisions packages, and government
    shut downs.
        Just earlier this month, we came days away from halting a
    Food For Peace program in Haiti that supports 100,000
    chronically poor households. We are very grateful to our USAID
    colleagues who managed to release funds at the eleventh hour.
        But when lives are on the line we cannot afford crises of
    our own making. To be sure, the State Department and USAID are
    not perfect institutions. The 2015 Quadrennial Diplomacy and
    Development Review, which I oversaw, contains many
    recommendations to make these institutions more efficient and
    more effective. I will highlight just three.
        First, the currency of the State Department is information
    and relationships, and yet there is no enterprise wide system
    for organizing, collecting, and sharing information.
        Second, better utilization and expertise in data analytics,
    science, and technology is essential, and the siloed natures of
    both the State Department and USAID mean that crosscutting
    analysis and engagement is often unavailable.
        Third, performance management and strategic planning at
    both agencies should be strengthened and collaboration and
    communication across agencies should be enhanced.
        As the history of the CARE package shows, often the best
    way to combat fragility, address poverty, and prevent mass
    displacement is by harnessing the generosity and talents of the
    American people in partnership with communities around the
    world.
        This work, backed by continued American engagement and
    diplomacy in development, is essential to building a future
    worth having for ourselves, our children, and our neighbors
    around the world.
        Thank you very much, and I look forward to answering your
    questions.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Higginbottom follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

     STATEMENT OF MR. NATSIOS, DIRECTOR OF THE SCOWCROFT INSTITUTE
     OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS & EXECUTIVE PROFESSOR, GEORGE H. W.
       BUSH SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICE AT TEXAS A&M
      UNIVERSITY, FORMER ADMINISTRATOR, UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR
                       INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

        Mr. Natsios. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and
    members of the committee. I want to thank you for the
    opportunity to speak today on the importance of foreign aid
    programs.
        My comments today are my own. I am not representing Texas A
    & M Univ. the Bush School of Government and Public Service at
    Texas A&M.
        Since World War II, the United States foreign aid programs
    have played a leading role improving the livelihoods of the
    world's poor, cultivating good governance and democratic
    practice, protecting human rights, and accelerating economic
    growth.
        We are living through the greatest golden age in civilized
    history for the common people of the world. The reason I say
    that is based on the statistic that Ms. Higginbottom here just
    mentioned.
        There has been a dramatic improvement in the lives of the
    poor. Ninety percent of the population a hundred years ago in
    the developing world was poor. In fact, there was not even a
    developing world; there were colonial empires a hundred years
    ago.
        But that has dramatically shifted. The number of poor
    people has dramatically declined. The number of democracies,
    until recently, has been on the rise. Certainly, there have
    been terrible abuses of human rights. I know this firsthand: I
    was in the center of the Rwandan genocide. I was there when
    Darfur took place. I like to think we blew the whistle in USAID
    about what was happening in Darfur before anyone else even
    noticed what was going on. But the fact is that people did not
    even know what human rights were a hundred years ago. They did
    not use those words, and there were no institutions protecting
    human rights.
        We have made enormous progress and we are living through
    it, but we do not see the forest from the trees. We do not see
    what things were like 200 years ago, or 300 years ago, when a
    life expectancy of 40 years was regarded as long.
        The Marshall Plan was our first organized, systematic
    effort to extend American humanitarian power abroad in a
    lasting way. We had carried out humanitarian efforts before:
    Herbert Hoover ran the greatest food aid program in world
    history during World War I and its the immediate aftermath. But
    that was a temporary program. By the way, Hoover also went into
    Russia in the middle of the Great Famine after Lenin took over.
    It is a very interesting story regarding how he prevented the
    central government from manipulating the food aid at that time.
    The same problems we have now concerning the manipulation of
    food aid took place in Russia in the early 1920's. Hoover
    simply told Lenin that the U.S. would leave the country if he
    did not stop interfering. We would not distribute food on a
    political basis. It will only be done based on need.
        That is one of the hallmarks of our aid programs,
    particularly in humanitarian assistance and in health programs.
    We distribute aid based on need.
        Now, I understand some aid has to be distributed to our
    allies--economic aid, that sort of thing. But when it comes to
    the survival of people, including women, and children, and
    noncombatants, we need to focus on aid distributed based on
    need, not based on interest.
        USAID helped the United States win the cold war more than
    most people realize, even within USAID. For example, in South
    Korea there are amusing stories regarding how intrusive USAID
    was in the Park government in terms of forcing reforms. The
    same thing happened in Taiwan, in Indonesia, and in Thailand.
    In Greece and in Turkey in the early 1950's after USAID
    encouraged reforms Stalin worked to destabilize both countries
    in the late 1940's.
        We have had remarkable successes in countries that were
    extremely poor and are now developed countries in Latin
    America, in Asia, and, more recently, Africa.
        One of the greatest success stories--my favorite--is the
    Green Revolution. That was an effort started by Dr. Norman
    Borlaug, who was a professor at Texas A&M later in his life; we
    have a Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture there.
    The Green Revolution doubled yields in Asia at the same time
    that Mao was killing 45 million Chinese through the Great Leap
    Forward Famine, USAID's work increased and contributed to a
    dramatic decline in famine in Asia.
        In fact, a study has been done on the topic. The book is
    called ``Mass Starvation'' by Alex de Waal and it came out last
    year. Alex de Waal is a good friend of mine, he teaches at
    Tufts. In the book, he says that with the creation of the
    international humanitarian response system, there has been a
    massive decline in the number of famine deaths, since 1980.
        He traced famine deaths from 1870 until 2010. So, we have
    empirical evidence showing that starvation deaths and famines
    have massively declined at the same time that this
    international response system was set up.
        Now, I have mentioned in my paper four challenges. I am
    running out of time now so I cannot go into them, but they are
    the forced displacement crisis, the pandemic disease risk, the
    risks posed by fragile and failing States, and food price
    volatility (which was a major factor in the uprisings in the
    Arab world). People said it was the Arab Spring. It was not a
    spring. It has been a nightmare in Syria, Yemen, and Libya in
    particular. There is a direct connection between food price
    increases (which make people hungry when theye cannot afford
    the food)--and political uprisings. The evidence--empirical
    evidence from political scientists and scholars--is very
    convincing in showing that there is a direct relationship.
        There are three things I propose in my testimony that we
    need to do to address these challenges. First, we must
    decentralize back to the USAID missions. The reason we were
    successful in the Cold War is that the mission directors (and,
    I might add, our Ambassadors) had far greater discretion to
    carry out policies and programs at the country level than we do
    now. Everything has been centralized over the last 30 years,
    and it is not helping things because we, in Washington, are
    separated from the reality of what is going on in these
    countries.
