    [House Hearing, 118 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                    MONEY IS POLICY: ASSESSING SHORTCOMINGS IN
                     THE STATE DEPARTMENT'S FOREIGN ASSIST-
                     ANCE GRANTS PROCESS
    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                           SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND
                                   ACCOUNTABILITY

                                     OF THE

                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
                         U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                                  June 4, 2024

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 118-109

                                   __________

            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
    56-743 PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2026
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                       MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Chairman
    CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey     GREGORY MEEKS, New York, Ranking
    JOE WILSON, South Carolina               Member
    SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania            BRAD SHERMAN, California
    DARRELL ISSA, California             GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
    ANN WAGNER, Missouri                 WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
    BRIAN MAST, Florida                  AMI BERA, California
    KEN BUCK, Colorado                   JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
    TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee              DINA TITUS, Nevada
    MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee             TED LIEU, California
    ANDY BARR, Kentucky                  SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
    RONNY JACKSON, Texas                 DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
    YOUNG KIM, California                COLIN ALLRED, Texas
    MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida        ANDY KIM, New Jersey
    BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan              SARA JACOBS, California
    AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN,       KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
        American Samoa                   SHEILA CHERFILUS-McCORMICK,
    FRENCH HILL, Arkansas                    Florida
    WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio                GREG STANTON, Arizona
    JIM BAIRD, Indiana                   MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
    MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida               JARED MOSKOWITZ, Florida
    THOMAS KEAN, JR., New Jersey         JONATHAN JACKSON, Illinois
    MICHAEL LAWLER, New York             SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California
    CORY MILLS, Florida                  JIM COSTA, California
    RICH McCORMICK, Georgia              JASON CROW, Colorado
    NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas               GABRIEL AMO, Rhode Island
    JOHN JAMES, Michigan                 KWEISI MFUME, Maryland
    KEITH SELF, Texas                    BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
    RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana
    JAMES C. MOYLAN, Guam

                    Brendan Shields, Majority Staff Director

                    Sophia Lafargue, Minority Staff Director
                                     ------

                  Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability

                         BRIAN MAST, Florida, Chairman
    SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania            JASON CROW, Colorado, Ranking
    DARRELL ISSA, California                 Member
    TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee              DINA TITUS, Nevada
    FRENCH HILL, Arkansas                COLIN ALLRED, Texas
    MIKE WALTZ, Florida                  ANDY KIM, New Jersey
    CORY MILLS,Florida                   SHELIA CHERFILUS-McCORMICK,
    NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas                   Florida
                                         MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania

                  Parker Chapman, Subcommittee Staff Director

                            C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page

                                REPRESENTATIVES

    Opening Statement of Subcommittee Chairman Brian Mast............     1
    Opening Statement of Subcommittee Ranking Member Jason Crow......     3

                                   WITNESSES

     Statement of James L. Richardson, Former Director of The Office
      of Foreign Assistance, U.S. Department of State................     4
      Prepared Statement.............................................     7
    Statement of Robert A. Destro, Former Assistant Secretary, Bureau
      of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State    11
      Prepared Statement.............................................    13
    Statement of Tom Malinowski, Former Assistant Secretary, Bureau
      of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State    16
      Prepared Statement.............................................    18

                                    APPENDIX

    Hearing Notice...................................................    48
    Hearing Minutes..................................................    50
    Hearing Attendance...............................................    51

                            Materials for the Record

    Materials for the record, submitted by Chairman Brian Mast.......    52
    Materials for the record, submitted by Ranking Member Jason Crow.    54

       MONEY IS POLICY: ASSESSING SHORTCOMINGS IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT'S
                       FOREIGN ASSISTANCE GRANTS PROCESS

                                  ----------

                             Tuesday, June 4, 2024

                      House of Representatives,
          Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability,
                                  Committee on Foreign Affairs,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m., in
    room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brian Mast
    (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
        Mr. Mast. All right. The Subcommittee on Oversight and
    Accountability will come to order.
        The purpose of this hearing is to examine the foreign
    assistance grant making process at the State Department and
    related agencies and I will now recognize myself for an opening
    statement as we begin.

         OPENING STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN BRIAN MAST

        I want to recognize, No. 1, just that yesterday marked the
    35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The Chinese
    Communist Party may have held on to power, no doubt, as we can
    all see but the spirit of the pro-democracy protesters evident
    in Tiananmen Square on June 3d and June 4th of 1989 it does
    live on.
        Today's hearing is an opportunity for Congress to hold the
    State Department accountable for sending American tax dollars
    to thousands of foreign groups, hopefully, in support of
    American values.
        But what we need to see as that's taking place is that
    there not be an instance where there's less accountability and
    oversight than is used to build a bridge or a road here at
    home.
        It's also an opportunity to examine what exactly are the
    State Department's priorities. Is it rising to the challenge of
    taking on foreign superpowers or is it promoting wokeness and
    social justice?
        When it comes to foreign assistance the U.S. Government
    provides more than every other nation combined. Every year the
    State Department, DOD, the Commerce Department, Agriculture
    Department, the EPA, and many other Federal agencies send tens
    of billions of dollars to other countries with very few strings
    attached and with basically no discernible strategic benefit
    for the United States of America and its citizens, at least
    that's the way many of my constituents feel as they take a look
    at this on a daily basis.
        The half-million-dollar grant promoting atheism in Nepal
    would be one example of this. Another example is that the Biden
    administration has sent more than $2.8 billion to Afghanistan
    since the Taliban took power in August 2021.
        A report shows tens of millions of dollars of that money
    going directly into the hands of the Taliban. There was a grant
    for $20,000 to fund drag shows in Ecuador. Unfortunately, the
    examples mentioned are likely only the tip of the iceberg.
        As some of our witnesses will explain there is a culture of
    rot within the State Department that has perverted how American
    tax dollars are being spent.
        We're seeing grants being structured to promote avowedly
    left wing agendas and then when the money is approved there's
    little monitoring or evaluation of how these grants are
    implemented.
        Let's examine some of the examples that I gave. Take the
    $500,000 grant promoting atheism in Nepal which was, to say the
    least, denied for hours in this very room until we actually
    held up the document showing that this was in fact factual.
        This committee sent more than 10 requests for information
    about this grant to the State Department over a 1-year period.
        We didn't get any answers until staff from this committee
    were able to track down irrefutable proof when they were on a
    staff delegation to Nepal the State Department was in fact
    funding atheism in Nepal. In many places they're building--
    working to help build useless piers in places like Gaza.
        If that wasn't bad enough the implementing partners are now
    admitting that that initial $500,000 was approved without the
    establishment clause concerns even being raised.
        The State Department doesn't want us to know how many of
    the instances like this have occurred and it appears to me they
    don't know themselves. We need to know why the State Department
    is allowing grant beneficiaries to craft their own monitoring
    and evaluation criteria for how this money is spent.
        We need to know why the State Department is often unable to
    assess the actual impact of a grant. They can tell us that a
    grant went to an NGO tasked with distributing humanitarian aid
    in the form of wheat, yet they can't tell us if the wheat got
    into the hands of the civilians that actually need it.
        The State Department's preferred evaluation is an impact
    assessment but they are not required and are seldom used. We
    need to know why that is the case.
        Finally, the hardworking American taxpayers who fund these
    grants, who go to work every day, have money taken out of their
    pocket and have it sent to other countries, they should be able
    to easily understand what is the benefit being derived for the
    United States of America with their dollars.
        And with certain humanitarian aid the people in the State
    Department and/or USAID they don't even want to label this aid
    as coming from America. This makes you wonder even further how
    do the people on the ground know that America has done
    something good for them.
        Every dollar spent abroad should benefit America's national
    security interests, period, without waste, without excuse, and
    in a way wholly different from the transparency that we receive
    right now.
        America is competing for influence all across the globe
    with China and Russia and Iran and other enemies. We're
    fighting to secure allies and our tax dollars should be going
    to benefit America's national security interests.
        Yet, we're not seeing that from Joe Biden's State
    Department. China's Belt and Road Initiative is building
    highways, ports, and bridges.
        Meanwhile, our State Department is promoting atheism. This
    is a failing strategy and, hopefully, today's hearing and our
    witnesses will shed light on what Congress can do to ensure
    American tax dollars are not wasted. I look forward to hearing
    the testimony and I thank all of our witnesses for being here
    today.
        The chair now recognizes the ranking member, the gentleman
    from Colorado, Mr. Crow, for any opening statement that you may
    have.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE RANKING MEMBER JASON CROW

        Mr. Crow. Thank you, Chairman Mast. I want to start by
    thanking all of our witnesses for being here and especially
    welcoming back our former colleague, Congressman Malinowski, to
    the committee to once again share his insights and his
    expertise.
        I hope that today we can have a good faith conversation
    about improvements to the foreign assistance process and about
    what robust assistance means for our interests in an era of
    renewed great power competition.
        This is what I believe this committee should be focused on
    and what congressional oversight should be all about. This
    hearing is also an opportunity to dispel some of the false
    arguments being pushed by those who want to curtail U.S. global
    engagement and leadership.
        These arguments have crept into the discourse in Washington
    and are amplifying talking points used by our adversaries to
    delegitimize the work of our diplomats and our development
    professionals around the world.
        So I want to set the record straight. Our foreign
    assistance is not a pot of handouts overseen by deep State
    bureaucrats pushing domestic political causes nor is it a slush
    fund for writing blank checks to implementers without
    oversight.
        This is exactly what opponents of U.S. global leadership
    want the American people to believe but it is not the truth.
    The truth is our foreign assistance programs go through
    rigorous process to justify their creation, competitive bidding
    to find the best implementers for the job, and have mechanisms
    in place to recoup American investment should any kind of
    waste, fraud, or abuse occur.
        The truth is these programs don't push domestic political
    agendas but promote democracy and human rights, counter
    corruption, and expose the malign influence of Russia, China,
    Iran, and others.
        The truth is these programs help us strengthen existing
    relationships, build new partnerships, and create environments
    that are permissive for U.S. businesses. These efforts are
    vital to our national security.
        That's not to say some parts of the process can't be
    improved, hence, the need for this committee. Sometimes
    programs fall short in achieving their objectives and sometimes
    mistakes are made.
        So I always welcome good faith suggestions from our
    witnesses about legitimate gaps that need filling and ways to
    make our programming more effective. But what I hope we avoid
    is using this hearing as a justification to gut our foreign
    assistance and our foreign policy.
        Since being elected to Congress advancing the foreign
    policy and national security interests of the United States
    have been among my top priorities and serving on the House
    Intelligence Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, and
    the House Foreign Affairs Committee one fact has repeatedly
    stood out as self-evident, that we cannot win the competition
    with Russia and China if we do not invest in the necessary
    tools to defeat them.
        That is why I'm deeply concerned about the Republicans'
    announced 11 percent cut to our State and foreign operations
    budget and hope to discuss what draconian cuts like these would
    mean for our ability to use foreign assistance as a tool to
    advance our national interests.
        To quote former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, quote,
    ``If you don't fund the State Department fully then I need to
    buy more ammunition.''
        Thank you again to our witnesses for being here, and I
    yield back.
        Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Crow.
        Other members of the committee are reminded that opening
    statements may be submitted for the record.
        We're pleased to have distinguished witnesses before us
    today on this important topic. Mr. Richardson is the former
    director of the Office of Foreign Assistance at the State
    Department.
        Prior to this, he served as coordinator of U.S. Agency for
    International Development's transportation task force team
    where he established new policies and processes within the
    agency; Hon. Robert Destro, the former assistant secretary of
    State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor during the Trump
    administration.
        As assistant secretary he led the State Department's
    worldwide policy and foreign assistance programs on human
    rights and democracy issues such as free and fair elections,
    internet freedom, and the growth of the surveillance state; and
    last, we have Hon. Tom Malinowski, formerly represented New
    Jersey's Seventh congressional District from 2019 to 2023.
        Prior to his time in Congress he served as the Assistant
    Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor during
    the Obama administration.
        Thank you for being here today. Your full statements will
    be made a part of the record and I'll ask you to keep your
    spoken remarks to 5 minutes in order to allow time for members'
    questions.
        And I now recognize Mr. Richardson for his opening
    statement.

