 Good morning everybody. Good morning. Welcome to US Institute of Peace. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the president here, and I'm delighted to welcome everybody for one of our bipartisan Congressional dialogues. This is part of a series in which we provide a platform for Congressional members who are coming together from across the aisle to work on critical foreign policy issues that are essential for our national interests. And this is the bipartisan spirit that really has informed USIP since our founding in 1984 as an independent, nonpartisan, national institute that's dedicated to resolving and reducing international violence. Here at USIP, we very much believe that peace is possible, that it's a very practical undertaking, and that it is essential for our national security. And we pursue this mission by linking research with policy training and working on the ground to support partners on the front lines of violent conflict. We've long served as a powerful platform for people to come together from across different views, political areas of expertise as a way of tackling the most vital foreign challenges. And that's exactly what brings us here today. Despite what you read in the papers, we have found that there is a continuing and genuine interest on Capitol Hill and coming together to grapple with important issues. And we have that opportunity today to hear from two congressional foreign policy leaders who are focused on an important issue facing us, which is diplomacy and development in a complex global landscape. The world has experienced significant advancement in technology, in global health, in economic growth over the past half century, often called the long piece. We've seen the last 70 years has brought a drastic reduction in violence between states. Literacy rates have gone up, more girls are in primary school, extreme poverty goes down, child mortality, lots of good news. But as the title of our event suggests, today's very, very rapidly changing world presents us with new challenges and a more complex set of obstacles. We see that fragile states continue to, you know, those states that are filled with unmet grievances, bad governance, injustice. These are the states that continue to spawn violent extremism, civil wars, historic levels of migrants and refugees. And now these issues are further exacerbated and complicated by the rising competition between regional and major powers. Global issues like pandemics, environmental shocks, the dark side of technology, these are all requiring global solutions at a time of rising global tension. So this is a time when U.S. global leadership will require the best of our diplomats, the best of our development experts, and the most effective systems to support them. And our ability to come together around a shared vision and a path forward. So we're honored to have with us here today two congressional foreign policy leaders, Congressman Ami Berra from California and Congressman Lee Zeldin from New York. So you'll notice not only are they from the Republican and Democrat party, they're also from the two coasts. So this is truly an exercise in coming together. Congressman Berra and Zeldin lead the newly established House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation as chairman and ranking member. And the subcommittee's goal in the words of Chairman Berra, the goal is to hold governments accountable to support the mission of our diplomats and development experts and to investigate abuses when they occur. Congressman Berra practiced medicine for 20 years. And so with his medical background, he's been a leading voice on the need to address global health. Congressman Zeldin served in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division into Crete, Iraq, which has led him to be a leader in Congress on foreign policy and veterans issues. So both of these Congress members, they're well traveled. They've been to these hot spots around the world and they've seen firsthand the impact and the importance of U.S. diplomacy and development in advancing our country's interests. Congressman Berra and Congressman Zeldin, thank you for being here with us today. We're really pleased that you could join us. For those who are watching us online, you can follow USIP on Twitter at USIP with the hashtag bipartisan USIP. With that, please join me in welcoming to the stage Congressman Berra and Congressman Zeldin. Please come up. So I'd like to invite Congressman Berra to make some opening remarks. He'll be followed by Congressman Zeldin. We'll have a conversation and then we're going to open it up for questions and conversation. Well, thank you, Nancy, for that introduction. And I want to thank USIP for hosting this event. And for those of you that have taken time out of your morning to be here, thank you for your involvement. And those watching online, thank you for joining us. You know, Nancy, you framed what this world looks like increasingly complicated. Things are changing at a more rapid clip. And if we look back at our history and think about where we are, you touched on it. Post World War II, America's diplomacy and development, that world leadership really did create a safer world, did reduce conflict and so forth. You know, the long sustained view during the Cold War did lead to reduced conflicts. But today we find ourselves in a different place. And you know, when we think about the opportunity, and when I think about the opportunity that Congressman Zeldin and I and our colleagues have, when we start to think about what does 21st century diplomacy and development look like, there's a real opportunity here. And when conversation prior to this, you know, you had sustained views and so forth, and you had congressional oversight previously, but you know, not just in this administration, but in the last few administrations, you've seen Congress lose some of that oversight responsibility and the executive branches gain more of that. So, you know, as we start to lay our agenda and think about what does the oversight committee focus on, you know, I think we've got a primary purpose to think about where are we today? What