State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce praised Secretary Marco Rubio's reorganizational plan when asked about opportunities for former USAID employees at the State Department.
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00:00Just on the hiring freeze and the way that this affects the folding in of USAID to the State
00:04Department, how, you know, given the fact that these people are not considered State Department
00:08employees, what opportunities, if any, are going to be given to them to be able to reapply or
00:13for their position? Sure. First of all, the USAID fold in, that in a way is kind of the genesis of
00:19this, right? We knew that was going to happen. USAID was going to become a part of the State
00:24Department. And in this framework, what you'll see, and it makes, I think, perfect sense and
00:28people seeing this will see that it makes sense, is that instead of this monolithic entity
00:33that was, you know, its own object in Washington, D.C., making decisions about aid and where the
00:40money would go, the usual experience, and I've experienced this with the Secretary's travels
00:45and his conversations with the leaders and also our own embassy and consulate staffs, is that you
00:51would have donations or funding for a project that the country itself was not interested in or
00:58did not want and had other needs, that the embassy staff or the ambassador was never consulted,
01:05that the opinions of the people who are working in the country were not consulted. So they would
01:09see money going into a nation, as an example, put in to fund something that was even, in
01:15some cases, detrimental to the nation that we were working with or opposed by an ambassador,
01:21and yet there was no input and no action. In this particular kind of reorg, it's about consolidating
01:28things, right? Weaving certain offices into other bureaus, making situations smaller, reorganizing
01:35it, literally. And in that case, you will see the bureaus, which used to have a lot of power,
01:40but it really kind of lost that in a certain way through the giant bureaucracy that became evident
01:47through the 70s and 80s and 90s. And that you would have a dynamic now where the intention is,
01:54and described in this plan, to have each regional bureau have the element of the USAID that is relevant
02:02to that bureau, so that they would be working together and it would be a coalition, if you will,
02:10of ideas and minds and efforts to then also bring in and have the embassies, the ambassadors,
02:17and the governments who are working with having a say and making sure that the money that's donated
02:22is relevant to that nation, is relevant to the region. And that's what will be, you know, that's where USAID
02:28essentially is going, is into positions where, as I've mentioned to you, don't, as we were doing
02:34our review of USAID, is don't mistake a change for being something, for indicating something is gone
02:41or missing, that it was never about us abandoning our commitment to funding, to any kind of life-saving
02:49efforts or our work with other nations in assisting them, but it was going to look different. And now it
02:56will, but it will not just look different, but it's actually going to be within a functional framework
03:01to make sure that any aid that goes out is aid that the nation, that we work with the nation on,
03:06that we work with the embassies on, and people on the ground with an interest who are stakeholders
03:12will have a say in that. I think that that's a certainly a much more functional way to move foreign
03:16aid through. But on the employees themselves, they're already sort of in limbo in terms of how their jobs
03:20are going to change when the department was going to be taking over USAID. Are those employees going to have the
03:26opportunities to apply for other positions? How many people? Well, some will, some will. So that,
03:30so in the, in, again, this is a proposal, this obviously could change, but as you have offices
03:35that are cut or, or even some bureaus that were set up for a specific situation that end up being cut
03:41entirely, uh, that you will have people who then foreign service officers, uh, the career workers, etc.,
03:48being able to apply for something else. So these are a, it's a dynamic where you've got a certain number of
03:54open seats that exist, and then people who, of course, will then be out of the seat where they
03:59were if, in fact, their office is, uh, cut or even folded in to another bureau. So these are, again,
04:06this is, again, a roadmap, uh, and it's a dynamic where, as we've said, uh, in the past, certain dynamics
04:13where people, and this is new for me as somebody who's never worked for government, very much in a way
04:18like the military, where you can be working for the State Department, working in a specific,
04:23let's say, embassy overseas, and then that job ends, and then you come home, and you get slotted
04:29into a new job. Um, that, I think, for the American people, maybe for large corporations, that makes
04:35sense, uh, but that's how it works here, when, of course, that's possible. So that is possible,
04:41and we will, uh, clearly watch that as it plays out. Oh, yes, sir.