                    STATEMENT OF JAMES L. RICHARDSON

        Mr. Richardson. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking
    Member, distinguished members of this committee.
        I really appreciate the opportunity to discuss U.S. foreign
    assistance, specifically grants at the State Department.
        Foreign assistance does have the potential to be a force
    multiplier for U.S. interest while also positively impacting
    the lives of millions of people around the world. When done
    correctly our foreign assistance demonstrates the best of
    America and enhances our security and economic goals.
        But foreign assistance is not charity, as both the chairman
    and ranking member have mentioned, and it should never be used
    to advance ideological or personal agendas. It should only be
    used to advance the core national security interests and goals
    of the United States.
        As someone who's spent a lot of time here on the Hill, at
    USAID, and the State Department working on foreign assistance I
    know that this committee has seen that our efforts don't always
    meet these expectations.
        We have seen grants undermine our closest allies, promote
    activities inconsistent with the culture or religion of partner
    nations, and fund projects that fail to advance America's core
    national security interest.
        But the world of grants at the State Department is complex.
    Unfortunately, we don't always have clear goals, clear
    approaches, or a clear model for success.
        Part of the challenge is, honestly, having too much money
    in the system. Part of it is an over politicization of foreign
    assistance, and still another is that foreign assistance is
    just tough. It's hard to do in hard places.
        The first step of the process is to clearly articulate
    goals and objectives when approaching foreign assistance
    grants. As such, our grants should be aligned to the national
    security interest of the United States.
        Unfortunately, I do fear that the State Department has
    taken a far too decentralized approach resulting in fairly
    murky goals and a lack of direction. Grants of the State
    Department are also too stovepiped with often too little
    socialization across the enterprise.
        Functional bureaus don't always engage regional bureaus,
    embassies, or other agencies doing similar work, specifically
    USAID. This can often result in inherently less impactful
    programming because I believe deeply that the best ideas have
    broad engagement and broad buy-in.
        The next step in the grant process is designing the notice
    for funding opportunities which provides the roadmap for
    achieving objectives. During this process we decide what type
    of grantee we want, what metrics will indicate success.
    Recently and all too often notices seem to be written to appeal
    to specific groups with specific ideological bents.
        This can generate outcomes incompatible with good diplomacy
    as the values and ideas inherent in these grants can
    fundamentally be at odds with the local culture where they are
    intended to be implemented. This can alienate our partner
    countries, hamper developments, and hinder U.S. strategic goals
    in the region.
        Furthermore, politicizing foreign assistance, which already
    does have low support among the American people, is just
    fundamentally unwise.
        I would argue that it's important for us to return to a
    much more traditional, diplomatic, and development approach
    that is focusing our attention on real national security
    priorities albeit with new tools and paradigms with sharper
    monitoring and evaluation approaches.
        This brings me to monitoring, evaluation, and outcomes. Too
    often our grants do not seem to meet common sense monitoring
    and evaluation standards. For example, grant awardees
    essentially write their own monitoring evaluation requirements
    including a focus on self-reporting quality versus quantitative
    data.
        This results in weak performance standards that rarely if
    ever include an impact assessment, as the chairman mentioned,
    and monitoring in the field is often nonexistent. State
    Department officials rarely venture out from the capital city
    to see the progress of America's investments.
        Part of the challenge is the simple--the amount of funding
    in the system and another part is the structural and cultural
    issues at the State Department. From the macro perspective, I
    fear the problem is even worse.
        Requirements are focused on inputs and outputs rather than
    outcomes. The State Department is pretty good at tracking
    inputs. Most bureaus can tell you whether the grant was used
    for the intended purpose.
        However, we fail to track whether the U.S. Government is
    having the intended impact in the country or sector that we're
    trying to reach or whether this type of program that we're
    actually funding is the most impactful approach.
        To that end, awardees should not write their own monitoring
    and evaluation requirements. Instead, I would argue that a team
    of professionals in and out of the associated funding office or
    bureaus should draft them as part of the development and review
    process.
        Let me close with this. America is not alone on the foreign
    assistance stage. We are competing with nefarious and self-
    serving actors including the Chinese Communist Party.
        The CCP knows exactly what it's trying to achieve with its
    foreign assistance like efforts from capturing strategic ports
    to controlling rare earth metals. There's no confusion or lack
    of focus on their part.
        Our foreign assistance efforts are inherently more noble
    than the CCP but we owe it to the system. We owe a better
    system to the world and the American people.
        Again, I appreciate the committee's efforts to dig into
    this process. If we get it right we will not only direct our
    resources in a manner that advances America's national security
    but also significantly improves our diplomatic efforts and
    achieve the best possible outcomes at home and abroad.
        Again, thanks so much for this hearing.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Richardson follows:]
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Richardson.
        I now recognize Mr. Destro for his opening statement.
        Microphone, please. That'll help us all.

                      STATEMENT OF ROBERT A. DESTRO

        Mr. Destro. Yes, thank you, sir. Thank you.
        Chairman Mast, Ranking Member Crow, and distinguished
    members of the committee, thank you for scheduling the hearing
    and thank you for inviting us to be here.
        I'm going to do in my 5 minutes of remarks something I
    learned at the State Department, which is to put the bottom
    line up front and that is my specific recommendation today,
    because what you all do here is legislate, is the Congress
    require all Federal agencies, not just the foreign assistance
    programs, to make detailed information about all unclassified
    grant awards and subawards, grantees and subgrantees,
    implementation and evaluation available online at Grants.gov,
    USAspending.gov, and ForeignAssistance.gov as soon as the money
    is obligated. Otherwise, you run into the problems that
    Representative Crow talked about--you know, the idea of, well,
    what's the agenda here.
        I'm going to be considerably less charitable than my friend
    Jim Richardson because when I got to the State Department one
    of the first battles I fought, I mean, literally the first day
    I got there was a member of my staff who wanted to go to
    another country in the Middle East and visit with all the
    grantees and the answer was absolutely not.
        You know, and as the new lead naive assistant secretary I
    was, like, well, I don't understand, to which the response was,
    well, you know, that's very sensitive information.
        You know, and my reaction--my initial reaction was, well,
    don't I sign the checks, you know, and the answer was, well,
    you don't understand--that's very sensitive, to which the
    response was to hold up my badge and say, I have higher
    security clearance than you do.
        And so what we're seeing here, if you take all that foreign
    assistance money and all the grants, literally to go from the
    top down to the ground level, whether it's in Sudan or Belize
    or wherever, you know, we don't know the story of American
    foreign assistance programs and unless we see what happens on
    the ground.
        That was the point that Jim was making. It's, like, yes, we
    spent a lot of money. You know, it took me a while to figure
    out that at DRL we do a lot of training programs. We spend a
    ton of money on training.
        You know, the question is what did they learn, and when I
    spoke with some folks from North Africa and asked them after
    having gone through the training whether or not they had--
    whether or not they knew what a whip list was or they knew that
    they could go visit their representative down in their home
    district they said, wow, we never learned that, to which I
    turned to the staff and said, well, what did they learn.
        So what we're seeing here, and I think that Representative
    Crow kind of accurately captures the problem when he says--and
    I don't think it's unreasonable--by writing blank checks to
    departments and administrative agencies across the Federal
    Government Congress is funding and maintaining a vast counter
    State.
        It's actively violated the constitutional laws of the
    United States by funding censorship programs designed to limit
    speech at home and abroad. It attacks religious freedom at home
    and abroad and it spreads noxious theories about racial and
    cultural identity both at home and abroad.
        Those programs--sometimes, not always, in fact, not most of
    the time--poison bilateral relations with other countries with
    incessant demands and funding for internal political change and
    cultural change while failing to notice coup and growing
    opposition in friendly countries through its heavy handed and,
    I would submit, unconstitutional use of sanctions tools against
    both friends, rivals, and American citizens.
        The counter State that this Congress is funding and
    maintaining is comprised of unelected and unaccountable
    bureaucrats who no longer make any pretense of the fact that
    they are politically accountable where they actively resist
    efforts by Congress and the executive branch to oversee
    billions of dollars of Federal grants for both foreign and
    domestic programs, ideologically driven NGO's, and
    international organizations who receive those billions through
    an opaque grants process that puts a premium on spending the
    money by the end of the Fiscal Year rather than by measuring
    outcomes in the places where they deliver services.
        And then, last, a small and shrinking group of large NGO's
    at international development consulting firms who are the
    partners of choice for the bureaucracy because, unlike NGO's on
    the ground in country, they have the capacity to comply with
    the mind-numbing requirements of the Federal acquisition
    regulations.
        And so I'm going to stop here and leave time for questions.
    But there's plenty of data I can add. I've got figures for
    Haiti, the Sahel, Afghanistan, that will show you we got
    precious little for the money we spent.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Destro follows:]
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Destro.
        The chair now recognizes Mr. Malinowski for 5 minutes.