is the current state of America's diplomacy and development? What is the current state of the human resources, the men and women that service every day representing the interests of the United States, but not just the men and women, the NGOs that are out there, et cetera, representing the United States and its values and interests. Where is that? But if all we do is take a quick snapshot of where we are today, where are those human resources, where are those programs, we'll have only done half our job. The second part of that job really is where do we want to be? What should this look like in the 21st century? What should the people look like? How do we empower those folks that are out there, our diplomats, our development personnel with the right tools to do their jobs in the most important way? What does a 21st century embassy look like? And how do we equip those embassies? How do we work in a world with the international community, with other multilateral organizations to better extend our resources? How do we work with the NGO community in a more effective way? How do we work with the corporate philanthropic community? So this is increasingly really important questions. We've also got to take the long view. We can't look at this as a two-year or four-year task. And the reason why Congress's role is so important here is we've got to have that sustained mission from one administration to the next. So yeah, I'm incredibly excited. You know, I'll leave it with one last thing. This isn't Congress's job alone. This is, you know, many of the folks that are in this town but all across this world that have been thinking about this, we can't accomplish what we hope to accomplish without engaging the folks that are out in the field, the folks that are at the think tanks, but then also in a bipartisan way, how do we best represent America's interest in the 21st century? So I absolutely look forward to working with USIP. Certainly look forward to working with Congressman Zeldin. And the best solutions are always going to be bipartisan solutions. So thank you. I guess in the spirit of bipartisanship, I'll just start off by saying I agree with everything that Chairman Barra just stated. And I'll be careful not to be repeating any of the themes because he really did touch on a lot in framing the mission and the work ahead for the committee that we serve on together. And it is an honor to be serving with Chairman Barra in this capacity as he now has assumed the gavel. And I thank all of you for being here for an important discussion. It is important for us to find ways to be able to work together to have conversations that are productive, that are substantive, sometimes because it's uncomfortable. We don't engage in debate in sorting out differences of opinion. It's actually very healthy to the process for us to be honest with each other, to share our concerns with a particular legislative proposal that's in front of us or a decision that's supposed to be made with foreign policy and other issues that are before us in Congress. So I wouldn't certainly want to discourage debate in the pursuit of bipartisanship. But unfortunately what doesn't get out to our constituents enough is that conversations like this happen. It's good that you have the cameras here and I understand that you all have promoted to our constituents that we're going to be here. So hopefully we have many who are watching at home so that they see that we're here. It's Friday morning. We're in Washington and we're working. Ed Koch, who is a former mayor of New York City, he said, if you agree with me, nine times out of 12, vote for me. If you agree with me, 12 times out of 12, see a psychiatrist. And I'm sure a lot that we're going to be discussing this morning that everyone in this room is going to agree upon. But to have an honest conversation, it's also going to require us to give you candid answers to your questions today, whether it be from here on the dais from all of you in the audience. I'll just briefly say that my philosophy on foreign policy is one that should always pursue strengthening our relationships with our friends, treating our adversaries as our adversaries, understanding that our adversaries do not respect weakness, they only respect strength. We can't be silent with many conflicts that happen, not because we want war but because we want to prevent it. The military option, which is one of the four instruments of national power, is the last possible option ever. If you ever come across anyone in government or out in pursuit of conflict that looks at the military option of the four instruments as option one, two, or three, then there's something wrong with them. And as the institute focuses on here, really to take some self-reflection as to whether or not you're standing on the side of good or not, if you're in pursuit of peace, ultimately, if that's your long game, you're right. If you're in pursuit of conflict, you're wrong. And the mission and know that many of you who are here work for the institute, you all are here at the institute today or watching at home, I believe that our military should never be sent into harm's way unless they're sent to win. You send our troops to win or you don't send them at all. I also believe our country should do a better job when our veterans return home, that they are treated with the love, the dignity, the respect that they deserve on behalf of a very grateful nation. I know that the institute here has some members of the team who have served in the military. I thank them all for their service. There was a time after World War II where just under 100% of Congress was made up of military veterans. Right after Vietnam, it was just over three quarters. Now that number is less than one in five. It's good to have diversity in Congress. So I'm not here advocating for us to be able to return to that post World War II number. It's fine that we have great diversity in Congress. But I will say that in my interaction with fellow veterans on both sides of the aisle, there's a certain outlook that I know is part of the conversation today, at least with one of your questions. That perspective you get