        Second, we need to deregulate USAID. USAID is overburdened
    with the regulatory requirement that have been imposed on it in
    order, supposedly, to reduce abuse. These reporting
    requirements do not reduce abuse. They just generate a huge
    amount of paperwork. The abuse still takes place anyway, and it
    costs USAID a lot of money to fulfill these reporting
    requirements.
        The third proposal is consolidation of programs. Having
    USAID programs at 18 different Federal agencies is very unwise.
        Those are the three reforms that I propose at the end of my
    written testimony.
        Thank you very much.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Natsios follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Bera. Thank you.
        Obviously, you have got a lot of say there and all of it
    really important. I will go ahead and start the questioning.
        Ms. Higginbottom--and let me frame it this way. I think it
    is incredibly important for us to, you know, recognize our
    veterans every day and have a day like Veterans Day to just
    remind us of what they do to protect our freedoms and represent
    us around the world and the sacrifice that they and their
    families make.
        But I do think far too often we forget about the others
    that are out there representing us from our diplomats to our
    aid workers to the folks that are working through the NGO's
    and, you know, I just want to make sure that we do not lose
    sight of that and, you know, our generals are the first ones to
    admit that that partnership that they have with the development
    community and the diplomatic community is incredibly important,
    because it is this combination of our hard power and our soft
    power.
        You have been inside the building at State Department and
    certainly have looked at how the department is working
    currently and if you would just make a few comments on, as we
    get this committee underway, some of the things that we should
    be thinking about and how we best could work with the folks
    inside the building.
        Ms. Higginbottom. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        I think that this committee can play a really important
    role in highlighting some of the challenges that both the
    Foreign Service and the civil services face as well as to
    understand, to your point, Ranking Member, about how to have
    oversight of program and ensure we have accountability and that
    we have the right processes in place for those things.
        With respect to some broad areas that I think are important
    for the committee to consider, we are seeing a decrease in the
    number of people taking the Foreign Service exam and we are
    seeing some attrition.
        The building is built on the professional nature of its
    Foreign and civil service employees. I think it is really
    important that we understand what is happening there. We need
    the best and brightest to represent us around the world and
    that is really critical.
        I mentioned in my testimony something that I am really
    seized of and I want to just mention it again, and that is that
    we do not have an enterprise wide knowledge management system
    and it is inefficient and ineffective to have a personal system
    that is contingent upon rotations with no clear way of
    maintaining information and relationships that is organized and
    centrally housed.
        I think that is a critical issue. It takes investment and
    it is complicated, but I think it is really, really necessary.
        Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you.
        Mr. Natsios, you are a long-serving USAID director and,
    certainly, served at a very interesting time. As you think
    about your lessons and as you think about where we need to go
    in aid and development, we are seeing other governments, you
    know, taking a different approach, the Chinese for one
    certainly how they are approaching the rest of the world.
        What would, if you were to just imagine the absence of the
    U.S. presence there, who is going to fill that? And then the
    flip side is the importance of how should we be thinking about
    this as we go forward as we think about aid and development in
    the 21st century and the importance of the U.S.'s role in that
    capacity and what it says to the rest of the world when the
    United States shows up.
        Mr. Natsios. Well, I can tell you I am a very strong
    internationalist. I am right of center rather than left of
    center. But that is where the bipartisan nature of this
    coalition is.
        There are conservative internationalists and there are
    liberal internationalists, and I think we agree on more than we
    disagree, frankly.
        Mr. Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations,
    publicly said something we all knew privately. The U.N. does
    not work without American leadership. It does not. President
    Bush used to have a weekly call with Kofi Annan, the U.N.
    Secretary General at the time.
        He would sit there and go through a list of things we
    needed done and Kofi would say we need help on this or that.
    They were not the best of friends, I have to tell you. They
    disagreed on some issues.
        But they worked together on a regular, systematic basis and
    it made a difference. That relationship between the U.S. and
    the U. N. is weaker now, and it has been weakening for some
    time. That is not a good thing.
        I am an Africanist--that is where I spent a lot of time. My
    African colleagues tell me that African States that signed
    these infrastructure agreements with the Chinese are kicking
    themselves for failing to read the fine print.
        One colleague told me that the financing agreement says if
    the recipient country cannot pay the bill, the Chinese take
    over their ports. I think it was in Zambia recently that the
    Chinese took over a mine.
        We do not do things like that. Everybody knows the United
    States protectds its interests. But we have other interests,
    including the broader development of poor countries.
        It is in our interest to have a stable world order in which
    fewer people are poor. No one thinks that the Chinese have that
    anywhere in their foreign policy.
        If the Chinese displace us--which I do not think they are
    going to do--I think this notion the Chinese are going to take
    over the system is nonsense. It is not going to happen for a
    variety of reasons that are beyond this hearing.
        But if it should happen, the international system will not
    be functional.
        Mr. Bera. Well, my sense, having traveled a lot and talked
    to leaders around the world, is they would much rather the U.S.
    presence be there because they know, you know, obviously, we
    have our interests. But we do act in a much more benevolent way
    in helping build the capacity of the countries that we are
    involved in.
        In my remaining time, you know, Ms. Higginbottom, you are
    now at CARE International and as we think about our role in
    diplomacy but, more important, aid and development, how should
    we be thinking about our partnership with the NGO sector and
    also, potentially, with the corporate sector?
        Ms. Higginbottom. I think in the NGO sector we look at,
    across the spectrum, at partnerships. That is how we work.
    Whether it is with USAID or with private sector companies with
    other INGO's, and I think as we see the world changing and
    particularly the development landscape changing, what we see is
    that official development assistance, as critical as it is, is
    a very small percentage of private revenue flows that are going
    into countries, and that means if we are going to be really
    effective with our work we have to look across a whole range of
    partnerships.
        And I think as we look at State and USAID, ensuring they
    have the capacity--both agencies--to develop those partnerships
    and relationships and work more seamlessly across different
    sectors, I think we will be much more effective and efficient
    with our--with our resources.
        Mr. Bera. Well, maybe expanding on that then as well,
    knowing that we have limited and we certainly have challenges
    that we will have to look at here domestically, I think my
    perception is, it will not be the United States going it alone.
        We now have multiple allies that are developed nations and
    so forth and the president is not incorrect that we should be
    working with them.
        Maybe, Mr. Natsios or Ms. Higginbottom, how do you envision
    us working with the international community? And, again, let me
    couch I think the Americans should be leading because of our
    leadership and our values. But what has changed from the 20th
    century to the 21st century?
        Mr. Natsios. I think when political systems--democratic
    systems in particular but even dictatorships get under severe
    stress they begin to behave differently.
        And it is not just in the United States. This has been
    happening across the world in other democracies. You are seeing
    what is happening in Europe right now.
        The Democratic Party of Sweden is actually the Nazi Party
    of Sweden from the 1930's. It got 17 percent of the vote in the
    last Swedish election. That is very disturbing.
        The auditor general, which is a big job in this party, was
    a member of the Waffen-SS. He is an old man, but he was a
    member of the Waffen-SS, one of the most horrendous parts of
    Hitler's structure of terror.