                       STATEMENT OF TOM MALINOWSKI

        Mr. Malinowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
    Crow. It's great to see you. Great to be back in this room.
        Chairman Mast, thank you for leading us off by reminding
    everybody that today is the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen
    Square massacre.
        It's a day we always have to remember but it also, I think,
    helps to ground this conversation in what's important, a
    reminder that we are still in a struggle between
    authoritarianism and dictatorship in the world and we need to
    be giving the State Department the tools to stay in that fight.
        As you know, before I came to Congress I was also the
    assistant secretary for the DRL bureau--democracy and human
    rights. This is the State Department's front line expeditionary
    force in supporting people who are struggling for freedom and
    democracy around the world.
        A couple things about the budget. It's grown quite a bit in
    the last few years, not because any president has demanded it
    but because Congress has demanded it and the main champions, in
    fact, of DRL's budget in Congress, I would say, have been
    Republican appropriators in the last few years. It's certainly
    been bipartisan.
        Another really important fact for you guys is to keep in
    mind DRL's grant programs around the world. 85 percent of them
    are earmarked by Congress for specific countries and purposes.
        This is not a blank check. This is a part of the State
    Department that is probably the most directed, the most
    overseen by Congress of any part of that department.
        I want to make sure everyone has a clear picture of what
    these funds do every single day. They support Chinese activists
    who have kept the spirit of that June 4th movement alive,
    helping them to break through the Chinese Communist Party's
    censorship and propaganda efforts and documenting their crimes.
        They help to smuggle news and books and TV shows and movies
    to North Korea so that the people of that closed communist
    dictatorship will know what life is like in democratic
    countries.
        They help Afghan women stay safe as they fight to get their
    rights back. When our military left these programs--these grant
    programs remained.
        In Iran they help dissidents safely access the global
    internet when the clerical regime tries to shut them off. They
    help Cubans document human rights abuses by their government
    and press for the release of political prisoners.
        They've empowered Christians and other religious minorities
    in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East fight for their
    rights under very difficult circumstances.
        Under a program I got started they support anti-corruption
    investigators in every part of the world and when we think
    about our contests with China and Russia this is incredibly
    important.
        Every year DRL grantees expose corrupt business deals that
    the Chinese government in particular is foisting on countries
    in Africa and Asia and Latin America. Very much in our
    interest.
        Putin and Xi hate these programs. They hate what we do with
    this money. That's why they are pushing all of their allies in
    the developing world to pass these copycat laws criminalizing
    these kinds of partnerships with the United States and other
    Western aid agencies.
        There are hundreds of thousands of people in the country of
    Georgia on the streets the last few weeks protesting that kind
    of law. They know what's at stake. So does their Russian-
    supported government, and what disturbs me most is that our
    adversaries have now turned to influence operations in the
    United States to try to discredit what the State Department
    does.
        Now, my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, you know I
    don't mince words or dance around sensitive subjects. So I'm
    going to align myself with the chairman of this full committee
    Mr. McCaul, my friend, who recently said that Russian
    propaganda has made its way into the congressional debate about
    America's support for our friends and allies in the world.
        I will align myself with Senator Mitch McConnell, who I
    often don't agree with but who recently warned us not to take
    our foreign policy cues from Viktor Orban's Hungary, a country
    that he rightly served--said serves as China's doormat to
    Europe.
        I get why authoritarian governments and American think
    tanks that have forged partnerships with those governments
    might want us to stop these efforts.
        I get why they're smart enough to be using language from
    our own culture wars, language about wokeness, to try to turn
    us against what our government does to promote freedom and
    democracy around the world.
        I don't get why any of us would listen. Doesn't mean I
    agree with everything the State Department does. If you ask me
    to review the thousand or so grants the DRL manages every
    single year I'm sure I'd find a couple things I disagree with
    or that I'd redirect and, obviously, I believe in strong
    congressional oversight.
        But the last thing we should do is to gut or politicize
    this programming or to disparage the hardworking, nonpartisan
    career public service servants who implement it. That would be
    doing to ourselves what our adversaries have long tried and
    failed to do to us.
        Thank you. I yield back.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Malinowski follows:]
       [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Malinowski.
        Let me just say I do love this panel, and this is not to
    diminish you at all, Mr. Richardson, but I love the fact that
    we have two individuals having held the same position at
    different times from different administrations.
        I think it does allow us to get a very good understanding
    of some of the work that's done there. So I'm glad to see the
    way that this panel was formulated.
        Members are going to be recognized for 5 minutes of
    questioning and if they want we'll probably go to another round
    of questioning if members desire. I'm going to begin by
    recognizing myself for 5 minutes.
        And, Mr. Malinowski, you used the term earmarks. I also sit
    on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. When I
    think of an earmark I might not do the design and engineering
    of a bridge but we're going to directly identify, hey, we need
    a bridge here, a road here, a piece of track here or whatever
    it is and we're going to directly identify that.
        And I would dare say that if we did foreign assistance in
    that way I think most Members of Congress would probably not
    want to put their names on a lot of the grants that are going
    out or what--as you used them call them earmarks. I don't think
    they would want to earmark them with their name on it.
        But how do you mean that term earmarks? Because it's not
    the same way that we would talk about a transportation earmark.
        Mr. Malinowski. It's not exactly the same but basically the
    way it works is Congress will say, all right, State Department,
    you got hundreds of millions of dollars--we're going to direct
    that you spend, say--I'm making this up--$4 million on internet
    freedom programs for the people of Iran.
        You're not picking the contractor who might implement that
    program if it's done that way but you're also not picking the
    contractor who's going to build your bridge, right.
        You're saying this is the objective--this is what I want
    you to try to achieve in this place--and then the State
    Department goes out, hopefully, ideally, in consultation with
    those Members of Congress who are most interested in that and
    they figure out a way to do that.
        And then the oversight does not end because if you are the
    person in Congress who pushed that earmark you're, I assume,
    going to be talking to them regularly about how they're going
    about implementing it.
        Mr. Mast. So I wouldn't call that an earmark, right? It'd
    be like saying, well, Congress approved a hundred million
    dollars for roads across America. That doesn't mean that we
    said which roads we want to build. We just approved money for
    roads. That's not directly saying we need one here, we need one
    there.
        Mr. Malinowski. No, it's much more specific. It's much more
    specific. So----
        Mr. Mast. But the members are not putting their names on
    the specifics of the ones that they want----
        Mr. Malinowski. No. You're passing it. It's in the law.
    So----
        Mr. Mast. We need members to put their names on the
    specifics of these.
        Mr. Malinowski. Right. Well, I think the difference is when
    I would yield on something----
        Mr. Mast. I'm going to go to Mr. Destro. But I thank you
    for your analogy. I appreciate it. You gave me some food for
    thought.
        Mr. Malinowski. It's not for your district. That's the
    difference.
        Mr. Mast. So, Mr. Destro, I want to go to whether--what I
    brought up with some of the examples--drag shows in Ecuador
    approved, ultimately not funded because of all of the political
    pressure, but moronic to say the least.
        The atheism in Nepal, half a million dollars--the money
    going to the Taliban, you name it--are these outliers or is
    this the tip of the iceberg? Microphone, please.
        Mr. Destro. I agree with Congressman Malinowski that the
    staff is hardworking, that they're dedicated public servants.
        But I can also tell you that the staff in DRL--the policy
    staff in DRL versus the funding staff in DRL was extremely
    frustrating. They could not get information about where the
    money was going in their countries and they were completely
    forbidden to talk to the contractors.
        And so, I mean, when you look at a country like Lebanon who
    had an earthquake in the explosion in the port, you know, I
    called their staff together and said, well, what are we doing
    in Lebanon where we can kind of get the contractors and get
    people over there to help them.
        You know, you look at the perception of our programs. I
    have spoken to since I left the State Department and during the
    time I was there to many people in Nigeria. I've introduced
    them to grants.gov.
        I've introduced them to USAspending.gov and the response is
    this is like the dew that never makes it to the grass. Where's
    all that money going; how is it helping us.
        And so the perception here--I don't want to undercut the
    really good work that's done. The problem is that you have a
    State Department, among other things, that is paying to foster
    internet censorship, which is exactly the opposite of what we
    in DRL were supposed to be doing.
        Mr. Mast. So let me ask again. Are the examples I gave the
    tip of the iceberg or are they outliers?
        Mr. Destro. I think the answer is not clear, and I don't
    think--if you--one of the things I mentioned in my written
    statement is that in response to staff concerns I asked DRL to
    come up--the technical people at State to come up with a real-
    time data base of where we were spending our money.
        Mr. Mast. All of it?
        Mr. Destro. All of it. Yes, all of it, so that all the
    other bureaus could get to it. It would tap into the data base.
        Mr. Mast. How did it work?
        Mr. Destro. And it was built and it was one of my most
    progressive and, I think, honorable staff members--I mean, I
    loved her opinions on things--said, you know that that data is
    pretty inconvenient. It's going to cause an uproar in the
    countries if the information gets out.
        So that's not--those are not my words. And so the fact of
    the matter is, Mr. Mast, we don't know the answer to your
    question because the information is opaque and not available.
        Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Destro. Thank you, Mr. Malinowski.
    Sorry I didn't get to a question to you, Mr. Richardson.
        The chair now recognizes Ranking Member Crow for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Crow. Thank you, Chairman.
        You know, it strikes me that there's two issues going on
    here. There's one discussion about whether or not we should be
    doing this stuff at all, right--whether this money should be
    appropriated for these programs in the first instance, and
    that's kind of the larger debate that we're having right now as
    we address the Republicans' proposed 11 percent across the
    board cut for FSOBS, which would cutoff these programs.
        Versus, Mr. Destro, I'm hearing you say the implementation
    and oversight of these programs, right, which seems to be the
    thrust of this conversation, not necessarily that we shouldn't
    be doing these things, that they do have value if they're done
    the way they should be done versus making sure they are done
    the right way.
        So, Mr. Malinowski, I would just, you know, love to hear
    your response to Mr. Destro's comments about implementation and
    oversight and your experience with that.
        Mr. Malinowski. I find it very strange. I signed off on
    every grant. I knew exactly what we were doing around the
    world. I don't think any of my predecessors--certainly, I did
    not--have any trouble understanding what we were doing. There
    was trust between leadership and staff.
        Talking about transparency and putting the stuff online do
    not forget, particularly for the bureau that we both led, most
    of the grants are going to help people who are living in
