Secretary of State Tillerson defended President Trump’s proposed budget cuts to his department as a reversal of unsustainably high spending in recent years. I think clearly, the level of spending that the State Department has been undertaking in the past – and particularly in this past year…
Secretary of State Tillerson defended President Trump’s proposed budget cuts to his department as a reversal of unsustainably high spending in recent years.
«I think clearly, the level of spending that the State Department has been undertaking in the past – and particularly in this past year – is simply not sustainable,» Tillerson told reporters while traveling in Japan.
«What the President is asking the State Department to do is, I think, reflective of a couple of expectations,» Tillerson said. «One is that as time goes by, there will be fewer military conflicts that the U. S. will be directly engaged in; and second, that as we become more effective in our aid programs, that we will also be attracting resources from other countries, allies, and other sources as well to contribute in our development aid and our disaster assistance. »
Trump proposes to cut State Department and other diplomatic spending by nearly a third, generating about $10 billion to offset an increase in military defense spending.