        This party received 17 percent of the vote in Sweden
    because of the immigrant issue in Europe. So it is an issue--
    these issues are churning across the world.
        We interviewed someone for admission to the Bush School.
    She is Chilean and works in refugee issues. She told me that a
    million refugees have escaped to Chile--a million.
        The Refugee crisis is having an effect across the world,
    and that is why people start turning inward, becoming more
    protectionist, more ultra nationalist, more isolationist, and
    that is not good.
        Mr. Bera. Mr. Natsios, I notice that votes have gotten
    called.
        Mr. Zeldin, I think you can probably do your questions and
    then we will recess and come back after votes.
        Mr. Zeldin. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Earlier in my opening remarks I referenced the GAO report
    that Congressman Perry and I recently secured the
    declassification of revealed a number of concerning issues
    regarding staff who failed to implement appropriate policies
    and push back with the host country.
        When UNRWA developed complementary teaching materials and
    seminars to address concerning content following three textbook
    reviews, some staff refused to attend training and workshops
    and utilized this supplementary material, which countered the
    content that was not aligned with U.S. values and, in many
    cases, not aligned with reality.
        I want to ask you this question more generally. It is not
    specific to that report. But based on your experience, how did
    you deal with local beneficiaries who did not implement
    appropriate standards?
        Mr. Natsios. Well, Congressman, I hesitate saying this, but
    I will say it. It is not this committee, but this Congress and
    other committees have placed draconian limits on American
    diplomats and USAID officers getting out-- not just of the
    capital city--but out of the mission itself.
        The USAID mission in Kabul is called ``the prison" by the
    USAID staff. You can go for one year on duty in Kabul and never
    leave the mission. They will not let you out because of the
    security restrictions.
        Mr. Zeldin. Just so you know, the question, though, is with
    regards to the local----
        Mr. Natsios. The question is: How do you monitor programs
    if you cannot go out and see them? If you to improve
    accountability, you need to take the authority over our
    embassies and missions out of those other committees, because
    they have told everyone there is no tolerance for risk. If
    there is no tolerance for risk, we should not have embassies.
    We should not have missions around the world. You have to get
    out of the capital city, out of the mission, and out of the
    embassy to find out what is going on. These abuses are taking
    place because we cannot see what is going on.
        Why? Because of these security restrictions and, more
    importantly, because of restrictions on how many USAID officers
    and diplomats can be assigned to these countries. We hire more
    Foreign Service Officersand then we cannot send them out to the
    field.
        I used to blame the State Department for this until I
    became a diplomat and realized it is not the State Department
    that is the problem. It is Congressional Committees, but it is
    not the four committees that oversee Foreign Affairs.
        The committees that are the problem are giving exactly
    opposite instructions than all of you are giving to the State
    Department and USAID, and that is the problem.
        There are conflicting instructions in terms of access and
    openness to get out of the capital city and the mission and the
    embassy.
        Mr. Zeldin. Ms. Higginbottom, if you could, I guess, just
    speak to the interaction with the locals, based on your
    experience. What else can we improve upon?
        Ms. Higginbottom. I do--I just want to agree with what Mr.
    Natsios said. The issue of how we manage risk, not how we
    eliminate it, has got to be taken up and I think this committee
    can play an important role because a lot of the concern we
    would have about program implementation would be the limit that
    we would have imposed for mobility and not having the ability
    to really know what is happening in a given program.
        When you do know that there are--there are a lot of
    mechanisms, I think, actually to deal with staff that are not
    following policy or guidelines and when it is very clearly the
    case then the line management has a lot of tools at their
    disposal to take action and they should.
        The inspector generals at both agencies play an important
    role. I met with our inspector general every week. It was not
    my favorite meeting but it was really important, and I think
    they can highlight critical areas where we need to focus and
    where there are problems. They do inspections of embassies.
    They can highlight some of these issues.
        So I think there are tools. I do think the risk issue is
    really important and I do think that this committee can play an
    important role in helping to address that.
        Mr. Zeldin. OK. So I am going to just continue based off of
    your answers as opposed to--I had a couple of other followup
    questions.
        But I guess going back to Mr. Natsios, can you now take
    your point, I guess, to the next level a little more? Is there
    more specificity you can share? I know you did not--you were
    not naming other committees but what can we get out of your
    exchange that we can act on?
        Mr. Natsios. Well, you cannot reassign responsibility
    within the congressional system.
        But if I had my way, the only four committees that would be
    allowed to deal with the State Department and USAID would be
    the four appropriators and the authorizers in the House and the
    Senate.
        Even though I have had disagreements with these committees
    over the years, I have never seen then do things that are
    damaging to either institution. But I have seen other
    committees in this Congress who do not travel.
        They do not know what is going on in the world, and their
    objective is not the carrying out of American foreign policy or
    USAID programs. It has nothing to do with party. The Democrats
    and the Republicans are equally damaging to the operational
    capacity of State and USAID.
        I wrote a article for the Weekly Standard about 10 years
    ago called ``American Fortresses,'' because the embassies often
    look like medieval fortresses.
        Mr. Zeldin. Well, we all have more to talk about. I know
    that--I will yield back to the chair at this time because I
    know we only have a few minutes left of votes.
        Mr. Bera. I want to--at this time the subcommittee will
    recess so that members can vote and then the hearing will
    resume immediately following the votes.
        Thank you.
        [Recess.]
        Mr. Bera. The committee will come to order. I ask that, you
    know, at this juncture, Mr. Perry from Pennsylvania. So we will
    go to you.
        Mr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate coming
    directly--oh, do you want to defer to the----
        Mr. Bera. OK. Thank you for that. See, we are already
    acting in a bipartisan manner, as you know, working together.
    What a tone.
        Mr. Malinowski.
        Mr. Malinowski. OK. Thank you. Thank you.
        Thank you for your testimony earlier today and for your
    patience with us as we vote.
        Let me start with this question to you, Mr. Natsios. As a
    general matter, I assume you would agree that when the United
    States military deploys to a complicated dangerous place it is
    helpful to have civilian agencies involved as well providing
    humanitarian assistance, development, reconstruction, good
    governance, and all of that. I presume we are in agreement.
    Yes.
        And Ms. Higginbottom, OK. Let me--let me apply that
    principle then to a situation we are dealing with right now and
    that is Syria.
        A number of us, on a very bipartisan basis, over the last
    few weeks and the last few days including at the Munich
    Conference made an effort to try to persuade President Trump
    not to follow through on his policy or tweet or whatever it was
    to pull all of our forces out of that country prematurely
    before the mission was complete.
        And he heard us and I think, fortunately, made the decision
    to retain around 400 troops with our allies as part of the
    effort in that country.
        But what has been lost in the debate over our presence in
    Syria is that late last year the administration also made a
    decision to completely end, not to spend some $230 million that
    the Congress had provided for stabilization programs in Syria
    because, they argued, others, particularly the Saudis, could
    fill our shoes.