    dictatorships.
        Mr. Destro mentioned Lebanon. Like, imagine you're giving a
    grant to an NGO in Lebanon that is fighting corruption in that
    country where the government is heavily influenced by
    Hezbollah.
        You're telling me you're going to put that on a website so
    that Hezbollah can see exactly who in Lebanon is getting a
    grant to expose their corruption? Are you crazy?
        So if members of his staff were telling him this is
    sensitive they were absolutely right. We are helping people who
    are risking their freedom and in some cases their lives to
    stand up for democracy, freedom, and human rights in their
    countries and you're darn right that one of the main missions
    of the staff and that bureau and others in the State Department
    is to keep our partners safe.
        The assistant secretary knows what's going on if he or she
    is running the bureau correctly. But that doesn't mean--and
    Congress should know if you ask--but we have to keep that in
    mind.
        Mr. Crow. And, Mr. Destro, do you think that an 11 percent
    across the board cut to the FSOBS program would be, in your
    view, beneficial? Would that enhance oversight or solve the
    problem that you're talking about about implementation and
    transparency?
        Mr. Destro. Well, you've got a couple of questions there. I
    don't think that an 11 percent cut is unreasonable. I mean,
    most Americans are taking a much bigger haircut when they go to
    the grocery store every day.
        You know, so the fact that it's not the amount of money
    that we spent. I think Jim Richardson and Tom Malinowski have
    both said it's the effect and the outcome that we're looking
    for.
        You know, and it's not fraud, waste, and abuse we're
    talking about. That's the wrong--that's a category error. What
    we're talking about is programs that don't advance America's
    foreign policy interest and many programs that actually
    antagonize the people in the country who get it.
        Mr. Crow. And your response to that, Mr. Malinowski?
        Mr. Malinowski. Well, they certainly don't antagonize the
    people who get it. What I've heard a couple of times from Mr.
    Destro is that they may antagonize governments, and I'm
    surprised to hear a former assistant secretary for democracy
    and human rights suggest that we shouldn't be making democracy
    and human rights grants that antagonize governments.
        I mean, by definition if you are helping people--and that's
    the mission of this bureau and of the State Department, a
    mission defined by the U.S. Congress--if you're helping people
    advance human rights and democratic reform dictators aren't
    going to like that.
        Mr. Crow. I guess one thing is I'm struggling with this
    notion that the resources and the amount of money doesn't
    matter. It's the effect.
        But if you're cutting the resources and you're cutting what
    you're actually allocating in the projects themselves then the
    effect goes away, right?
        Mr. Malinowski. Of course, it matters, and it matters at a
    time--and I think there's bipartisan recognition of this as we
    have heard today--that China in particular and Russia to some
    extent spend billions of dollars on influence operations around
    the world and our comparative advantage in these countries is
    that we, unlike them, are associated by the peoples of these
    countries with these values of rule of law, human rights,
    democracy.
        We work with them. We work with civil society and we should
    be doing more of that, not less of that, if we're going to
    actually win this competition, if we're going to be serious
    about it.
        Mr. Crow. I think the point for me here is that you can't
    separate the conversation about allocation of resources and
    implementation, right. If you get rid of the resources then
    implementation doesn't matter because the programs go away,
    right.
        And I'm all about increasing efficiency, having better
    implementation, doing things better all the time. Every
    organization can do things better. But if we cut the resources
    and the programs go away then the entire conversation goes away
    and we can't even have a seat at the table.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Crow.
        The chair now recognizes Mr. Perry for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Gentlemen, thanks for being here. Tom, it's good to see
    you. Welcome back.
        Mr. Destro, you coordinated for Tibetan issues when you
    were working in the last administration. I think Tibet suffers,
    as we know, from deteriorating human rights, poor economic
    development conditions, restrictions against religious
    freedoms, and repression of Tibetan culture as the Communist
    Party of China seeks to consume and subsume Tibet.
        With that in mind, did the Biden State Department encourage
    atheism in Tibet? Is that my understanding. I just want to--do
    you know about--what's the story there?
        Mr. Destro. It was in Nepal.
        Mr. Perry. It was in Nepal. Okay.
        Mr. Destro. And I can tell you this.
        Mr. Perry. Okay. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Tell me.
        Mr. Destro. No. No. Please finish your question.
        Mr. Perry. Well, what's the interest of the United States
    of America in supporting atheism in Nepal? Like, what--how does
    that help us? What are we trying to achieve?
        Mr. Destro. Well, there's two answers to that question.
    One, we don't have any and there's no evidence that atheists
    are a persecuted class in Nepal. But even more so, you know,
    one of the big issues I had to deal with is talking to Nepal
    into not sending people back to China.
        I had to intervene with the foreign minister and ask him,
    please don't send people back who escape. And you could expect
    once this came out where the conversation would be--so why are
    you trying to destroy our culture?
        You know, so you're asking other countries to do things in
    the field of human rights, very valuable things in human
    rights, and then you're kind of hitting them in places they
    don't expect to get hit.
        And it's a false dichotomy that Mr. Malinowski is pointing
    out. It's not about--just about governments. It's about how the
    people see our government spending and who they're spending it
    on.
        The people in Nigeria I have been speaking to for years now
    and they say, who are these people who get the money? What do
    they do with it? And I have suggested that their independent
    journalists go out and start knocking on some of the doors to
    find out where that money comes from.
        Mr. Perry. Yes, I'm actually outraged that we're spending
    money whether it's in Tibet or Nepal on atheism abroad. I just
    feel like we could better spend our money and we'll talk about
    that a little bit more.
        Mr. Richardson, it's come to my attention that grant
    awardees were being able to write their own monitoring and
    evaluation requirements. So they get the grant money--that's my
    understanding.
        So I want you to confirm this. Maybe I'm wrong. And then
    they write their own monitoring and evaluation so they're
    watching themselves and how they spend it. Is that--am I
    mischaracterizing it?
        Mr. Richardson. Yes, that's essentially right. When a
    grantee puts forward its proposal it'll have a monitoring/
    evaluation section in that. Often what you find is that the
    monitoring and evaluation standards seem, I would argue, pretty
    weak and so--but it is almost a self-reporting.
        The latest guidance that I saw from the State Department
    focuses on essentially a qualitative personal experience of
    whether that funding helped them or not, and rather than
    looking at actual data or doing a true analysis and
    monitoring--true monitoring and evaluation, which is what you
    would actually want to do, because what you really want to do
    is see does that money actually have the impact you're trying
    to accomplish rather than does this just make people feel good.
        And that seems to be the direction that the State
    Department seems to be taking in this new monitoring and
    evaluation standards that they've put forward.
        Mr. Perry. So it seems to me that we should be--you know,
    when the people in the district I represent wake up early in
    the morning and head off to work to pay their taxes, can't
    afford their groceries, their electricity bill, you know, their
    daycare bill, funding things--climate pet projects or, you
    know, DEI initiatives, other fabricated issues as I would call
    them as opposed to major infrastructure projects, oil and gas
    leasing or drilling, mining, real economic development projects
    that could be assessed at tangible results and then evaluating
    whether these funds have an impact as essentially optional is
    astounding to me in the sense that last year, 2023, foreign
    assistance, government, State, and USAID combined spent $56
    billion--$56 billion--while China is out doing hard things.
        They're not doing DEI initiatives. I guarantee you they are
    not. And climate issues--they're not doing any of that stuff.
        We're spending our taxpayers' money on this stuff and then
    we're not even requiring a third-party evaluation on
    effectiveness. It's astounding. It's outrageous.
        For those who say 11 percent is too much let me tell you
    what will tighten up the organization, not having as much to
    spread around because they're spreading it around willy nilly
    like they don't care because they don't care.
        Well, my people, the people that I represent, that are
    working hard for their money, they do care, and they don't want
    to waste it. I yield the balance.
        Mr. Mast. The chair now recognizes Mr. Burchett for 5
    minutes.
        Mr. Burchett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Votes have been called. Are we still good to go?
        Mr. Mast. If you would be more comfortable coming back here
    after the vote we can hold until then. I can give you your 5
    minutes then. Either way.
        Mr. Burchett. Okay, there's still time. Progress.
        Mr. Malinowski, it's good seeing you, brother. I miss your
    receiving abilities on the football field.
        Mr. Malinowski. I can still play on the football team, you
    know.
        Mr. Burchett. Yes, you can. Well, but with all those pros
    they don't ever throw to people like me and you anyway. So
    anyway----
        Mr. Malinowski. I think you caught a couple when----
        Mr. Burchett. Well, I'm incredibly gifted. Thank you for
    noticing.
        Mr. Richardson--I appreciate all you all being here and all
    the usual stuff we say. Can you explain how too much money in
    foreign aid can be a bad thing?
        Mr. Richardson. Yes. No, I appreciate the question. It is,
    I would say, two things. One, you always want to look at the
    outcomes rather than the inputs, which is the money going into
    the system.
        Not every program is designed for the same impact. Not
    every sector will have the same level of impact that is
    directed to the national security interest of the United
    States.
        When it comes to the pure dollars in what you find is that
    we have both grants officers and contracting officers who are
    actually doing the hard work of crafting the right grant
    agreement or the right contracting agreement or the right
    cooperative agreement, and if you have too much money into the
    system you're overburdening those contracting officials and so
    that results in less quality and less focus.
        The other part of this is that as a--from a foreign
    assistance perspective you really want to cut out the German
    manager or the British NGO that is managing your resources. You
    want to put the money as close to the recipient as possible.
        It's called localization. That's really hard. You have to
    find local actors. So it takes longer and it's more labor
    intensive, and you probably can't put as much money into the
    system. But you ultimately will have a better impact, at the
    end of the day.
        So having less money into the system allows you to better
    localize resources, better focus your attention on improving
    the actual approach that you're taking in order to have that
    better focus on impact.
        Mr. Burchett. Thank you for that answer. I would remind you
    that John's sitting behind me. Apparently you hired him----
        Mr. Richardson. I brought John to Washington hired, him in
    his first job. It's great to see you.
        Mr. Burchett. He's not much to look at but he does a pretty
    good job.
        Mr. Richardson. He's a good Kansan.
        Mr. Burchett. I've had a couple of good ones in that
    position. One of them was over there but he's left, too.
        What needs to change culturally, I think, at the State
    Department, USAID. We hear a lot of talk about that and just
    cutting it out for foreign aid to be more effective and I want
    to put in there to that how do we keep foreign aid from getting
    to our enemies?
        I've had State Department people here before and they've
    told me that a hundred percent we cannot guarantee that that
    money--some of that money is not getting to our enemies.
        Mr. Richardson. Yes. Look, the vetting question is really
    serious where we actually are vetting both people and
    organizations that implement our foreign assistance, making
    sure that they are trusted individuals.
        We do that on a very limited basis focused on very specific