from serving the military, the leadership that you get, I would say it would be good if we had some more veterans in Congress than we do now. That number that's less than one in five is a bit concerning to me. So as we go into today's conversation, please understand that any discussion with regards to that M is knowing that it, please know that I'm talking about option triple Z. We always need to be pursuing the diplomacy, the economic pressure, bilateral multilateral diplomacy, the information operation, the other instruments of national power. And for that, I hope that we can have maximum bipartisanship on the Hill, maximum progress in this city and around this country and at the UN closer to where I live and all around the world. So I look forward to today's conversation. Thank you for hosting both Chairman Berra and I. And I guess we'll get it going. Let's get it going. Let's dive in. Thank you. Thank you both of you. So this new subcommittee is part of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. So I want to start there. And I'll ask both of you for your reflections. I mean, historically, we have been well served as a nation by this concept that politics stop at the water's edge. And I would love your thoughts on where do you see areas within the House Foreign Affairs Committee where there is a lot of room for bipartisan agreement where Republicans and Democrats are coming together to solve some of the most vaccine issues. Let's start with you, Chairman Berra. Great. I think we've been served well on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It probably is the most bipartisan committee in Congress. Under Chairman Royce and Ranking Member Engel, we were blessed to have great leadership. And now under Chairman Engel and Ranking Member McCall, I think we see that same bipartisanship. A good example would actually be the authorization bill looking at the Northern Triangle countries. How do we take a deep look at what the root cause issues are that are happening in these Northern Triangle countries? We had a hearing on this fairly recently. And you wouldn't know who the Democrats or the Republicans were because we recognize that we've got a challenge on our southern border right now. But again, when you're thinking about diplomacy and development, we also recognize that we've got to go to the root cause. And I think when you look at most of our hearings, there's some contentious hearings at times where there's differences of opinion. But by and large, if we're thinking about Russia, if we're thinking about long-term sustained strategy in Ukraine, if we're starting to talk about fragile states in Africa, you do see strong bipartisan concern. If we did a markup of 15 different bills, the one that is most likely to get the media's attention is going to be the most controversial bill of the 15th. And if there isn't a controversial bill, then you'll never know that a markup even took place. And it actually has been great. It's been a bit surprising by how much agreement from some of the most conservative members of Congress to some of the most liberal members of Congress. We have Freedom Caucus members on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and you have as far anti Freedom Caucus as it gets on the other side of the aisle. And yet, when we do a markup, we saw it on my first couple of terms with Chairman Ed Royce. We see now with Chairman Elliot Engel that a lot of what we do is it's unanimous. But if you want to debate policy with regards to Venezuela, if you want to discuss the future of the Iran nuclear deal, you're going to, and we would be wrong for us not to engage in a conversation on some of the most pressing topics of the day because, you know, God forbid, we might have a disagreement on the days. So I don't want to discourage that, but I would say as you look around this entire globe, that committee is filled with bipartisanship to the extent of unanimity, which is great and healthy. The committee is almost unanimous in the support of Israel. It has been great in the effort to combat ISIS, to identify the extremist elements that are out there and, you know, ways that we can work with other governments to cooperate with each other, the bipartisan effort with UNRWA textbooks. I mean, you could just go from country to country and see a ton of cooperation, which has been fantastic, even if it's not unanimous. Nancy, if I could just add, and it's important for us to have vibrant dialogue and debate and disagreement. And, you know, we've had hearings on the war powers resolution, what's happening in Yemen, and our approach and strategy to Venezuela. Better policy is going to come out of that debate, and we don't always have to agree on the end point. But if we don't actually engage in asking the right questions, if we're not pushing the envelope to better understand what those strategies are, we're not doing our jobs as members of Congress. And that is our oversight responsibility. And it also challenges, I believe, members to focus in on issues that they might not be focused in on. Until that committee hearing on Yemen gets scheduled, that member might be focusing on anything else other than Yemen. So it's, you know, it's good to schedule the hearings and the debate on these issues, forces members to engage. Well, we say here at USIP that there will always be conflict and the challenge is to manage it so that it's productive and transformative, but to acknowledge that there will be. But so let's move now to your subcommittee, which is newly formed, and you've described it as being able to ensure that we have the most effective diplomacy, the most effective development. How do you see the subcommittee pursuing that? And what should our interests be? Great. Thanks for that question, Nancy. So it's oversight and investigations. And if you're to look at the media, they want to talk about investigations. Certainly we're going to use the investigative tools to get a sense of where we are. But really this is about oversight. And if I'm thinking about some priorities and what we ought to be looking at is we've had chronic vacancies both at USAID and state. Yeah, that