        So I wanted to ask you, do you think that is a good idea if
    we have 400 troops or any number of troops deployed in Syria to
    have absolutely no civilian component to that mission?
        Mr. Natsios. Congressman, I was the co-chairman of the
    Committee on Human Rights in North Korea with my good friend,
    Roberta Cohen, when you were assistant secretary of state. You
    were our biggest supporter in granting money for investigating
    the outrageous atrocities that the North Korean regime has
    committed against its own people, and I do want to thank you
    for that.
        Mr. Malinowski. Thank you.
        Mr. Natsios. It made a very great difference to us. We are
    a small organization and we appreciate it. Thank you.
        The first thing is that it is not about how much money we
    spend. It is about who is spending it and how it is spent.
    USAID has expertise in war zones that even our friends in
    Europe do not have--and I think some of our friends in Europe
    do some things very well.
        We perhaps, because of the U.S. being a great power, have
    mastered, though not completely, how to work in very difficult
    places and run programs.
        The Saudis have no experience in this. They do not have any
    experience even in stable environments. That is point number
    one.
        It is not going to work with the Saudis taking over in
    Syria. Second, if we are going to keep troops on the ground, we
    need to have a civilian component next to them.
        So I, frankly, do not support the withdrawal of these
    civilian personnel from Syria. I think we are going to have to
    send them back in again. I know we keep telling the Russians
    and the Iranians they are going to fund the reconstruction.
        I have to say the Russians do not have a lot of experience
    doing reconstruction work in the developing world and the
    Iranians have no experience.
        Mr. Malinowski. Right. Well, we are keeping them as--so we
    are actually keeping the troops with no----
        Mr. Natsios. I know, but what about the civilian component?
        Mr. Malinowski. Nothing. It has been completely eliminated
    and, I mean, does that make our troops safer? I mean, is there
    an issue potentially with--in terms of the safety of our troops
    if there are no civilian eyes or ears? If we are not working
    with local governments? If we are not working with NGO's on the
    ground to counter extremism, which we were doing?
        We were funding in Syria these extraordinary women-led
    human rights organizations that operated under ISIS control
    and, in my view, are the most effective counterweight to ISIS
    at a time when, well, they were obviously risking their lives.
    Would the Saudis fund those kinds of organizations, do you
    think, if we turned it over to them?
        Ms. Higginbottom. I would not expect that they would and I
    agree that--Congressman, that the type of relationships and
    engagements that you have with some civilian capacity in a
    context like that is really important and I do think it can
    have a direct contribution to the security of the troops. I am
    pleased to see that there has been a shift in that--in that
    posture from the president.
        Mr. Malinowski. Thanks. And just, finally, a comment on a
    different issue that has come up--our assistance in Palestinian
    areas--and I take the point about criticism of UNRWA.
        But let us also not forget that we have completely
    eliminated USAID programs operating to improve water systems,
    to encourage Palestinian and Israeli children to get to know
    each other, to support schools.
        Presumably, you do not think USAID was teaching people to
    delegitimize Israel. Who do you think benefits more from the
    complete elimination of those programs, Israel or Hamas?
        Mr. Natsios. I think eliminating the programs helps Hamas.
    That is not what the intention was by the administration, but
    that is what the effect is.
        I can tell you from personal experience, and I might add a
    little story. When we went into Afghanistan the first thing we
    did, not just to educate kids but to get them off the streets
    into school, was to print 7 million textbooks from the old
    royal curriculum used when the king was in power. These were at
    the University of Nebraska, where there was an archive from
    Afghanistan.
        I had nine Afghan intellectuals--journalists, women's
    groups, and academics--read all 200 textbooks to make sure
    there was no anti-Semitic or anti-Russian content. (There was
    anti-Russian content because of the civil war.) Female stick
    figures--stick figures-- had been scratched out from all the
    textbooks.
        We fixed these issues and I had the Afghan intellectuals
    read the books twice to make sure we did not miss anything. The
    point is that there is a utility in having USAID there because
    we are sensitive to these issues, and without us there I think,
    frankly, the extremists will have more license.
        I understand the pressure of politics. I was in the
    legislature of Massachusetts for 12 years. But I think it is
    unwise to shut these programs down. That is my experience.
        Mr. Malinowski. Thank you. Fully agree.
        Mr. Bera. Thanks, Mr. Malinowski.
        And Mr. Perry from Pennsylvania.
        Mr. Perry. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen,
    thanks for being here. These foreign assistance dollars are
    precious and, of course, I do not have to tell you or remind
    you they come from the hardworking taxpayers of the 10th
    District in Pennsylvania and everybody else's district here,
    too. So it is really important that we safeguard them.
        And, you know, oversight is important and I am sure you are
    familiar with the stories of fraud and abuse and so this is the
    Oversight Committee. I think it is important to highlight some
    of these things and then just have a discussion about it.
        There is a 2018 report that assistance provided to
    Afghanistan through the reconstruction trust fund was at risk
    for misuse. The special inspector general for Afghanistan
    reconstruction who was appointed by Congress stated that once
    the U.S. or any other donor provided its contributions to
    fund--to the fund, neither the World Bank nor USAID could
    account for how those funds were specifically spent.
        There is also--this goes back a way--but, you know,
    because, Mr. Natsios, I have listened to some of your comments
    and also Ms. Higginbottom. I want to get to some of those about
    why this is happening if you are not able to monitor correctly.
        But this goes back to 2013. An investigation by the Wall
    Street Journal found that more than 20 percent of the malaria
    drugs sent to Africa under the president's Malaria Initiative
    were stolen or diverted each year and then sold on the black
    market.
        Is the circumstance that you have described where the risk
    assessment or the aversion to risk is so great that we are not
    letting the people that would oversee--that staff that oversee
    these funds and these programs, is that--is that something
    fairly new?
        Is that the--let us be candid--is that the advent of this
    administration or does it go prior to this administration?
        Mr. Natsios. Oh, no. This goes back 20 years. This goes
    back to the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in
    the 1990's. I wrote an article, as I said, for Weekly Standard
    in 2006 called ``American Fortress.''
        But it was based on what had happened earlier. This is now
    new at all.
        Mr. Perry. So----
        Mr. Natsios. And it is not just in Afghanistan and Iraq.
    This is across the world.
        Mr. Perry. Across the spectrum. So when the IG does
    inspections and finds these flaws and the lost money, so to
    speak, or the evidence of lost money, do they include in their
    report the circumstances, and why is that? Do you know?
        Mr. Natsios. Well, I am being very candid here.
        The special IG for Afghan reconstruction is outrageous in
    some of the accusations he makes. I will give you an example.
    He said: we went to a school that USAID rebuilt. There was no
    one in the school. That is true.
