Tillerson's Nairobi visit highlights proposed spending cuts

pulse

March 12, 2018 1:48 AM

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laid a wreath on Sunday at the August 7th Memorial Park here that commemorates a suicide truck bombing 20 years ago that killed more than 200 people.

In the wake of the 1998 attack, the department hired tens of thousands of security guards for posts around the world and made other changes that today cost nearly $7 billion annually, which is almost half of the $15 billion that Tillerson wants eliminated from the department’s budget.

Tillerson has twice proposed slashing the department’s budget to about $35 billion from about $50 billion, saying that doing so would return spending levels to those before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He is expected to testify on Capitol Hill in the next two weeks to explain his reasons for the proposed cuts, which have received a chilly reception in Congress.

Critics say those cuts are misguided and could even cost lives.

Tillerson is in the midst of a five-nation tour of Africa, his first as secretary of state, and the visit to the memorial park — where the damaged U.S. embassy once stood — was the most somber event of the trip. He laid a wreath at a wall with the names of the victims inscribed and then gave brief remarks.

“As all of you well know, in 1998 terrorists thought they could demoralize and destroy the Kenyan and American people by attacking the U.S. Embassy here in Nairobi,” Tillerson said. “Of course, they were wrong. Nearly 20 years later, we meet here to honor those who we lost and those who were injured.”

Michael Evanoff, the current assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, said Tillerson had never suggested he would cut the department’s security budget. “At no time has he ever said to me he wants D.S. to look at cutting,” Evanoff said, referring to the security bureau.

Without cuts to ballooning security expenses, Tillerson would need to look elsewhere.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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