that isn't just this administration. It precedes this administration. If you look at the GAO report, we'd like to do a deep dive into, you know, what is the cause of those vacancies? How can we better speed up the process? So our personnel have the resources. And by the way, I'm remiss for any State Department employees both here and internationally. Thank you for your service and our development workers at USAID. Again, thank you for what you're doing for us every day. But how can we make sure you've got the tools to do your job in the most effective way? You know, when I think we were chatting, you know, when we were thinking about those mid-career professionals as well, the next generation of our development workers and senior diplomats, we're losing a lot of those folks. Why are we losing those folks? How can we best retain them? How can we best keep those folks in our diplomacy and development throughout their careers? Are there things that we could do to modernize it? One thing that we've looked at is, if you're a mid-career professional and you want to start a family, there's no paid family leave. And that's not just isolated to state or USAID. You see that in the federal government. But for folks that you're asking to go on long-term deployments and, you know, you lose a lot of folks. So, you know, we've addressed that within the military, but can we also address that for folks that we're asking for longer deployments so that they may be able to step away for a while, not have to worry about those resources, but then also be able to come back into the departments? I'll say as the ranking member on the subcommittee, there has not been a single moment that Chairman Barra has said anything, whether it's rhetoric, policy, approach to the committee that I've disagreed with, which is a testament to him just taking over a chairmanship to have that type of endorsement from our side of the aisle. It's an oversight and investigation subcommittee. It's possible at some point that a, you know, decisions made or an investigation gets started that we might have a difference of opinion on. But I'll tell you, he hasn't given me any hint of, you know, of that to come. So, I'm filled with optimism. Oversight is incredibly important. It's a critical congressional role, whether it's appropriations, making sure that there's accountability, that money is being spent the way it's supposed to be spent, whether congressional intent is being followed when a bill becomes a law, and then years later, a particular agency of the federal government is not pursuing that intent exactly as Congress meant it, even if it was a prior Congress before we got here. That piece of oversight is important. Or maybe an agency, or even within an agency, not talking well to each other, ways to improve reporting, to improve efficiencies. I don't view the executive branch as, and the legislative branch as one that should always be in conflict. Oversight doesn't mean two branches fighting with each other over everything. Maybe there's a way to conduct hearing that Congress is informed that congressional intent is being followed, and that's not as much of an issue as we thought it was. But improved communication and coordination between agencies and Congress, I think, improves the entire process, and it helps make Congress and our constituents feel better about funding all of these programs and ways to improve efficiencies in reporting, as I mentioned, I think, are key. And I think there's a way for the chairman and I and our parties for the whole committee to have good victories there, as well. So I want to talk about risk, because when, for both because of years of different kinds of oversight, there has developed a certain risk aversion certainly to trying and experimenting with things and failing. There's also in a post-Bengasi era, and let's face it, the world is not as safe as it used to be. There's a risk aversion for security purposes. How do we balance concern for security, concern for effective use of resources with unleashing our diplomats and development experts such that they can be more effective? How do you develop greater appetite for appropriate risk? Absolutely. So that is an area that we actually will be diving into. If we think about the dollars we're sending abroad and the NGOs, they can work appropriately 99% of the time. It'll be the 1% of the time where some of those resources end up with the bad actor that ends up on the front page of the New York Times. So just as we're starting to look at this process, have we created these bureaucratic barriers, the reporting requirements, etc., that prevent those resources to getting to the places that they need? We certainly want to look at that. I think Congressman Zeldin touched on if Congress authorizes inappropriate funds, are those funds getting out there? Are they being impounded perhaps? So I don't want to presuppose why the funds aren't getting there, but we do have real concerns that the funds aren't getting there. Can we have a more appropriate risk tolerance? So I won't give you a concrete answer on what acceptable risk is, but through the committee process, through the process of working with the administration, I think we have to look at that. Post Benghazi, and this is another area that the committee will certainly look into, if you were to look at American diplomats and development workers 30 years ago and we were chatting about this, you'd see them out with the people back in the 60s, 70s, 80s in the heyday when you'd see all of that. What's happening now is are we building these barriers? Are we removing our diplomats' ability to do their work? Our development workers' ability to get out there? It is a different world today, and we've got to find that right balance, and we can't do that without engaging the administration, without engaging those senior development workers and diplomats. What worries me is the flip today is, I was in Sierra Leone a few months ago, and you see the Chinese everywhere. You see others all over the place where you'd have the Americans. What does that look like in the 21st century? That is something that I absolutely think the