    regions in the world and we do it almost exclusively focused on
    terrorism concerns rather than transnational concerns, criminal
    enterprises.
        I think if we start expanding both what we are looking for
    in our vetting and expanding the amount of time and effort we
    focus on vetting, expand the number of countries, I think we
    can get a lot better and be closer to protecting the
    investments the American people are making.
        Mr. Burchett. Okay. Let me make sure--no, I'm good.
        You got any recommendations--any further recommendations
    that we could followup with maybe in legislation or otherwise
    to ensure that would happen?
        Mr. Richardson. Yes. I think that, you know, we have to
    take this stuff--the impact assessment--very seriously. You
    know, we have a logic model whenever we do any type of foreign
    assistance work that the money that we put into this program
    will result in this type of outcome.
        But we know--we rarely actually track as to whether that
    actually happens and often when we do track whether it happens
    it's not true. The great example is greater economic assistance
    programs in Central America.
        The theory was if we put more money into economic
    assistance programs that will keep people from migrating to the
    north. Turns out we made them just a little bit less poor,
    which allowed them to have better ability to pay for somebody
    to go to the north.
        So it had the exact opposite. Great logic, terrible
    results. That's not the type of programs we should be funding
    and I think Congress can really dig in and require that type of
    impact that is essential.
        Mr. Burchett. We have run out of time. I want to thank you
    all. Tom, miss seeing you, brother. But it just kind of reminds
    me--my momma was a school teacher and the last 10 years of her
    teaching career she taught at a historically black college and
    they had a saying, they don't want a handout, just a hand up.
        And I think that's something that we should take to heart
    because it just seems that we are missing the boat on this
    thing and I think we're going to--long-term we're going to hurt
    ourselves because people are getting tired of just hearing
    about the misuse and the people that are abusing, specifically
    United Nations, on things like that.
        So thank you all very much.
        Mr. Mast. So we're well into a vote series here. As long as
    you all can hold on for us we would fully intend to come back
    with a few more questions. So we will briefly recess for this
    vote. We do appreciate your patience, and the committee will
    stand in recess until subject to the call of the chair.
        [Recess.]
        Mr. Mast. The committee will come to order.
        I want to thank you all for waiting patiently for us. We
    tried to hold it off until the end of that last vote and then
    did the following vote immediately.
        So, hopefully, you didn't feel like you had to wait too
    long. We're going to now go to my colleague from Florida, Mr.
    Mills, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Mills. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time. I
    appreciate you guys being here and I appreciate the chairman
    for putting this together.
        I wanted to go through a couple of just very easy questions
    for you. You know, Republicans are putting human rights
    defenders' lives at risk is what we're being told and I just
    want to talk about how--what a kind of hyperbolic statement
    that is when these things are made by our colleagues but also
    others.
        Certain offices at State like DRL used this argument
    intentionally over classified information as a way to shield
    their program from congressional scrutiny on accountability.
        Can you tell me whether or not you feel that's true that we
    are in some way putting human rights' lives at risk?
        Mr. Malinowski. I think there was a conversation about
    whether we should be--the State Department should be putting on
    a website or being much more public about all of the grants
    that go out to help human rights defenders in a dictatorship.
        Mr. Mills. Transparency, right?
        Mr. Malinowski. And I said if we did--in some cases if we
    did that it would be putting their lives at risk. I wasn't
    accusing anyone of doing that now because we're not doing that
    now.
        Mr. Mills. But, I mean, Congress is more than capable of
    being able to understand certain classified sensitivities.
        Mr. Malinowski. Correct.
        Mr. Mills. But at the same time in an effort to try--and
    this is the oversight and accountability piece--we're supposed
    to show transparency and accountability for the American people
    and also for the taxpayers on how things are being done.
        My chairman here has even in the past shown where on a new
    department or bureau that had been established it wouldn't even
    say who works for those independent--is that not correct that
    we tried to source this multiple times?
        How is that in some way not showing transparency,
    accountability, or in some ways putting someone at risk of a
    classification when you don't even show who's actually part of
    that actual independent department or bureau?
        Mr. Malinowski. I think we may be talking--do you mean a
    bureau of the U.S. government?
        Mr. Mills. Yes. I mean, I'll----
        Mr. Malinowski. Okay. Well, that's a totally different
    issue we have not discussed in this hearing.
        Mr. Mast. Would the gentlemen yield for a moment?
        Mr. Mills. I yield.
        Mr. Mast. It was the climate czar Mr. Kerry that would not
    identify the individuals being paid by the taxpayers who are
    working in his office.
        Mr. Malinowski. And so totally different issue from grants
    made to human rights defenders.
        Mr. Mills. And so--but do you think that those type--do you
    think those types of things, though, should be held or
    classified or do you think they should be transparent to the
    American people?
        Mr. Malinowski. I think those things should be transparent
    to Congress.
        Mr. Mills. I would absolutely agree.
        Mr. Malinowski. There are situations where, again, we're
    talking about human rights defenders in Cuba or Lebanon or Iraq
    or China. We do have to be careful whether something is
    formally classified or not. I'm sure you would agree not to
    endanger people who share our values, who take the risk of
    being partners with the U.S. Government.
        Mr. Mills. But I think you would also agree that making
    sure that we find out where these grant fundings are
    allocated--so let's just say as an example, and I'm sure that
    it's already been beaten a few times on this, but what about
    the money that's being allocated to UNRWA?
        What about the $343 million that went to them last year
    where you had members of UNRWA who were participating in the
    October 7th incident or the fact that they've said almost 10
    percent of the 13,000 employees actually celebrated the attack
    on October 7th?
        I mean, Mr. Richardson, in your opinion do you think that
    an organization who participates in such things should continue
    to receive government funding?
        Mr. Richardson. No, of course not. I think the larger issue
    is also that we don't provide--we don't require any vetting of
    U.S. dollars to go into the U.N. system.
        So while we know what happened with UNRWA because of
    reporting, we don't actually do our own independent analysis or
    security checks of humans that are actually receiving funding.
    And so we need to change that, especially with the U.N. system.
        Mr. Mills. And this is exactly what the OIG and Sopko
    talked about with SIGAR with regards to the independent grants
    and how they're being weaponized and being abused. You've watch
    where companies like Chemonics International and DAE and
    Creative Associates and all these supposed implementing
    partners who continue to say that they're doing things to get
    advocacy were actually just--actually telling people, hey, we
    have to get grants out as fast as possible because if we don't
    spend the money we're not going to be able to receive our
    second tranche.
        That is not what I consider to be fiscally responsible and
    especially if you go back to the November 2011 IG report from
    SIGAR on the Chemonics Afghan Stabilization Initiative Program
    in southern Afghanistan where money was being allocated and in
    some cases falling into the hands of Taliban and also those who
    are running the poppy and opium fields.
        So my point is in all this, and I know this is the point of
    the chairman as well, we need to have better oversight
    accountability to make sure that this money is not falling into
    the hands of the very people that we say that we're trying to
    combat against, and I think that the only way we're going to do
    that is to have more transparency from departments like the
    DRL.
        With that, I yield back.
        Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Mills.
        We're going to go to another round of questioning here. I'm
    going to recognize myself for 5 minutes.
        And as I start out here--maybe there's some agreement or
    some good debate between you two--what is the budget that we're
    looking at, you know, on average year over year?
        What are some of the budgets we're looking at for DRL from
    what you all have seen in terms of grants going out the door?
        Mr. Destro. Well, the----
        Mr. Mast. Not everything coming in for salaries. But when
    we're talking about grants going out the door what do you guys
    see and if we can agree on some kind of roundabout?
        Mr. Destro. Yes. We were looking at a--at least when I was
    assistant secretary it was about one and a half billion. I
    think it's gone up a bit. The operations budget was about $30,
    $40 million.
        Mr. Malinowski. Yes, that's not right. It was--so the grant
    budget when I was there was a little over $100 million a year.
    During the Trump administration Congress increased it. It went
    up about four times.
        I don't have the exact figure, obviously, but it went up to
    I think in the $400 million to $500 million range.
        Mr. Mast. How many grants you all think that's getting
    divided into?
        Mr. Malinowski. It's about, I think, on an annual basis,
    roughly, about a thousand. DRL is--one of the cool things about
    the bureau in my view is that they're pretty good at doing very
    small grants. So, like, USAID can't do anything under, like,
    Mega Millions.
        One of the best programs that DRL has that has strong
    bipartisan support is the ability to get very tiny grants of,
    like, $2,000, $3,000, $5,000 out in even less than 48 hours----
        Mr. Mast. And of the thousand grants----
        Mr. Malinowski [continuing]. To people--let me finish. To
    people who need it to stay alive.
        Mr. Mast [continuing]. How many subgrants are we talking
    about? How many subgrants do you all think--the entity that you
    wrote a grant to is now writing another or several other grants
    to other entities that you did not actually give a dollar to--
    you did not vet?
        Mr. Destro. That's pretty hard to say. That was the basis
    for my comment about the big organizations like Chemonics and
    others that understand the Federal acquisition regulations.
        You can't, without doing what Jim said earlier, get down
    into the field and give some Nigerian human rights defenders,
    you know, a small grant for peacebuilding. I mean, they just
    don't know how to account for the money.
        So it requires a lot more--you know, these--a lot of that
    money gets sucked off in overhead, I would suggest to you.
        Mr. Mast. Elaborate on that. When you say sucked off in
    overhead let me--I brought up the example numerous times. We
    almost had a whole hearing on the atheism in Nepal. But the
    numbers are round and so we'll use it as an example--$500,000
    to expand atheism in Nepal.
        It was denied here for several hours until we ultimately
    held it up, and then afterwards the people that were here
    denying it for 2 hours called me afterwards and said, oh, crap,
    sorry, and we missed half of the slides in the program. By the
    way, here they are. The lawyer sent it to us.
        But when you look at that $500,000 Nepal's probably daily
    wage is what, probably $2 a day on average, something like that
    there. So what do you think the $500,000 went to? I know this
    is a pure speculation question.
        But was it $50,000 toward producing 100 slides to give a
    PowerPoint and then the other $450,000 in paying salaries for
    people at some NGO sitting in England? Or what is it?
        Mr. Destro. Well, this is pure speculation. Jim would
    probably know better what the overhead rates are.
        Mr. Richardson. I mean, yes. I could talk a little bit
    about sort of generically rather than the specific because I
    don't know the specific project.
        The challenge that we have--and you're exactly right. So
    what we end up doing is we'll give a grant to an NGO in London
    who will then hire some random German to then fly to Uganda and
    set up a program where there will be an office, there'll be an
    office space, there'll be this guy's family or this girl's
    family and then they'll run a program, which will have slides,
    an office, and those types of things.
        Once you start getting to the actual implementation of the
    program what we often see is a 50 percent overhead rate, and
