Thank you for being here, sir. You know how i feel about you. I appreciate the proactive approach you took a. Its something we feel strongly about in 2017 the senate and the house and the National Defense authorization act with a take on additional responsibilities with regards to d get this informatin coming from countries intended to destabilize democracies, undermined some of our basic values and institutions. Russia and china come to mind. My question for you, is there an ability to keep some of these important entities in the Global Engagement centers, specifically from being weekend by the other organizations that could lead to a more difficult time and the responsibilities. Certainly. Thank you, senator. With respect to the Engagement Center it is a priority for something. We are flexible and there is a hiring freeze, but we are flexible and weve granted a number of exceptions, over 700 exceptions to the hiring freeze to support safety, security and health. So, we are reviewing
Thank you for being here, sir. You know how i feel about you. I appreciate the proactive approach you took a. Its something we feel strongly about in 2017 the senate and the house and the National Defense authorization act with a take on additional responsibilities with regards to d get this informatin coming from countries intended to destabilize democracies, undermined some of our basic values and institutions. Russia and china come to mind. My question for you, is there an ability to keep some of these important entities in the Global Engagement centers, specifically from being weekend by the other organizations that could lead to a more difficult time and the responsibilities. Certainly. Thank you, senator. With respect to the Engagement Center it is a priority for something. We are flexible and there is a hiring freeze, but we are flexible and weve granted a number of exceptions, over 700 exceptions to the hiring freeze to support safety, security and health. So, we are reviewing
3. Recess for 15 minutes and come back at 5 45 so everyone can go over and vote and be back and hear what everyone elses question. We thank you for being here mr. Secretary again. So promptly. We appreciate that youve made time to appear before this Committee Twice in h a weeks time passing an annual state department bill is one of the fundamental responsibilities of this committee. When we shirk that responsibility and decline to exercise our oversight we in essence surrender our authority and we fail to do the job our constituents sent us here to do. Restoring is this annual practice was a top priority of mine when he became thachairmand im proud of the progress we made last year when the first authorization bill in 14 years became law and i want to thank everybody on this committee for making that happen. However, because of previous inaction, there are programs at the department that have not been appropriately reviewed and analyzed in well over a decade. This lack of oversight res
Recess will end and we will stand in her new again. I moved to senator corcoran. Care. You for the thank you. Secretary sullivan, you know how i feel about you. I appreciate the proactive approach you took. I appreciate your coming for the service as well, the funeral. I was not here earlier. I know the hiring present the reorganization was a topic of discussion and i want to talk to about that a little bit. It is something i feel strongly about. We as a senate and a house and the defense reauthorization act, we ask the local Defense Center to take on more responsibility, specifically with regard to disinformation coming from countries meant to undermine some of our basic values and institutions. Russia and china come to mind. There is an Important Role in pushing back against extremism, is question for you is there an ability to keep some of these important entities like the Global Engagement centers specifically from being weakened by a hiring freeze or by other reorganizations that
Provider. Now deputy secretary of John Sullivan testifies about reorganization plans. My question for you is, is there an ability to keep some of these important entities like the Global Engagement specifically from being weakened by a hiring freeze or other reorganizations that could lead to it having more difficult time carrying out its mportant responsibility . We would certainly entertain that. I think that the threats we talked about do present a National Security threat to the United States of america and ertainly that would qualify. Its more important than ever. I thank you for that. Like you to do is to get back to me on that and see why they have not mea a request. On the reorganization in general, like you to do i know an opportunity to speak about the this. The many entities that you now have oversight over in your role as deputy. The military financing. I think fmf is a critical component. That was to be reduced by 19 by 2017. With 95 of the request allocated to just four c