        You know why there was no one in the school? Taliban had
    taken out the headmaster and beheaded him in front of all the
    teachers and the children. If your child watched the headmaster
    being be headed,--would you send your child back to the school?
        Of course the school was empty. He did not mention that in
    the audit, however. In fact, their people did not even go to
    see for themselves. They sent someone else from one of the
    ministries to go in. Half of his staff has never even been to
    Afghanistan.
        I think the regulators overstepping, and I say that
    carefully. The IG for USAID, in my view, does very good work.
        But he has to be in competition to find more abuse than the
    special IG. They compete with each other, and if he does not
    show that he is saving money, his budget gets cut by the
    Congress.
        I wrote an article about this in 2010 called, ``The Clash
    of the Counter-Bureaucracy and Development.'' You can access it
    on the website of the Center for Global Development.
        I would urge you to read it--I know it is a long article
    but your staff could read it. It discusses the consequences of
    these systems that have been set up. When you have competing
    IGs to see who can find more abuse, you get inaccurate
    reporting.
        Are there problems in USAID? Absolutely. But half the
    problems that I have seen they got reported by the IG because
    they never discovered them.
        Ms. Higginbottom. If I could just add very briefly, I think
    that as USAID and State, to a certain extent, have come up with
    new ways to try to monitor when they are limited in access,
    particularly in places like Afghanistan, questioning the
    efficacy of those frameworks I think is worthwhile because they
    are really committed to ensuring that the programs that are
    being funded work and that they are not subject to fraud.
        But I think there is a good conversation to have to see
    whether that oversight--the accountability framework that USAID
    and State are doing is effective and I do think that the risk
    issue is more acute in some places than others. But post-
    Benghazi it is more--it has been more constrained.
        Mr. Perry. Sure. So what is the--if we are not--you know,
    these are all policymakers up here interested in making sure
    that you have the resources that you need, that American
    foreign policy and interests are furthered and that is what we
    are doing here.
        So and we count on things like the IG, right? I mean, that
    is what we are supposed to do. We are not there and they are,
    allegedly. So is there--what is the mechanism for people
    inside--and thanks for the indulgence, Mr. Chairman--inside the
    organizations?
        What is the--what is the internal mechanism? Is there an
    internal mechanism when you--you said, you know, they are not
    reporting on half the things that you saw that apparently you
    found problematic at some level.
        Is there a mechanism for you to find a way to report and
    make sure the right thing is done?
        Mr. Natsios. As Administrator, I used to meet with the IG
    every week. We had a very good relationship. When I saw
    something wrong I would tell him: I want you to go in and find
    out what is going on here.
        There are two functions of the IG. One is to make sure the
    management systems work properly and conduct do financial
    audits. That is sacrosanct. We cannot touch that.
        The other function is to look into fraud and abuse. Most of
    the things that the IG investigates USAID officers report.
        The IG does not discover the abuse. We discover the abuse
    and we call in the IG. I can give you a lot of examples--some
    of them entertaining, some of them very disturbing.
        But the staff calls up the IG--that is the standard
    procedure in USAID. If you discover something wrong and you do
    not report it, you can get fired for not reporting.
        Mr. Bera. Mr. Perry, if I can also--I would like that to be
    part of our role as congressional oversight as well. You know,
    if we are authorizing and appropriating funds for programs I do
    think it is part of our responsibility to say are these
    programs actually working the way they are--are we using the
    taxpayer dollars in the most effective way.
        And, you know, if programs are working really well in one
    part of the world, you know, certainly, thinking about how you
    take that and, you know, if programs are not working or funds
    are not being used the way we intended them to be used as
    Congress.
        I also think it is our responsibility to expose that and--
    --
        Mr. Perry. Without a doubt, and I appreciate the chairman's
    indulgence. And for the purposes of the discussion, it seems to
    me that there is somewhat of a breakdown in the system here and
    maybe, you know, while we rely on the IG as well is there any
    way reconcile between what the folks that work for the agency
    report to the IG and what the IG reports to us, right? I mean--
    --
        Mr. Natsios. The special IG for Iraq reconstruction was
    more responsible than the one in Afghanistan, in my view. I
    worked with the guy. I sent the IG into Iraq. When the Marines
    took the city, the IG and the USAID officers were right behind
    them.
        The mission director called me up and said, Andrew, could
    you have given me a month to set the systems up before you sent
    the IG in? I told him, ``I do not want any problems". We had
    one contract that got screwed up.
        Guess where the contract was? The U.S. Air Force. We asked
    the Air Force auditors to look into it. It was a corrupt
    contract, and we had to dump the whole thing. That is the only
    contract that got screwed up.
        Mr. Perry. Well, as two Army guys, look, we like picking on
    the Air Force but that is another--Mr. Chairman----
        Mr. Natsios. I am Army too or I would not have told you the
    story.
        [Laughter.]
        Mr. Bera. Well, and I know Mr. Espaillat is on his way over
    here. You know, I have additional questions. So since we do
    have a little bit of time we will go and do a second round of
    questions if you also have questions.
        I am conscious and supportive of what Mr. Perry brought up
    in terms of, you know, we do have a responsibility to use the
    taxpayer dollars in the most effective way and in conversation
    with the current USAID administrator, Ambassador Green, I
    really do think the shift to capacity building and looking at
    the assets in the countries that we are going into and trying
    to, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all, saying, you know, each
    country in each situation is specific.
        Ms. Higginbottom, we had a chance to travel together to
    Europe and I think there are some specific examples of how
    CARE, working with USAID and the U.S. Government, are doing
    some specific programs to help empower women in villages to
    care for themselves.
        And if you want to share some of those, you know, because
    those are not ones that demand donations from the United States
    in the long term. What it is doing is building self-
    sufficiency.
        Ms. Higginbottom. Yes, thank you. A lot of the care
    programming is really aimed at how we build capacity over time,
    how we make sustained investments, not--I mean, we do
    humanitarian response. We respond to emergencies.
        But we also look at investments we can make that can really
    lift up communities and we do that with a lot of USG support,
    with a lot of resources from the USAID as well as other
    partners, and we have a variety of different programs. We saw
    some in Sierra Leone and the idea--and I think it is consistent
    with Administrator Green's approach--to get a path to self-
    reliance.
        We want to lift whole communities out and one of the
    reasons why--the principal reason why we have over time come to
    focus on women and girls is that the data shows that by
    targeting not just women and girls--we benefit boys and men as
    well--but by targeting them we see that there are greater
    returns in terms of investment in health care and education for
    their children and it lifts them up into becoming
    entrepreneurs.
        We have an incredibly powerful--it is called the Village
    Savings and Loan Association. They are small savings groups but
    they are much more than that. They become really a platform to
    save some money but also to become empowered in communities and
    make permanent and sustained change.
        I think that is the type of development assistance that we
    know is successful and that works and that over time should
    become really the lever that lifts these countries.