committee will be looking into, hopefully working with the administration to think about what is that appropriate risk tolerance. So that we are able to have eyes on and understand what's going on with greater flexibility and field division. I can't imagine a development worker or an ambassador being able to do their job unless they're actually out there with the people. There are authorized programs and unauthorized programs that get funded, and Congress has a responsibility to authorize a program. Our committee, as it relates to the jurisdiction of the State Department, can play an important role in ensuring that Congress is armed with the maximum amount of information as to whether or not a particular item of the budget should be funded more or less, that money should be moved to another area. That's something that's unauthorized, that we should pass legislation to reauthorize it. So that's all key. And in my opening remarks, I talked about how we should never send our troops in a harm's way unless they're sent to win. I say that out of great concern for the men and women who risk life and limb on the battlefield, but really globally, wherever we send anyone on any mission, we should be sending them to win. I also believe that our government should remain, when I say it's, I'm not talking about sending everyone with that military instrument of national power. There are many different missions. We should just, whether they work for the State Department or USAID, if they're with an intel agency, everyone who is sent abroad spending time away from family, sometimes for years on end, they all should be sent to win. And so our duty as stewards of tax dollars to make sure that it's being spent as appropriately as possible, I also believe that our government needs to always remain nimble and leaning forward as to what is the government that we want of 2020. That kind of, in 2019, that's what we should be talking about with the FY 2020 budget. We should be having a conversation of what should the government look like in 2025. And we, based off of our experience in government, in life, we get reflective and we think of what government in 2020 should look like based off of what worked five, 10, 20 years ago. And I actually think it's really important if you have that experience of lessons learned from five, 10, 20 years ago, is to help create the creative vision for what needs to be improved and made more efficient for that next level of government, because I hate to report we don't have a surplus next year. And I know that shocking news. It's a lot that we need to fund. I mean, Nancy, I would just, you know, my staff gets on me sometimes and folks that visit our office, but we haven't done a State Department Authorization Act in years, a Foreign Service Act in years. Long term. Right. A lot of nodding heads. And that weakens our ability, right, that we're not doing that. We're not doing our job as oversight. Now, a lot of folks come into the office and say, it's not going to happen. Well, it's not going to happen if we don't actually try. And we've got to take that long view and we've got to make those attempts. And both Chairman Angle and Chairman Royce have both attempted the process. Let's actually see if we can't do, I don't think our committee will be leading this, but, you know, certainly we ought to do these authorization bills and try to get back to some regular normal order, because it'll not only serve the administration better, it'll serve the folks that are out there. They'll have a sense of, you know, what we're prioritizing, and it'll also allow us to take a longer term view. Well, I want to ask one final question before we go to the audience, and that is, USIP was asked by Congress, as we are from time to time, to pull together a bipartisan group of experts to look at how to address the underlying conditions of fragility that give rise to violent extremism, especially in the Sahel, the horn of Africa in the Middle East. And if I could just summarize the report that we delivered to Congress about a month ago, is that we need a policy of prevention, and it includes recommendations around more flexible, longer term approaches, some of which will be in the purview of what you all will be thinking and working on. And there is legislation both in the House and the Senate on reduction of global fragility. But I wanted to ask you both before we turn to the audience, you know, this is hard. This is the dog that doesn't bark, going to prevention instead of the reaction, responding to crises that have already happened. How do you see that intersecting with your mandate? You've spoken several times now about the importance of a longer term view, which is core to a prevention policy. Look, my professional background as a physician, that informs how I look at a lot of this. And as a physician, you're trying to practice prevention. And you may not see that disease avoidance 20 years from now. We've got to take that same approach. And the reason why bipartisanship is so important to me is there's the truth. We know we're going to have Democratic presence. We know we're going to have Republican presence. And what you're talking about, you're not going to accomplish a four-year term or an eight-year term. You're talking about a generational impact. If we want to address the youth bulge in Sub-Saharan Africa, which, you know, when you look at the experts, it is going to cause a lot of instability in that. We've got to take a long-term sustained approach that's bipartisan that doesn't shift every four years from one president to the next. And, you know, that's my hope. And, you know, the most effective foreign policy was when had strong Democratic and Republican support, and you had strong congressional oversight and involvement. Great points. We need a stronger, more consistent, more effective foreign policy, no matter who the president is. At any time, it's been my observation that from one administration to the next, there's inconsistency from one country to the next. You'll find inconsistency. Sometimes within the same country, the same administration from one month to the next, there's inconsistency. So, for