    there's been efforts afoot to try to limit the overhead rate
    and it's different between contractors and grantees and what
    that actually does is different based upon the type of program,
    the sector, the region that you're operating.
        But there's a lot of countries that do foreign assistance
    that really try to limit overhead to under 10 percent, which I
    think is the right metrics and right approach.
        Mr. Mast. And would you say what you're outlining is par
    for the course whether you're talking about DRL or USAID or
    Commerce or take your pick of where the dollars might be coming
    from in terms of aid going abroad?
        Mr. Richardson. Every agency is different but I do think
    that there's general consensus about that is the way most of
    the--at least on the foreign assistance side at State and AID
    there is a consistency.
        As the former Congressman said, I mean, you have--DRL does
    sort of micro grants where aid sort of lives in the $1 million
    to $5 million range. So there's a little bit of difference in
    scale which allows you to have different expectations and
    there's--but there's also different levels of programming.
        Often you'll see 5-year programs run out of aid or you may
    have shorter out of DRL. So it just depends on each one.
        Mr. Mast. The chair now recognizes Mr. Crow for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Crow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        You know, we heard today that DRL does somewhere in the
    neighborhood of a thousand grants, hundreds of millions of
    dollars, but the majority keeps on coming back to this supposed
    atheism grant in Nepal, and I just want to make the record
    really clear here.
        This is a grant that was done through the International
    Religious Freedom grant program at DRL and it directly
    implements an amendment to the Frank Wolf Act that was
    introduced and supported by a Republican member of this
    committee who actually supports this program.
        The programming grant on the State side followed proper
    process and it supported a mission to support religious freedom
    broadly. This is about religious freedom broadly in Nepal.
        But that includes nonbelief. So just because one element of
    this is nonbelief doesn't mean that's the focus of the entire
    program. This is about religious freedom in Nepal broadly.
        And there was a comment that, you know, there's no evidence
    that atheism is under attack in Nepal and I would like to
    submit into the record a report--a country update on Nepal from
    the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom
    from August 2023 that specifically talks about the assaults on
    religious freedom including nonbelief in Nepal.
        If I may submit this for the record.
        Mr. Mast. So ordered.
        [The information referred to appears in the Appendix:]
        Mr. Crow. So I just think it's really important that we
    baseline and we talk about facts here, right, because the
    challenge is and when we cherrypick individual instances of
    grants, some of which could be done better, right--we talked
    about this.
        There's always room for improvement. There's always things
    that can be done better. But we use those cherrypicked
    instances to then broaden out and talk about the grant process
    overall. That can be very dangerous.
        So, Mr. Malinowski, I'd like to just come back to you about
    your experience. You know, what can we do better, right, but
    also what do we do well?
        Mr. Malinowski. Yes. And just to reinforce your point,
    look, the the religious freedom programs are wonderful and that
    a hundred percent came from the Republican side of the House
    originally is something that the State Department needed to do.
        When we're funding an NGO, say, in Iraq that is working
    with the Christian minority in that country, helping them,
    empowering them to stand up for their rights, we're not
    promoting Christianity any more than this grant was promoting
    any particular religion. It's promoting people's right to stand
    up for their beliefs.
        To your point, the broader point--and I think this is
    really important--Mr. Richardson at one point rightly said that
    it should be our goal to localize, right.
        We don't want to be giving all the money to some, you know,
    group in London that works through a contractor in Germany
    where most of the money is not actually going to help the
    people on the ground.
        The reason why we sometimes do that is because there's
    oversight. We don't want the money to be misspent. We want to
    know what's going on.
        You guys are pushing us for more oversight or pushing the
    State Department and that pushes in the direction of more
    bureaucracy, of more people in fancy offices in Western
    countries doing more paperwork to make sure we don't have even
    a single example of something not going in the right direction.
        So there's a balance here. We want more of the money to go
    locally. We want some freedom to experiment, right. I mean, any
    of us who have led a team in the military, in the State
    Department, know it's best to empower--you know, to hire good
    people, empower them to go out, be creative, and not have to
    ask for permission for everything.
        But there's got to be some oversight because, you know, if
    you don't have it there will be mistakes.
        And so there has to be balance and that means, yes, you got
    to hold the State Department accountable if you see something
    you don't like.
        But understand if they never do anything you don't like
    that's probably because there's too much bureaucracy, too much
    control from the top, and we're not actually getting the really
    good programming that comes from a little bit of freedom and
    flexibility. Keep that balance.
        Mr. Crow. And in the remaining time, Mr. Malinowski, what
    would be the impact, in your view, of an 11 percent across the
    board cut to the State and foreign ops program?
        Mr. Malinowski. Yes. Well, it's actually not across the
    board. I think I looked at what the committee did. One of the
    things they did, for example, was eliminate all funding for the
    United Nations general budget.
        I know the U.N. is a whipping boy around here but, Okay,
    you want to end sanctions enforcement on North Korea and Iran
    and on ISIS and on al-Qaeda? That's what would happen if we did
    that.
        There are a lot of things the U.N. does that don't get a
    lot of attention because we agree with them. We tend to only
    pay attention to the things we don't like.
        So massive cuts like that would absolutely undermine the
    U.S. national security interest and I sincerely hope we don't
    go there.
        Mr. Crow. Thank you. I'm out of time.
        Mr. Malinowski. The programs we're talking about we should
    be spending more, not less.
        Mr. Crow. Thank you. I'm out of time and yield back.
        Mr. Mast. Thank you, Ranking Member Crow.
        I know this is not the time for us to continue to fully
    hash out Nepal as an issue. We argued it plenty for several
    hours here before.
        But I would say that if the paper, the document, that State
    Department literally puts forward on this grant for Nepal says
    expanding atheism.
        I would say expanding is promoting and I would further make
    the point that the folks on the ground said that atheism was
    not one of the marginalized groups. Atheists were not one of
    the marginalized groups in Nepal.
        This was absolutely an instance--Mr. Malinowski, I think
    you used an appropriate word, experimentation. I don't think
    the American people want their dollars used for experimenting
    on whether atheism should be expanded in some country abroad.
        And I appreciate the comments on it. I appreciate the
    thought on it. But I entirely disagree regardless of where the
    policy came from.
        I believe it is now back to Mr. Mills for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Mills. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
        Look, I want to talk about this whole grant and
    localization thing but I also want to talk about how these
    grants has not seen any national security strategic success in
    goals.
        Let's go back to Afghanistan and Iraq. I spent 7 years in
    Iraq, almost 3 years in Afghanistan. I've worked with the State
    Department, I've worked with the government. I've worked with
    the agencies. I've worked in uniform.
        And I've watched the gross abuse of programs like Black &
    Veatch's Kandahar Helmand Power Project, the idea of being able
    to spend billions and billions of dollars that we're going to
    do hydro turbine electricity to Kandahar Helmand and that's
    somehow going to work.
        Are you aware with what happened with that project, Mr.
    Malinowski?
        Mr. Malinowski. No, and, again, what we have been focused
    on here is we do need to distinguish between big economic
    development projects and what----
        Mr. Mills. But this isn't--this didn't start out as a big
    economic development program. Originally they were saying that
    we're going to give small grants to the people that are there
    to do construction areas just to try and refurbish what was
    existing.
        Then that failed. Then it was, Okay, now we need to grow
    this a little bit bigger. Okay, now that failed. Now we need to
    go ahead and bring in all new equipment. Now that failed. And
    then it starts to get to the tunes of billions and billions of
    dollars.
        And you said something, that USAID doesn't do small grants.
    Well, I know for a fact that in Libya you had organizations
    like DAI and also Creative Associates and also Chemonics who's
    given $1,000 to $5,000 grants. They were giving grants.
        Do you want to know what one of those was for? It was to
    buy speaker equipment for a local rapper because they thought
    that if he made music about governance that that was going to
    stabilize the Nation.
        Does that seem like that's what American taxpayers want to
    see is their money being spent to buy rap equipment for people
    in a nation which has nothing to do with stabilization and
    never had any actual impact whatsoever?
        These are the things that--my point in bringing up these
    failed programs is that we have tried the monitoring
    evaluation. We contract one company.
        We then contract a company like Management Systems
    International--MSI--who's supposed to be the M&E gurus and
    experts, who then spend even more money and then they can't
    even track the money they're spending for M&E while trying to
    also track the money that's being done to the implementing
    partner.
        And then we talk about this grand scheme of we're going to
    do localization. Let's talk about localization. The only
    difference is instead of the Thursday night debauchery that
    goes on by most of the expats that are over there celebrating
    drinking on a Thursday night like they did in Iraq,
    Afghanistan, all the rest, you then just have them refilling
    boots and positions here in D.C. and calling themselves deputy
    chiefs of party, chiefs to the party, you know, program
    assembly manager, all this.
        You're not saving any money by trying to do this
    localization route and, in fact, I would argue that we saw
    actually a lot more corruption in Iraq as a result of that
    whenever we were building bridges that were $750 million and
    then all of a sudden come to find out half the bridges when we
    investigated hadn't even been built.
        My issue is that I don't see where cash diplomacy has been
    successful. I don't see where that's stabilized nations.
    Where's Iraq right now? Where's Afghanistan right now? Where's
    Libya right now?
        We spent trillions of dollars in these nations and then we
    throw it out when we do things like the 2005 Iraq constitution
    under Article 76 that establishes sectarianism, which hasn't
    existed since preapartheid eras in North Ireland.
        My point is is that we can talk about M&E and all this. I
    disagree with your assertion that, you know, the U.N. enforces
    all these grand sanctions.
        What about the sanctions on Iran right now? How's that
    working with regards to ensuring that they don't export more
    oil than they've ever done in their history under this
    administration?
        Is that--do you think they're imposing sanctions? Do you
    think they're actually upholding things? No. General Guterres
    and Ban Ki-moon under Resolution 2231 knew there was midrange
    ballistic missile, you know, violations and, yet, they did
    nothing to actually prevent it.
        So tell me again how cash diplomacy makes national security
    a priority.
        Mr. Malinowski. Well, we heard about Iran sanctions, people
    getting drunk, and projects in Afghanistan. There's a lot to
    respond to.
        Mr. Mills. Do you dispute any of those, though? I mean,
    I've seen----
        Mr. Malinowski. I don't even know how to make sense of what
    you just said. But, you know, you asked me. Let me take----
        Mr. Mills. Making sense of it is simply this, that the past
    formula doesn't work, Mr. Malinowski.
        Mr. Malinowski. Let me take a piece of it. You asked--you
    asked about----
        Mr. Mills. That's what I'm saying.
        Mr. Malinowski. You asked about how does helping a rapper
    who might be spreading a message about democracy help as well.
        You know, I recall that in the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, and
