During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Young Kim (R-CA) spoke about how the United States can counter the Chinese Communist Party's Belt and Road Initiative.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Just reading off the lists of grants and pages and pages and pages more.
00:05I now recognize Representative Kim for five minutes.
00:09Thank you, Chairman Matz, for holding this hearing.
00:11I want to thank all of our witnesses for joining us today.
00:15The U.S. foreign assistance has long been a very powerful,
00:19soft power tool to advance our American leadership by building trust with our allies,
00:26promoting democracy, stabilizing terrorism-prone regions,
00:30and providing market access for American businesses.
00:34However, we have seen serious and credible cases of wasteful uses
00:39of American taxpayer funds abroad.
00:41For example, $2.5 million were sent through USAID
00:46to build the electric vehicle charging stations in Vietnam.
00:50How is this spending critical to U.S. national security
00:54or advancing our American interests?
00:57They are not.
00:59Unfortunately, these cases of unproductive spending abroad
01:04undermine the many targeted, valuable,
01:08and effective foreign assistance programs that are essential to our national security.
01:13Mr. Yoho, as you know very well,
01:16the strategic competition with China and its Belt and Road Initiative
01:20is a top priority for the East Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee
01:25that you once chaired and I now currently chair.
01:29Xi Jinping is watching and he's waiting for the chance to fill any U.S. vacuum.
01:37And already, there have been many reports of Chinese Communist Party officials
01:41signaling their willingness to replace USAID in Nepal
01:46and demining activities in Cambodia.
01:48And these are just the instances that we know about.
01:52Even critics of USAID acknowledge the critical soft power value
01:56of targeted and efficient programming.
02:00So let me ask you, if USAID is fully merged into the State Department,
02:06what specific authorities will the State Department's Bureau of East Asia and the Pacific
02:12need to effectively implement USAID programs
02:16to directly counter CCP's influence in the region,
02:19such as training journalists to expose illegal CCP information tactics
02:25or strengthening critical infrastructures there?
02:28I think the important thing they can do is get it back online as quick as they can
02:31and authorize them to get back into the field, the implementers.
02:36The State Department might can do that,
02:39but I don't know if they have the bandwidth
02:41or if they have the expertise and the capability.
02:43The people that were there on the ground with USAID,
02:46as Minister Natsio said,
02:50these are the people that have institutional knowledge
02:52and they know how to do that.
02:54They're not R's or D's.
02:55They're mission-driven.
02:56And I think we can get some of those people back in there
02:59that are experts in their field to move America's agenda forward of,
03:06are we going to be safer?
03:07Are we going to be stronger?
03:08And are we going to be more prosperous?
03:09And if we do that, those countries will be too.
03:12And it counters China.
03:13And if we're not there, China will be there.
03:15Sure.
03:16So I'm glad that Secretary Rubio issued waivers
03:21for lifesaving humanitarian assistance programs.
03:24However, I'm also hearing many concerns
03:27regarding the lack of clarity on those scope of the waivers
03:31and challenges with getting paused programs restarted.
03:36It's hard to restart them if we completely turn the lights off, right?
03:40So what recommendations do you have for the administration
03:43to ensure an effective waiver process?
03:47Again, moving forward, I think the quickest thing they can do
03:50and the most effective thing
03:51is identify the program that you want to do
03:54and then put the people in there that know how to implement that.
03:57That could be at state.
03:59There's people at USAID.
04:00And I know there's this big black eye on USAID.
04:04But I think we need to look at what they did do good.
04:06You know, it's like a cake recipe.
04:08One drop of kerosene in a cake batter ruins the whole thing.
04:12So what happened and what's been exposed
04:15doesn't mean the whole thing was bad.
04:16And like I said, not all aid programs are good.
04:19Not all of them are bad.
04:20Let's take the good ones and implement them as quickly as we can
04:23so we do not cede that ground to China, Russia,
04:26anybody that doesn't like us.
04:28I'd like to ask a question to Mr. Primorak.
04:32What specific reforms can be implemented
04:35so that current adult audit and review processes
04:40ensure programming aligns with our U.S. national interests?
04:46I think transparency is probably the most important.
04:49We have various websites where we're supposed to provide information
04:52to the American public as to what we're doing
04:55in all these different countries,
04:56whether it's grants.gov or foreignassistance.gov.
04:59But it's not consolidated.
05:01And too often, actually probably most of the time,
05:04we don't have information as to who are the awardees,
05:06who are the sub-awardees.
05:08If those are made available, and not only to Congress,
05:11they should be made available to the American people.
05:13I think by having this kind of transparency,
05:16that a lot of these bad things happening,
05:18people will be a little bit more careful
05:20because lots of people are watching.
05:22I appreciate that.
05:23Thank you very much.
05:24My time's up.
05:25Thank you, Representative Kim.
05:26Chair now recognizes.