the rest of the world to understand American leadership, to be able to tell others about what American values mean to them or how to predict an American, whether it's American prevention or reaction, there's a need for us to be better leaders and be more consistent. And the long-term planning is key. The Global Fragility Act is one vehicle that the House has, the Foreign Affairs Committee has moved in the past. This was a Royce angle bill that's now an angle McCall bill. So, that bipartisan support is key. The Build Act was signed into law last Congress. So, the lot is moving in this front, and I think that the Foreign Affairs Committee just needs to keep the lead on this topic and not expect any other committee to do it for us. It's, Elliott Anglenay are related, by the way. We are second cousins once removed, but we're still related. There we go. Aren't we all, right? And I think that he's doing a, I think he's doing a good job so far with this committee. It's just very important that some of these topics that are discussed where there's controversy that we find more of an opportunity for progress, because some of the early debates have been more parsons, just the life of politics in 2019. But I do think that Chairman Anglenay is highly capable of getting big victories over the finish line. And I think that this is one topic that is primed for bipartisan action. So, I want to check to see if we have here in the room with us or online any current or former members of either state or USAID who'd like to ask the first question. We've got a hand right here. We've got mics coming around up front, if we could. Thank you. First of all, thank you, Nancy and USIP for hosting this event. My name is Jeff Levine. I'm Vice President of the Foreign Service Association, employees at USAID. Thank you both very much for your time today and for the bipartisan support for foreign policy. Representative Zeldin, I appreciated hearing you say about wanting to be sure that we send the Foreign Service, State, USAID, Commerce, USDA, where we have a chance to win. Representative Barra, I appreciated your point that winning also has to include a long-term view. It's not just a short-term. My question for both of you is, in your committee, in both oversight and investigations, how do you see those two views coming together around policies that ensure that the Foreign Service has an optimal Foreign Service professional core to be able to deliver on the expectations that Congress has? Thank you. So from our end, I touched on really diving into where the personnel issues are today. And it really does worry me that these chronic vacancies put undue stress on the folks that are already out there trying to do this work, maybe diminishes their capacity to reach their full capabilities. So that is an area that we will be diving into and we've already started making some inquiries to the administration. And we would hope that we can work with Secretary Pompeo, Ambassador Green, and like to really do that deep dive so we can solve that issue. We also want to look at the morale inside the buildings, et cetera, and the work environments. In addition, though, let's not just understand what those chronic vacancies look like. Let's also see where we want to go, right? So what are the right tools that can help our men and women that are serving us do their jobs in the most effective way? Should an ambassador rotate every three years, or should you actually think about that person staying in country longer? I don't suppose to have an answer to that, but what are the right questions that we should be asking? And then how can we engage the folks that are expert in this area to think about those? I touched on paid family leave, I think. Why is it that we're losing mid-career professionals, the folks that really are going to be our superstar diplomats and development workers and serve this country? How do we retain that talent? What does it need to look like in the 21st century? Do you allow folks to leave and go get their master's degree or additional education, or even go into the private sector for a couple of years and then create a path to bring them back? Again, there's smarter people than I who understand the intricacies of this, but I think we've got the privilege of being in Congress and having a committee that can actually ask some of these questions and engage those stakeholders. One of the most important leadership principles is to take care of your people. While I often think about the service member who's on their 10th deployment missing birthdays and anniversaries and holidays, we as members of Congress will go on a code L to a Middle Eastern country where you're meeting a State Department official who will fill in on what they've been up to for the last 15 years, and they don't have 10, 11, 12 deployments because they have just been gone the whole time, and they're in harm's way, too. So I think that taking care of people is the most important takeaway that I would have from listening to what Chairman Barra just said and setting people up for success. Now, I was critical of the transition that the President had coming into office. I believe that a lesson learned for any major party candidate in the future is that when you have the nomination secured and you're going to your convention, that your transition needs to effectively start that moment. Because if you are elected President of the United States the next day, there needs to be a transition plan that is being implemented, and in this case, the transition plan, to the extent there was one, it was literally thrown in a trash the next day. So they were starting over from scratch after the election, and I think it set back the State Department. In particular, there are other agencies that I had that observation with, but I definitely saw it at State. So I think that's a piece of it in funding where you have bipartisan support on the committee for pushing back on the budget proposals that come from the executive branch as it relates to State Department funding. I do, as I mentioned earlier, I understand that there is a deficit, and I take that very seriously, but we