        Mr. Natsios was talking earlier about countries that were
    once the recipient of aid and are now our trading partners--
    some of the biggest countries in the world. That is our
    objective with the approach on poverty reduction.
        Mr. Bera. Mr. Natsios, in the remaining time that I have
    left, your focus on Africa, and when we think about there is
    many things that we should be focused on in Africa.
        You know, one, that I spend a lot of time worried about is
    the youth bulge that we are seeing in sub-Saharan Africa and,
    you know, a large population of young people, young men, who
    may not have anything to do--you know, potentially
    destabilizing to the region, et cetera.
        And I would just be curious if we were thinking about how
    we approach that and how we are approaching it and, again,
    sticking with what is working, what is not working--you know,
    just in the remaining minute and a half I would be curious
    about your thoughts on that.
        Mr. Natsios. First, when I became administrator one of the
    first things we did was set up the Office of Conflict
    Mitigation and Management. Some people said, ``Why? That's the
    State Department's job." I said, diplomatically it is.
    Developmentally, we can do things that cause conflict if we are
    not careful, and we can do things that prevent conflict if we
    are strategic in our planning.
        We asked how many of the 70 missions had civil wars or
    major conflicts in the preceding 5 years. Sixty percent. Sixty
    percent had major conflicts.
        I asked this office to intergrate ways to deal with that
    into their country strategis. The research showed that the
    youth bulge and illiteracy are correlated with conflict. The
    young men who join these militias in West Africa, in Yemen, and
    in other places are often illiterate and unemployed.
        So the youth bulge is affecting the stability of the world
    order, even if we do not see it. It is at the grassroots level,
    and when we begin to study what is causing this, it is very
    interesting.
        We sent teams in with the State Department and DOD in 2003
    into the Sahelian region to see why people were joining al-
    Qaida--I think it is called al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
    now.
        They started interviewing young men. It was not poverty
    that was causing them to join. It was the sense of belonging,
    of purpose in life. Most of them were not Islamists. They had
    no theological training. They did not even know what that
    meant. They were being propagandized by the leaders who were
    using them for this purpose.
        But it is the same mentality for young people--young men
    particularly but young women now, to joining gangs in L.A. and
    Central America and other places.
        So what we have noticed is if you can get these vulnerable
    young people into youth groups--more soccer teams--it helps.
    When I first saw this I asked why we were spending money on
    soccer teams. My staff told me, ``do you want them joining
    militias or a soccer team?" I chose the soccer team.
        You will notice in the USAID RFPs that workforce planning
    for youth is now a much bigger theme in all of USAID
    programming. I have noticed it much more than when I was in
    office.
        Mr. Bera. So it is a worthwhile area for us to pay
    attention to.
        Mr. Natsios. It is a very worthwhile area.
        Mr. Bera. Mr. Zeldin has been kind enough to let me go to
    Mr. Espaillat from New York first. Then we will come back to
    Mr. Zeldin.
        Mr. Espaillat. Thank you. Thank you so much, Chairman.
        Violence and illicit trafficking in Latin America and the
    Caribbean has become a more serious problem and I think that it
    deserves further attention from the U.S.
        I believe we need to do more with the State Department's
    Caribbean Basin Security Initiative and the Central America
    Regional Security Initiative Programs to curve the persistent
    violence in the region.
        Now, previously, many of these countries, so like
    transported drugs to the north, to the U.S., and they were
    involved in that aspect of the trade. But now there seems to
    also be a very dangerous and persistent code of violence in
    those urban cities of those countries that need to be addressed
    as well.
        And so what are--what are some of the recommendations that
    you can share with us today and with regards to improving the
    situation regarding this violence and illicit trafficking in
    Latin America and the Caribbean?
        Ms. Higginbottom. Just a couple of comments and ask Mr.
    Natsios to jump in.
        I think that it is clearly an issue. It is impacting us
    directly, whether it is because of migration and drivers there
    or because of the drug trade itself.
        I think we can look at the success of Plan Colombia for
    some lessons learned when we have a long-term sustained
    commitment. We talked about an incredibly fragile State,
    dealing with many of those issues. Now over 15 years later we
    get to Paz, Colombia and we see a different opportunity.
        I think the investment in the Northern Triangle of Central
    America where we see a lot of those conditions is absolutely
    critical to both addressing the drivers of migration but also
    encountering, you know, the cartels and the drugs that are--and
    the gangs in that area that are driving it.
        During the last administration we made a significant
    increased investment there. It is a longer-term commitment that
    takes some time to address the violence and the corruption and
    the security issues. But I think that is critical to maintain.
        Mr. Espaillat. But in addition to the sort of like
    traditional law enforcement efforts that could be augmented via
    additional funding, what are some of the social programs beyond
    the soccer leagues, right, that could help relieve the
    situation locally and also curtail the migration problem?
        Ms. Higginbottom. Yes. What I have seen, particularly in
    the Northern Triangle countries, is a combination of things.
        You are working with law enforcement. You are doing
    training. You are cracking down on corruption. You are working
    with the three governments to ensure they are making
    commitments to follow through.
        But there is a lot of programming for kids and young
    people, A, to give them something to do to keep them out of the
    gangs, to protect their safety. They are complicated to
    implement in certain very, very dangerous places but when done
    well are very successful, and I visited many of them when I was
    at the State Department and I think sustaining that investment
    is really important.
        But it has to be alongside a crackdown on corruption and
    really focusing on law enforcement as well.
        Mr. Natsios. Can I just add to that?
        Mr. Espaillat. Sure.
        Mr. Natsios. There is a part of that program, just to drill
    down a little further, that Ms. Higinbottom is referring to
    that looks at the indices that help us understand whether a kid
    is vulnerable to being recruited into the gang.
        What USAID and its partner organizations have done in those
    three countries--and this is based, by the way, on a model used
    in L.A. to keep kinds out of the gangs is identify what all
    those risk factors are, the figure out which kids are
    vulnerable, then put them in specific programs that reduce the
    vulnerability based on the factor that put them in the category
    in the first place.
        They are showing a substantial decline in gang membership
    as a result of this system. So the programs work. But the
    biggest problem--and this is something, Mr. Chairman, that I
    strongly urge the committee to consider--is the time horizon.
        USAID programs do work. They take 10 to 15 years sometimes
    to work. When we cut a program halfway through, we wipe out
    half the investment because it takes 10 years--sometimes 15
    years, particularly in democracy programs--change to occur.
        So one of the things this committee can do is look at the
    time horizon problem.
        Now, if there is mismanagement, I am not saying you should
    not absolutely look at it. We are not talking about
    mismanagement. But if you want to see results, realize that the
    Green Revolution took 30 years to implement. Thirty years.
        I am the chairman of a the board of Harvest Plus, a member
    of CGIAR, the Consultative Group for International Agricultural
    Research. Harvest Plus breeds plants for micro-nutrients--
    specifically zinc, iron, and vitamin A--to address micro-
    nutrient deficiencies among the poor in developimg countries.