    1980's we helped defeat the Soviet Union in part by supporting
    artists and writers and cultural people and radio programmers
    and musicians and people who were spreading the culture of
    democracy through art in Europe.
        You talk to any dissident in Eastern Europe who went
    through that and they would say that's one of the most
    effective things that we did.
        Mr. Mills. Where is Libya now. Are they a failed state?
        Mr. Malinowski. What's that?
        Mr. Mills. Would you consider Libya a failed state?
        Mr. Malinowski. I'm talking about Eastern Europe.
        Mr. Mills. I didn't mention Eastern Europe. I mentioned
    that specific program just to show that this is not being
    effective and I asked how national security has improved.
        Mr. Malinowski. Much of the things we try to do are going
    to--are not going to be successful.
        Mr. Mills. I agree with that.
        Mr. Malinowski. When I was at DRL I used to make an
    analogy--a baseball analogy to my team. I said that if you're
    batting .300 in a world where you're going after--you're going
    up against dictators, sociopaths, mass murderers, if you're
    successful----
        Mr. Mills. Well, at $35.6 trillion in debt I don't think
    that we can be batting a .300 for the American people.
        Mr. Malinowski. Well, it's better than batting zero.
        Mr. Mills. Well, I can tell you right now we are batting
    zero.
        Mr. Malinowski. If we stop trying you know who's going to
    cheer? It's going to be--the Russian government and the Chinese
    Communist Party would love us to stop doing this. Why? If you
    think it's unsuccessful----
        Mr. Mills. But they're already expanding, sir. You're
    seeing that Russia, China, Iran, North Korea----
        Mr. Malinowski. If you think it's unsuccessful why are all
    of our enemies passing laws----
        Mr. Mills [continuing]. Geopolitical alignment already
    expanding. You watched Belt and Road Initiative expand. You've
    watched China continuing to go into developing nations all
    across Africa----
        Mr. Malinowski. They're fighting.
        Mr. Mills [continuing]. And they've been very successful in
    this.
        Mr. Malinowski. They're fighting.
        Mr. Mills. You're watching Wagner Group down in Chad and
    CAR who's continued to expand. Now they're in their our own
    Western Hemisphere with economic coercion of Honduras and
    Panama taking over the canals for treaties, going into Cuba,
    and actually helping with the fentanyl pill press in the Darien
    Gap.
        So we're not winning the war against China or Russia by
    going out and doing what you're saying, which is these small
    funding grants.
        Mr. Malinowski. So why are they passing laws and all of
    their allies to try to forbid us from doing these grants?
        Mr. Mills. Why are we continuing to go ahead and give money
    but not account for where it's going?
        Mr. Malinowski. It's your job to account for where----
        Mr. Mills. Why are we still giving money to the Taliban by
    paying certain electric bills and housing rental bills that we
    know falls into the hands of those very people we fought for
    20-plus years?
        I mean, my point is that I don't believe in what you're
    doing is successful. I don't believe in the USAID cash
    diplomacy model and I've seen it fail time and time again
    firsthand as I sat on these things like RAMP UP North.
        And you can continue to do your little eyebrow roll or
    whatever you'd like to do right now. But you know for a fact
    that if we go and look at the monitoring evaluation books,
    SIGAR reports, look at OIG and John Sopko that you can't
    dispute the fact that a lot of money was waste, fraud and abuse
    at taxpayers' expenses.
        Mr. Malinowski. Well, maybe I'll put you down as a maybe.
        Mr. Chairman?
        Mr. Mast. All right. I have one final round of questions. I
    don't know if my colleague has another one. But it's a little
    bit more open ended for you all.
        Let's just simply say any advices, any ideas, that you all
    have to increase transparency for these grants within the State
    Department across the board.
        Does not have to be DRL where you two spent your time.
    Could be in USAID. Could be anywhere. Would love to hear those.
    I think it's one of the most important things that we can hear
    from all of you.
        Mr. Richardson. The one thing that hasn't really been--you
    mentioned it briefly in your opening statement but it's
    branding. We fail to really brand the gift from the American
    people that we are doing great and amazing work all around the
    world.
        We don't take credit for it. It's often at a little emblem
    in the bottom of Chemonics' roadway sign thinking that
    Chemonics is the one who delivered that project that impacted
    the lives of those people.
        No, it was the hard work of the American people paying
    their taxes that resulted in that, and if we're not proud about
    it then we shouldn't have done it.
        And so I think we should we should definitely pass a strong
    branding bill and put the American flag on foreign assistance
    projects.
        Mr. Mast. Agreed.
        Please, Mr. Destro? Mr. Malinowski?
        Mr. Destro. Well, thank you. I think that there is a danger
    for being too narrow in our focus whether or not it's on a
    local program like Libya, which is a completely failed State,
    you know, where we actually as a human rights matter have
    actual slave markets.
        You know, but on the other hand you have this focus on the
    atheism grant. What I'd like to suggest is that we need to pull
    the aperture back a bit and look at both our domestic and our
    foreign policy.
        We say that we're for religious freedom but we're for
    deconstructing of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. You know, the
    Ukrainian government is arresting priests and nuns.
        You know, it stands--it's funding the Greek Orthodox
    newspapers while standing silent while the Ukrainian--the
    Organization of Ukrainian Journalists--Orthodox Journalists
    nothing's said about them
        And so we need to be doing--and I'll just give you another
    example. I spend a lot of time on Xinjiang and on the
    surveillance State in China.
        I went through the Cleveland airport not long ago and was
    given the opportunity to have my face scanned. You know, so
    this question of what are human rights and what are we doing
    both inside and outside the country.
        It's not an accident that many countries think we're
    hypocrites because we say one thing and then we do things with
    our money that we shouldn't be very proud of.
        Mr. Mast. Mr. Malinowski, any suggestions that you might
    have for transparency within grants? We'd love to hear them.
        Mr. Malinowski. So don't get me wrong. I am for
    transparency and, you know, I was slightly critical of a
    proposal Mr. Destro made to put everything on a website. I'm
    actually for putting almost everything on a website. I think it
    should be easier for----
        Mr. Mast. Can we pause there 1 second? Was it a website or
    was it an internal server--an internal list?
        Mr. Destro. Right now I'd be satisfied with the internal
    server. I mean that, I think--because and two Ambassadors have
    told me that they cannot get the information----
        Mr. Mast. That you created. That you created.
        Mr. Destro. That we created.
        Mr. Mast. Was it a public domain website or was it----
        Mr. Destro. Right. It was based on what they call the
    Secretary's dashboard. Pulls the money--it pulls the
    information real time out of the F data base.
        Mr. Malinowski. So I think just as an American citizen,
    like, it would be--I would love there to be a website where you
    can go and see in a more clear, user friendly way what we're
    doing in various countries.
        If it were very clear it would also point out in many cases
    that the money spent is not being sent to that country. We had
    that debate over Ukraine aid. A lot of it is spent in the
    United States. Some of it is donated as grants to organizations
    in that country.
        That kind of transparency I'm for with the important caveat
    that applies particularly to DRL programs, less so to AID
    programs, that when you're working in a dictatorship and there
    are people who are risking their lives to do the work--anti-
    corruption, anti-torture, pro-human rights--then it's just
    common sense and good judgment that we're not going to splash
    over--all over a website, you know, Mr. Dictator, here's who
    you should arrest because they're working with the United
    States. I hope we would all agree with that.
        But beyond that, yes, I think the more you guys can push
    for that the better for everybody concerned. I'm personally
    proud of most of what the State Department is doing. I'd be
    happy to see it more transparently presented in that way.
        Mr. Mast. Mr. Crow?
        Mr. Crow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Malinowski, I just wanted to give you the opportunity
    to take some time here to respond to some of the back and forth
    and issues raised by my colleagues. I know you didn't fully
    have the opportunity to respond to that. So I'll give you my
    time.
        Mr. Malinowski. Well, thank you. Look, I started out where
    Mr. Mast started out, by mentioning the Tiananmen Square
    anniversary, because I think we should be focused on big stuff
    here on what's important and, in a sense, I think we all agree
    there is a contest in the world right now between the
    democracies led by the United States and dictatorships led
    particularly by China, and we have to be spending money in a
    variety of ways all over the world if we want to win that
    contest.
        And I am very concerned when I hear that because of some
    Members of Congress being concerned about a particular grant,
    which is fine--that's normal.
        That's your job even if I may--we may disagree about the
    merits of that particular grant. That you have a situation
    where right now I'm told about 60 percent of the grant funding
    the DRL has is held by members of this committee.
        If you disagree with $20,000 that might have indirectly
    contributed to a canceled drag show in Ecuador, whatever, we
    can argue that. It should not be an argument for holding 60
    percent of money that is absolutely critical to people who I
    think all of us would agree are fighting for good things like
    religious freedom and human rights in countries around the
    world who are in effect defending the gospel of liberty,
    freedom, and human rights that is associated with America in
    opposition to what China and Russia are spreading in the world.
        And so absolutely conduct oversight but do it in a serious
    and responsible way that protects and enhances the important
    things that the State Department is doing in response to
    congressional pressure, in most cases, to stand up for our
    values and our interest.
        That would be my plea to you today. This has been
    bipartisan for as long as I have been working on these issues
    for over 20 years. That needs to remain.
        Mr. Crow. Thank you. And I just also wanted to get your
    thoughts on a couple of times the issue of money provided to
    folks under assault in Afghanistan falling into the hands of
    the Taliban and, you know, we support people fighting for
    freedom and democracy and their rights that are under
    oppressive regimes pretty regularly, right.
        You had mentioned North Korea. You'd mentioned Iran. You'd
    mentioned Cuba. Of course, Afghanistan is another example.
        Can you just briefly discuss what controls and checks are
    in place when we do that to make sure that, you know, that
    money is not misappropriated or fall into the wrong hands.
        Mr. Malinowski. So, again, really important to distinguish
    between the types of things that SIGAR would evaluate.
        These are, largely, big infrastructure and development
    projects where you've got a lot of local business contractors
    and the funding that I'm most familiar with, which is in
    Afghanistan going to go to maybe support some journalists who
    are still trying to do actual journalism against the Taliban in
    the country or a small grant that might help a women's rights
    group have an office or pay for a court case or do the things
    that they need to do to stay alive.
        We have safeguards for all of these projects, even for the
    very small ones. There's project evaluation reviews, external
    evaluation that goes into a lot of these projects. But for the
    most part I'm not so worried about a little women's rights NGO
    in Afghanistan.
        That grant is not going to end up in the hands of the
    Taliban. That is 100 percent in our interest, it's the right
    thing to do, and the Taliban hopes and prays we stop doing it.
    So keep that in mind.
        Mr. Crow. Okay, thank you. Chairman, I yield back.
        Mr. Mast. Mr. Mills?
        Mr. Mills. We talked about human rights and I want to key
    off something. Do you think what's happening in our southern
    border with regards to the amount of human and child
    trafficking is a human rights tragedy?
        Mr. Malinowski. Human trafficking is a horrible human
    rights tragedy, yes.
        Mr. Mills. Do you think that the open borders are leading
    to an increase in human rights violations?
        Mr. Malinowski. I do not believe we have open borders on
    the southern border, Congressman.