also have to be careful never to balance anything on the back of something in the government that does not make sense. That's why it would be foolish for us to engage in a conversation. Well, how do we balance the budget next year? How do we balance the budget in the next three, four, five years? It's not going to happen. I think what would be responsible for Congress is to be passing a budget that balances in seven, eight, ten years. That would be responsible. I think it's irresponsible for us to pass a budget that doesn't even attempt to do that. In that context, I understand that you have a conversation with Secretary Pompeo, his team, everyone within the State Department of how are we going to make State Department operate more efficiently nine years from now? Fair conversation. But in the interest of getting a budget passed this year, some of the proposals on State, I believe, ends up resulting in a more likely outcome of military conflict. And just playing off of that, we've got to look at it that way. Certainly, what's the cost of some of the programs, but what's the cost of not actually being there, right? So you have to, we have to understand that complexity because it, in many cases, is going to cost us a lot more down the road if we're not actually there today. Thank you. In the interest of time, I'm going to take a couple questions at once if there are others who have questions in the audience. Or let's go here and then to Graham. Thank you so much. My name is Mojib. I'm a Rangel Fellow with the State Department. And my question is closely related to the experiential nature of the fellowship in that I am about to begin a internship on the Hill with Senator Menendez, a staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And so my question for Chairman Barra and Ranking Member Zeldin is how can Foreign Service Officers be best prepared to serve and aid in your foreign policy legislation implementation? And on the flip side for the professionals here in the audience, as well as Nancy, how can legislators best serve Foreign Service Officers in their execution of development and diplomacy? Okay, and then let's bring it over to Graham, over here. And then we'll go to the back. My name is Graham Bannerman. I was the lead Republican staffer when the last foreign aid bill was passed. And the lead Democratic staffer was a guy named Jerry Conley. In when we passed that legislation, we had the same congressional makeup, a Republican House Democratic, no, Republican Senate Democratic House. What seems to be lacking in those days back in the dark ages, Congress worked five days a week fully. They were here. They were not gone Fridays and Mondays. Before the markup occurred, there were months of hearings by each subcommittee in the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate that went into great detail on every program within the subcommittee's jurisdiction. I mean, you had Middle East hearings. You had East Asia hearings. You had Latin America hearings. Do you believe the Congress today is willing to put that much work into passing a foreign aid authorization bill? Okay, let's take quick answers to those two big questions, and then we'll take a final question in the back. So just quickly, what can we, we can't do our jobs unless we're actually working closely with the folks, our Foreign Service officers and others that are in the field because you're informing us what you need. So this has to be a partnership. It's not Congress saying, Hey, here's what you need to do. It's building that relationship and not just with our senior diplomats, but and development workers, but also our junior ones to because we want you to enter the foreign service. But I'd like you to stay here for 30 years and develop that expertise. Congress is broken right now. I'm stating the obvious, or it's not the most efficient organization. You know, one of the things that we did do in a bipartisan way when we set the rules package of this 116th Congress was create a select committee, bipartisan equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans on how you modernize Congress and make it more functional. So one of the ideas that often gets tossed around is the Monday through Friday piece, the working. You know, I have jurisdiction over my committee and we're spending doing a deep dive in how we can use the committee process in the most effective way. That could be picking out two or three topics and doing multiple hearings and peeling the onion back and diving deeper and deeper. But I want to do this in a systematic way. So it leads us to a conclusion. I am better trying to understand and we probably should. You know, Mr. Connolly serves with us right now, but try to better understand what it would take to do a foreign aid act, to do a State Department, not that before and serves act. And, you know, because again, unless we don't set that goal, we won't accomplish it. I think Congressman Berman gave it a big effort as the last time it was tried. Comments? I think that on the Foreign Service Officer piece, lessons learned from the field is and timely and relevant is better than any information that we as a member or anyone else who are fellow team members on that staff. It's better than anything that anyone comes armed to that conversation. You are the subject matter expert on what is the situation on the ground in that country where you just came from with perspective on other issues that you saw that might not have been directly in your lane, but observations that you made that can help inform not just your member, but other members as well. And I would say one of the best ways to ensure that members are helping Foreign Service Officers is to tell us what we need to do to better help you. If you see something that's missing, I wouldn't assume that the members know, you know, your top five list of items you need to help you better do your job. So, yeah, it's great that you're coming onto the Hill and Senator Menendez obviously is ranking member of that important committee is in a special place to help influence a policy very positively in Congress. As far as time spent on the Hill, there's, I, other members