        The reason I am bringing this up is that it will take 30
    years to fully inplement this program. Harvest Plus has bred
    these micro nutrients into 298 crops grown by poor people in
    the developing world. We have proved this can work. Now we have
    to get the seed out to farmers in a sustainable way. It is
    going to take at least 15 years, additional years to do that.
        Washington policy makers want want immediate results. I
    say, how are you going to get the seed out to a billion people
    in a year? It takes years to do this stuff.
        Mr. Espaillat. Yes. Mr. Chairman, just to conclude, and
    these programs, obviously, cost money and this current
    administration continues to repeatedly send to Congress
    requests for deep cuts, and so that is, obviously, a major,
    major problem that--there is a perception out there that we are
    giving away everything when in fact foreign aid is just
    minuscule in regards to the entire budget and there is proposed
    cuts to begin with.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Natsios. I do not support these cuts, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Espaillat. Thank you.
        Mr. Bera. Mr. Zeldin.
        Mr. Zeldin. USAID put forth a plan to partially reorganize
    a lot of consultation with Congress. I do not know if you had
    any thoughts you wanted to share that would be pertinent to the
    topic of this hearing with regards to the plan the USAID
    Administrator Green has.
        Ms. Higginbottom. I will just say one brief thing because I
    know you will have a lot to say. I think that there are some--
    it seems to be, from my perspective, some really good ideas.
    How they are implemented is really important.
        But when I look at, for example, the proposal to bring the
    food and nutrition programs into--to stop isolating them and
    bring them into more comprehensive that is just aligned with
    the way we do programming, for example, that we know is much
    more effective when it is combined with other interventions.
        I think there is a lot of logic there. From what I have
    understood from the proposals there is still a lot to learn
    about its implementation.
        Mr. Natsios. When I was the director of OFDA--the Office of
    Foreign Disaster Assistance--which was our emergency response
    mechanism in USAID for famines, civil wars, and disasters like
    earthquakes, we considered seriously merging Food for Peace and
    OFDA together.
        If Bush 41 had been elected to a second term, we were going
    to implement it. We were seriously considering it.
        Mark Green just did it 2 weeks ago and he asked me for
    support. This has nothing to do with the Trump administration.
    We were considering doing this 30 years ago.
        So I strongly support what Mark Green is doing. If I
    thought he was damaging the agency, I would say it in public.
        He is not damaging the agency. I think he is a very good
    administrator. He was a good choice. He is an honorable guy. He
    is trying to do the right thing.
        Now, do I agree with every single detail of everything he
    is doing? No. But the reorganization you are talking about,
    Congressman, I support and as I said before, we were
    considering it in 1992.
        Mr. Zeldin. Any other specific suggestions that you want to
    throw out there for our consideration and his?
        Mr. Natsios. Regarding the oversight functions, a council
    needs to be formed of the special IGs, the IG for USAID. The
    OMB, the GAO, and the Congressional Oversight Committees.
        A council should be formed statutorily to meet and
    coordinate so they are not auditing the same program in the
    same country at the same time. We had three different agencies
    auditing capacity building in Iraq in the middle of a war.
        We spent much of our time responding to three different
    agencies auditing the same program. That is a waste of taxpayer
    money while our people and soldiers are getting killed.
        We lost 300 people in Iraq, 600 in Afghanistan, while we
    were in the middle of answering three different audits by three
    different agencies. It is too much.
        Ms. Higginbottom. I would add a couple of things that are a
    bit different. One there is, in the 2015 Quadrennial Diplomacy
    and Development Review, some recommendations about how to
    increase efficiencies across the two agencies that I think
    regardless of administration this is--this is separate from any
    sort of strategic priorities I think are important.
        One of them that I led was a joint strategic planning
    exercise across the two agencies--that does not happen
    anymore--as well as joint reviews, and the reason for that--
    there is some tension, of course, between what development
    priorities and what foreign policy or diplomatic priorities we
    might have in certain places.
        But the fact of coordinating and communicating and
    collaborating is just a more efficient use of our dollars and
    it does not--it does not subjugate one department's priorities
    to the other.
        It is really about coordination and making sure. In
    Washington, we have the same level of understanding that you
    might have in a mission or an embassy, which does not--is not
    always the case.
        And also I would say--Mr. Natsios said something earlier
    about empowering the field. One very practical thing--when the
    State Department begins its budget and planning process it
    starts at the mission and it comes up to the bureaus and then
    eventually to the--and at State it is the--excuse me, at USAID
    it is the other way, and I think there is a lot of inefficiency
    in having those processes sort of start in different places and
    end up differently. They need to be separate processes but they
    should be better aligned.
        Mr. Natsios. We used to do planning at the mission level,
    but because nearly every dollar is earmarked in USAID, we had
    to tell the missions, ``These are the earmarks that they are
    going to get imposed, and you need to plan accordingly.".
        The old system, for 40 years in USAID, was that everything
    was done from the bottom up. Now, everything is earmarked.
    There is no discretion left.
        Mr. Zeldin. Briefly, I just have just over a minute left.
        Switching over to State Department and the special envoy
    positions, Secretary Tillerson was starting to look at the five
    dozen or so special envoys. Are there any that your--that you
    have identified as wanting to elevate higher?
        Are there any positions--any of the special envoy positions
    that you think are unnecessary? Do you have any thoughts that
    you want to share as far as----
        Ms. Higginbottom. I think from a--excuse me--from a process
    perspective, I think there should be a regular and I would do a
    every one-or 2-year review of the special envoy offices.
        Many are congressionally mandated. Others are appointed
    because at a moment in time you need them and those are
    important and we should not say all special envoys are bad, in
    my opinion.
        But some are outdated and it is not a great use of
    resources. We did that under Secretary Kerry's leadership and
    we got rid of a bunch. It was not the most popular thing within
    the building but it was the way that we could then say we need
    a special envoy to counter ISIL or another--a strategic
    priority.
        So I think it is an important regular process that should--
    that should occur in the State Department in terms of
    currently. I do not think my--I am as familiar with the current
    spectrum but I think they should be regularly reviewed and they
    should be presented to Congress as well.
        Mr. Natsios. I was a special envoy myself under President
    Bush for Sudan. I think I did a pretty good job under difficult
    circumstances in the middle of two terrible civil wars.
        Still, we have to understand the effect this has on the
    assistant secretaries when we put special envoys in to do their
    job, because that is what is happening.
        Now, are there situations in which you need a special envoy
    for a major crisis that requires someone's full attention. Yes,
    there are, and I agree with Ms. Higginbotom that saying all
    special envoys are a bad idea is not wise.
        However, having 50 special envoys is excessive. Why do you
    have a State Department, then? Why are there assistant
    secretaries? What are they left to do?
        I know it is very difficult from a political standpoint to
    get rid of some of these titles. But from a management
    standpoint, it does not make any sense.