        Mr. Mills. You don't believe that the 9.8 million people
    who's crossed our borders illegally that that is an increase in
    what we have seen in previous administrations?
        Mr. Malinowski. I don't think we're going to have the time
    to debate our border policy here, Mr. Mills. But no, I do not--
    --
        Mr. Mills. Mr. Malinowski, we will actually be able to
    debate whatever the chairman actually allocates the time on,
    correct?
        Mr. Malinowski. Okay. That's fine.
        Mr. Mills. You've sat in Congress. You know how this works.
        Mr. Malinowski. I do.
        Mr. Mills. So my point is is that if we're worried about
    the human rights violations--and it is atrocious what's
    happening.
        We know what the cartels and what others are doing with
    regards to--almost 40-plus percent of the revenue they took in,
    you know, it's $500 million in cartel revenue in 2018. Fast
    forward to 2022. We're over $13 billion in cartel revenue.
        Mr. Malinowski. Yes. They're gaming our asylum policy.
        Mr. Mills. And we're seeing where there's millions upon
    millions of people crossing our borders of which many are being
    used and thrown into child and sex trafficking and sex slavery,
    things like this, which is a pretty atrocious thing I think we
    all could agree on.
        Wouldn't our money be better allocated focusing on human
    rights violations and things like that that directly impacts
    our country more so than throwing money to other nations where
    we're not going to make--I mean, it's a drop in the bucket.
    It's not going to make an impact.
        Mr. Malinowski. So No. 1, that's why I wish and still hope
    that you guys pass a bipartisan bill that is the toughest----
        Mr. Mills. You mean H.R. 2, Secure the Border Act, which
    actually was passed over a year ago sitting in the Senate and
    the Democrat control?
        Mr. Malinowski. The bill that a bipartisan coalition in the
    U.S. Senate agreed to that was not passed----
        Mr. Mills. But didn't even pass the Senate.
        Mr. Malinowski [continuing]. Because the nominee of your
    party for president said it won't help him in getting
    reelected.
        Mr. Mills. Well, but wait a second. Well, let's talk about
    border policy now that you brought that up, though. Doesn't the
    President have executive order with unilateral authority under
    212 Section F to immediately secure the border?
        Mr. Malinowski. My understanding is he's going to be
    issuing that executive order.
        Mr. Mills. Why did he wait until right around the election
    period of time as opposed to closing it before 11 million
    people come across the border?
        Mr. Malinowski. I can't speak for him but I think he
    probably would have preferred----
        Mr. Mills. Or 70,000 to 100,000 who died of fentanyl
    overdose or the criminals who have actually killed people like
    Laken Riley or even my own State legislator Kiyan Michael whose
    son was killed by an illegal who crossed illegally three times
    back into the country.
        Mr. Malinowski. My guess is that he hoped Congress would do
    its job and when Congress explicitly said, we will not do our
    job because Donald Trump is ordering us not to then now the
    president is----
        Mr. Mills. So there's no Federal--well, wait, Mr.
    Malinowski. Isn't there Federal laws already in place to ensure
    the security of our borders?
        Mr. Malinowski. There are quite a few Federal laws but they
    need to be funded.
        Mr. Mills. Well, and they are funded. H.R. 2, which
    actually passed the House because like you just pointed out the
    Senate has supposedly a bipartisan bill, which is an amnesty
    bill, that wouldn't even pass its own chamber.
        But ours actually passed over a year ago which can make
    tangible result and impact. And, yet, the Senate hadn't taken
    that up.
        Now, that's not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue.
    This is an American issue that we need to secure our borders
    and need to we'd take care of things.
        Mr. Malinowski. That's why Republicans and Democrats need
    to work together as they did to produce something that both
    sides can support with compromises on both sides.
        It would--a lot of Democrats embrace that mostly Republican
    bill in the Senate because they understood they have to make
    compromises, and the Republican sponsor of that bill, one of
    the most conservative Republicans in the U.S. Senate----
        Mr. Mills. Well, I would disagree with that.
        Mr. Malinowski [continuing]. Said the only reason we are
    not doing this is because our nominee from President said it
    would hurt him politically to secure the border before the
    election and as a result----
        Mr. Mills. And then he also came back and actually said
    that his bill--and this was said by both Democrats and
    Republicans in the Senate--that the bill wouldn't actually
    secure our borders and that more would actually be needed. My
    point is is that we talk about human rights.
        Mr. Malinowski. So we can--so let's start somewhere.
        Mr. Mills. We talk about all the things that are
    significant and important. We talk about--the American people
    is the most important. That's who we're fighting for. That's
    who we take the taxpayers' money to provide and protect for.
        My own borders and the human rights violations on--I was
    just in south Texas for 3 days ago, right there in Mission,
    Texas, and going down the borders and watching where I can tell
    you it was not secured. It was not--it was very much an open
    border.
        Mr. Malinowski. A great country can secure its border and
    lead in the world. I'm looking at these paintings looking down
    on us right now and the people who have sat in that chair,
    Republicans and Democrats, who have believed what every
    Democratic and Republican president of my lifetime has
    believed, the United States can take care of its own people and
    we can lead in the world.
        Mr. Mills. But we can't at $35.6 trillion where next year
    we will pay more in interest payments than we'll pay in
    national defense. First time in history. Only 28 nations in the
    world's history has ever paid 130 percent GDP and only one
    survived, which is Japan.
        America is becoming the next fiscal experiment and I don't
    think at $35.6 trillion with our GDP to national debt ratio
    being where it's at, with the attack on fossil fuels, with the
    open borders, with the continuation of funding these kinetic
    wars that we don't need to be involved in.
        And, sir, I've fought enough kinetic wars to not want to be
    involved in more or to put another man or woman on the
    battlefield in an area that has nothing to do for a neocon-
    neolib interventionist mind set. I'm not an isolationist but
    I'm a protectionist.
        Mr. Malinowski. Well, then----
        Mr. Mills. And so I think that utilizing money in the right
    way in human rights on the border matters.
        Mr. Mast. The gentleman's time has expired.
        The chair now recognizes Mr. Crow for a closing statement.
        Mr. Crow. Thank you, Chairman, for calling this important
    hearing and thank you to all the witnesses today for having a
    robust discussion and talking about some areas for improvement
    in oversight.
        There is no organization in the world, whether we're
    talking about a business, a family, a government agency, or a
    department that can't find ways of improving.
        That's why this committee is so important and I look
    forward to working with all of you and the chairman and finding
    ways that we can promote transparency, that we can maybe look
    at options for putting appropriate grants that would not
    jeopardize people's lives on, you know, internal or external
    portals to improve those processes. There's, certainly, ways of
    doing that, certainly, ways of improving it.
        But, you know, I come back to what I was talking about
    earlier, this idea of taking specific incidents of things that
    didn't go as they were supposed to go and then using those to
    attack the entire system, and to say that grants writ large are
    not working and effective is just a non sequitur.
        These programs are extremely valuable for our Nation. You
    know, I will push back on this idea that we don't have the
    ability to take care of ourselves at home and the world at the
    same time.
        You know, if we are going to be a great power and if we're
    going to be a leader in the world we have to do both and we
    have to do both not just because it's charity and not because
    we just want to. Because it's in our self-interest to do both.
        If history has ever shown or taught us anything it's that
    when we pull inward and we neglect the world and we don't pay
    attention to conflict and oppression in other places it
    eventually finds us and it comes to our door. Over and over
    again that is the lesson of history.
        So these investments are to prevent those problems from
    coming to our door and threatening the American people. It's in
    our national security interest.
        It's in our economic self-interest and these are
    investments that are targeted, that have great return on
    investment in many cases. Not all of them.
        We'll always work on improving. We'll work on figuring out
    areas where we can course correct when necessary.
        But to cut these programs and attack these programs writ
    large is the wrong answer and it doesn't serve our interests
    and it doesn't serve the interests of the American people.
        So with that, I thank all the witnesses and I yield back,
    Chairman.
        Mr. Mast. Thank you, Ranking Member Crow. I recognize
    myself for closing statement.
        I thank you all for your testimony, for your service to
    America. I don't like personally when it's ever flippantly said
    any organization has room for improvement, any organization can
    find a few places where dollars were wasted and they can root
    that out and we should fix that.
        There's a very specific and important difference between
    the U.S. Government and any organization. The U.S. Government
    gets every single dollar from we the people.
        People go out to work. They work all night. They work one
    job. They work three jobs. The government takes their money and
    then doesn't just build a road so that they can get to and from
    work or to and from school with their kids or whatever.
        They send it to countries thousands of miles away at what
    everybody has agreed upon, which is a larger extent than every
    other country combined. This is not a situation where we can
    say, yes, every organization has room for improvement and we
    just need to do it a little bit better.
        There is tremendous room for this to be--that's an
    understatement, to be done better. There is absolutely waste
    and abuse and there's absolutely policy that's being made by
    the personnel that are out there authoring grants, soliciting
    grants, that is not connected to broader goals that every
    agency is working in tandem to achieve and that doesn't work
    for the American people.
        We did speak briefly about the idea of earmarks and
    comparing earmarks to transportation earmarks here
    domestically. I wish, personally, if I could make the policy
    law that every grant that goes abroad--every solicitation for a
    grant that goes abroad--be treated like a domestic earmark
    where some Member of Congress had to come in here and request
    that specifically, that half a million dollars for Nepal or
    that $20,000 for drag shows in Ecuador or the thousands of
    other things that exist within USAID or other places.
        I wish that members had to come in here, make the case,
    speak to the diplomats that are going to be executing those
    things on the ground, and come in here and make the case to the
    appropriators they want that earmark.
        I wish that that was the case. I think there would be a lot
    less requests for these grants and I think there would be a
    much higher level of accountability. I wish and I will continue
    to work for policy that these grants not be automatically
    reauthorized from not just being executed in 1 year but being
    executed 2 years, 3 years, 5 years in a row without them being
    looked at again.
        I don't think that that is responsible to the American
    people, especially when, again, I believe many of these grants
    and these solicitations for grants are avowedly left wing and
    radical policies that are being funded through the taxpayers
    through the State Department by writing a grant and then that
    agency is writing a sub grant or a sub grant to that, which
    nobody ever gets eyes on, certainly not the U.S. taxpayer.
        That being said, thank you for the comments about where you
    see room for improvement, where you see the ability to improve
    this process. I will continue to work in some of the ways that
    you all brought up and some of the ways that I just brought up
    and in that.
        Pursuant to committee rules all members will have 5 days to
    submit statements, questions, and extraneous materials for the
    record subject to the length limitations.
        And without objection, this committee stands adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 12:12 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

                                    APPENDIX

                                  ----------

                   Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                     [all]