would be more than willing to spend more time here that the key test for me as I imagine the key test for other members is you don't want to just be wasting time. You don't want to be here just to be here. But if you were to create, you know, an extra day this week or two extra days next week for us to be here, all I ask for is that you're making it worthwhile. So they're, and I, what I've seen is that on the foreign affairs committee every day that I'm here, the committee's having a hearing or a markup, subcommittees are having hearings or markups, the committee's been active. The challenge is you have to find it in the bandwidth of all of the different things that you want to accomplish and you want to talk about because there's a lot when your jurisdiction is the world. There's a lot that you might want to focus in on that might be more in the news that your constituents might be talking to you more about. Why aren't you doing a hearing on this, this, this and that? And that list of 15 different things, none of it will include a reauthorization of anything. Like our constituents don't contact us calling for reauthorizations of bills, but that's, you just have to force that into the bandwidth of the committee. Well, maybe they will having watched this. I want to give our one last question or an opportunity and then we'll close it up with your final comments. I'm Shala Arraste from Voice of America Persian Service. My question is first to Mr. Zeldin. I remember I interviewed you and Secretary Pompeo at the time a few years back when he was a member of Congress trying to get visa to go to Iran to observe the election. My question is, is Iran an urgent threat to United States at the moment, United States interest, and is there any dialogue in the Congress at the moment to how to support the administration and are you prepared to do that? And is there any room now for such a move to dialogue with Iranian while IRGC is in charge actually in Iran to go and dialogue and diplomacy? Well, thank you. You've just opened up a completely different dialogue that we should have with the question at the beginning. If you want to say anything quickly about that, it's obviously a big question. Sure. So Mike Pompeo and I, Frank Lobiondo at the time, was the subcommittee chair of the CIA subcommittee. Three of us went to the Iranian intersection of the Pakistani embassy and filed a visa. It's worth noting Zarif still has not formally denied our visa, although he still has not approved it. This is now several years ago. Any country that in their parliament and their leaders and on their holidays are chanting death to America, calling United States the great Satan, when they develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, that's not meant for Israel. It's intercontinental ballistic missiles concerned about a lot of Iran's bad activities that they're engaged in. And I'm also very well aware, and this is where an institute like yours can play a critical role, is that millions of Iranians right now would love to, they've been waiting a generation and a half, two generations, for an opportunity to take their country in a better way. They talk about freedom, democracy, stability. They want to be good world actors. Do I view Iran as a threat to the United States? Absolutely. When I know of US service members who were killed at the hands of and connection to activities of the IRGC. So there is a real threat, but I also don't want to paint a brush that doesn't acknowledge the fact that the Iranian people agree with us when we talk about the human rights violations and the person who's imprisoned for representing someone who's gay and a woman who is getting in trouble for taking off a headscarf. There's been so many different examples of the Iranian regime brutalizing its own people. I view the Iranian regime not only as a threat to the United States and their neighbors, they're a threat to their own citizens with the way that they've pursued certain policies. And I think that we should, with a clear eye, focus that issue on that and not paint too broad of a brush where the Iranian people are not part of the solution. Thank you. Congressman Barr, I'm going to give you the last word to close up on the session if you want to have any final reflections on the conversation. Sure, just to. I started with American foreign policy and global engagement post World War II and the Cold War made the world a better place, solved a lot of the world's issues or at least addressed a lot of the world's issues. American soft power diplomacy and development will look different in the 21st century, but make no mistake that the world wants American leadership in that engagement. And we shouldn't shy away from the challenges that we see right in front of us. And many of you, we travel around and they want to see America there. They know our values. They know what we represent. So we ought to take that issue on and address what it looks like in the 21st century. And we have to take and look at this in a long-term sustained way, look at the new partners, how we partner with developed nations around the world, how we partner with NGOs, et cetera, and what that looks like in the 21st century, the people, the places that we should be. And that requires long-term congressional involvement and oversight. I've got an announcement to make. I'm not running for president. I'm running for reelection to Congress because I want to be part of what that looks like. So, thank you for doing this and thanks for having us. I want to thank both of you for coming here today. I think demonstrating that there's appetite to try to tackle some of these issues that are so important. If you do decide that you want to take on the reauthorization, let us know we'd be happy to be helpful here at USIP. And I think a lot of people here have expertise and scars that they can help bring to bear. But these are critical issues. And enabling our diplomats and our development experts to work most effectively is one of those critical issues that we so appreciate you're taking on. Please join me in thanking Congressman Zeldin and Chairman Ami Berra for joining us today.