        Mr. Zeldin. My time is up. I will yield back to the chair.
        Ms. Omar. Thank you. And in line with some of the things
    that sometimes does not make any sense, Ms. Higginbottom, it
    seems that sometimes our humanitarian goals under--are under
    cut by other parts of U.S. foreign policy.
        To me, there seems to be--an emblematic example is the
    horrific situation that is happening in Yemen. Money for
    humanitarian aid does not seem to be a problem.
        We sent over $700 million trying to alleviate the enormous
    human suffering that is taking place in Yemen but it cannot get
    to the people because of the political and the military
    realities there.
        And one of those realities is that under the Obama and
    Trump administration we have been militarily supporting the
    Saudi-led coalition. I was proud to co-sponsor the Yemen War
    Powers Resolution and my question to you is to kind of think
    about the big picture.
        Is it the case that our diplomacy and development
    objectives sometimes seem to severely undercut our military and
    political objectives?
        Ms. Higginbottom. Thank you, Congresswoman. I mean, the
    situation--the humanitarian situation in Yemen is just awful.
    It is one of the worst crises, obviously, in the world. There
    is 80 million--80 percent of the, excuse me, of the Yemeni
    population that is in need of humanitarian assistance.
        We have a very large program with CARE trying to address
    some of those needs. I can speak to my perspective from the
    Obama Administration in which we were deeply engaged in trying
    to support a political solution--a peace solution--and had
    quite a deep involvement in that, which is ultimately how we
    are going to reduce the violence, and I think that diplomacy
    and engaging in that is critical important.
        Obviously, you know, we find ourselves facing just an
    absolutely horrific crisis there and we have got to figure out
    what are the steps forward now.
        Mr. Natsios. If I could just add.
        Ms. Omar. Yes, I actually was going to have you answer this
    question for me. Would you explain why a focus on humanitarian
    aid and human rights and development are important from a
    national security standpoint?
        Mr. Natsios. Sometimes there is a conflict between defense
    and development, Congresswoman. I watched it. I would get
    enraged sometimes. But this has been going on for 70 years. It
    is not new, though sometimes it is more public than it used to
    be.
        Food was used as a weapon against North Korea during the
    nuclear negotiations 25 years ago when there was a famine and 2
    1/2 million people died. I was part of the NGO community. I was
    vice president of World Vision and we had a coalition to stop
    using food as a weapon in diplomacy.
        President Bush said we would never do it, and he did not
    for the 8 years he was President, I do not think President
    Obama did it either while he was in office.
        There are clear tensions, and you have to make a judgment
    as to what is most important and whether aid is appropriate to
    use in achieving other ends. For me, using food aid as a weapon
    in negotiations is like blaming the people who have been the
    object of atrocities for the atrocity.
        They are not the ones that caused the problem. The people
    who are dying in a famine are usually weak, vulnerable people
    who have no way of protecting themselves. Why are we punishing
    them?
        Sometimes we fail to consider the ethical consequences of
    what we are doing. With respect to Yemen, I wrote an op-ed
    piece with the former director of OFDA--the Office of Foreign
    Disaster Assistance--in the Obama Administration. It was a
    bipartisan op-ed criticizing the Saudi government's blockade.
    And we timed it for the Saudi Crown Prince's visit. He
    apparently got a little upset that it appeared in the newspaper
    when he arrived.
        Ms. Omar. Yes.
        Mr. Natsios. Then, President Trump actually issued a tweet
    attacking the Saudis for doing this, and they suspended the
    blockade for a few months, but then they reimposed it.
        Reimposing it was not ethical. You have to consider the
    ethical consequences of this.
        Ms. Omar. So we are in agreement that humanitarian aid
    should never be politicized?
        Mr. Natsios. I do not think it should be politicized and I
    have spent 30 years of my career trying to prevent that from
    happening.
        Ms. Higginbottom. I agree with that.
        Ms. Omar. I appreciate that. I yield back my time.
        Mr. Bera. Mr. Zeldin, if you do not have any additional
    questions----
        Mr. Natsios. Now, let me just add one little qualification.
        Mr. Bera. Please.
        Mr. Natsios. If we find out that large amounts of food aid
    is being diverted by the regime or by any combatants or
    militias, then we must stop the program. That is what we found
    in North Korea. The North Koreans were diverting food.
        I sent someone up, under cover, to the Chinese border with
    North Korea to interview refugees. We found that 40 to 60
    percent of the food was being diverted by the secret police and
    the military. So I ended the program. We did it very quietly,.
    But the aid was not going to the people who were supposed to
    get it.
        That is a legitimate reason for ending it. That is not
    politicizing the aid. The purpose of the aid is to feed hungru
    people.
        Mr. Bera. And part of our job as oversight----
        Mr. Natsios. Yes.
        Mr. Bera [continuing]. Is to make sure our aid and
    humanitarian efforts are getting to the folks that we are
    actually trying to help.
        Mr. Natsios. Exactly. Exactly.
        Mr. Bera. Sure. Go ahead.
        Ms. Omar. Can you think of an example where a country that
    we might send humanitarian aid into can see it as inciting
    violence within that country?
        Mr. Natsios. Well, you might get that view point, if you
    talk to Omar al-Bashir, who I dealt with for 30 years as the
    president of Sudan, and who may be leaving office shortly,
    involuntarily, given the uprising going on in northern Sudan
    right now. He saw all of the humanitarian aid as helping his
    opponents and prolonging the war.
        He said, ``If you would only stop the aid, all these people
    would stop fighting." I said, ``They will stop fighting because
    they will all be dead. That is what you want to happen."
        I understood what he was saying, and he did argue that some
    of the food was being diverted and we had to be careful not to
    let that happen--to let aid get to the rebels, for example, in
    Darfur.
        But 2 million people's villages were burned down. Thirty-
    eight hundred villages were burned by the Janjaweed in
    cooperation with the Sudanese government. Are we supposed to
    just ignore that? Three hundred thousand people died in Darfur.
        Ms. Omar. Yes. Well, thank you. I think we are in agreement
    that sometimes in particular situations, depending on who is
    looking at it, sometimes we can see it as being diverted and we
    can--we can have a moral clarity and ethical understanding of
    why we are doing it, and sometimes people within those nations
    can look at it as having an alternative motive in getting
    involved and sending that aid.
        And so there is a balance and oftentimes we have to be
    cautious of towing the line and making sure that we are not
    being seen as bad actors intervening in other people's affairs.
        Thank you.
        Mr. Bera. Thank you.
        I want to thank both of the witnesses for being here. We
    will get you to your plane on time and----
        Mr. Natsios. Thank you, Congressman.
        Mr. Bera [continuing]. Again, we look forward to continuing
    to work with both your organizations and both of you as well.
        So thank you.
        Mr. Natsios. Thank you very much.
        Ms. Higginbottom. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Bera. With that, I adjourn.
        [Whereupon, at 4:39 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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