TESTIMONY SUBMITTED TO THE HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE'S SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, COMMERCE, JUSTICE AND STATE
BY JOHN W. LIMBERT (AMB.), PRESIDENT OF
THE AMERICAN FOREIGN SERVICE ASSOCIATION
April 8, 2005
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee,
On behalf of the American Foreign Service Association and the 23,000 active-duty and retired members of the Foreign Service, I thank you for the opportunity to share our views and concerns with you as the Subcommittee prepares to develop the Science, Commerce, Justice and State Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2006.
ADMINISTRATION FUNDING REQUEST
Mr. Chairman, AFSA fully supports the State Department's requests for operating and embassy security accounts, but considers the requests to be floors, not ceilings. These funding levels will build on the initiatives of Secretary of State Powell to improve the foreign affairs infrastructure. At the turn of this century, only four short years ago, organizations like the Stimson Center, the Council on Foreign Relations, AFSA and many others agreed that "The United States' overseas presence, which has provided the essential underpinnings of U.S. foreign policy for many decades, is near a state of crisis." We need to continue funding operation and security accounts at levels that will avert this crisis.
DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR PROGRAMS. AFSA fully supports the Administration's request for 221 more generalist positions and 55 more security professionals for FY06. These requests are continuations of the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative (DRI), which Secretary Powell initiated in FY 2001, and which aimed to fill, in three years, a staffing shortage of almost 1,200 people. Without adequate staffing levels of Civil and Foreign Service employees, our domestic offices and overseas posts had fallen below critical mass and had became dysfunctional in some instances.
With Congress's support, we have hired the additional people. However, the 1,158-person shortage that prompted DRI was a pre-9/11 measurement. Those who perpetrated the horrors of that day quickly and dramatically changed our world, and the men and women of the Foreign Service found themselves facing major new requirements and new priorities. We had to move quickly, even if doing so meant leaving vacant the very positions that DRI was meant to fill in order to address the most pressing needs. These new demands continue, from staffing embassies in Iraq and Afghanistan, to funding the security and support positions that expansion requires.
Mr. Chairman, we will not be able to meet the original intent of DRI or the growing requirements of this new, post-9/11 world without additional personnel -- beginning with the Administration's request.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FUNDS. AFSA also fully supports the Administration's important FY06 IT Central Fund request of $249 million. Those who are new to the State Department, cannot imagine the outmoded information systems it possessed just a few years ago. It was the world of the WANG system, a 1970s format that made the department a joke in the IT world. Today we have modern computers at our desks, e-mail, and access to the World Wide Web. Great strides have been made but there is still a distance to go, and we will need continuing resources to maintain and improve the IT infrastructure, particularly at some of our most critical overseas missions. Again, AFSA fully endorses this request.
EMBASSY SECURITY. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to report that the Department of State has made great progress in securing our posts abroad in the seven years since the terrible bombings of our embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Congress also has our thanks for meeting the Administration's worldwide security funding requests. Further, the recent Capital Security Cost Sharing program authorized in last year's Omnibus Appropriations legislation, halves the estimated construction time for building the safer embassies that security considerations require AFSA urges the Congress's continued support of the Administration's request for World Wide Security Funding.
SOFT TARGET SECURITY CONCERNS. There is one other concern that I have raised with the Subcommittee previously - the protection of our "soft targets." With improved security at our overseas posts, terrorists are expanding their reach to include "soft targets," a euphemism for me and my colleagues, our spouses and our children as we live and work abroad. These targets are the schools our children attend, the school busses they ride, our homes, our private cars, the recreation centers and churches we attend, and the places we shop and dine as we live our daily lives and perform our duty of staying in contact with our host country.
AFSA has raised this issue over the past several years, and we have received the assistance of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. But it continues to be of concern, and we urge oversight of the expenditure of already-appropriated funds in addressing this increasing threat.
ADDITIONAL AFSA CONCERNS - PAY DISPARITY
Mr. Chairman, first among AFSA's issues, and still requiring an authorization, is the elimination of the pay disparity existing between the FS-1 and below Foreign Service employees serving in Washington, D.C. and those serving abroad. Correcting this anomaly would require amending the 1980 Foreign Service Act and creating an Overseas Comparability Pay System at the Washington, D.C. level.
We raise this with the Subcommittee now, even without an authorization for this change. Such an authorization is AFSA's first priority, and when it happens we hope that the Subcommittee will provide full funding to eliminate this disparity.
The pay disparity between service in Washington and service abroad is the result of the locality pay system for all federal employees working in the continental United States -- a system that does not extend to those serving abroad. Today, this disparity causes a 16-percent annual loss in pay for Foreign Service personnel serving abroad. AFSA has calculated that a Foreign Service generalist joining the Service in 1995, serving a normal 27-year career, and leaving the Service as a FS-1, would lose over $440,000 in salary and retirement benefits over the course of that career. Certainly money is not the main attraction for serving in the Foreign Service, but this increasing pay disparity hurts Service morale, and is making it more difficult for the department to staff many of its hardest-to-fill posts. AFSA seeks to end this pay disparity by creating Overseas Comparability Pay - similar to that provided by intelligence agencies -- that would be equal to the Washington, D.C. pay rate.
Some overseas assignments offer differentials to compensate for danger and hardship. Twenty years ago, 35 U.S. overseas posts were classified as "greatest hardship" at the maximum 25-percent rate. Today, the figure is 75 posts in 62 different countries, a trend that is likely to continue. This change reflects the increasingly dangerous and harsh conditions in many parts of the world.
Because these allowances and differentials were established prior to the locality pay system, the disparity between Washington, D.C. salaries and overseas salaries has caused these differentials to lose their effect in this ever-increasing list of dangerous countries. The locality pay system has had the unintended effect of undermining the overseas hardship differential program by reducing the amount of differential paid. For instance, non-senior State Department employees stationed in the most difficult environments in the world receive only 9 percent more pay that their USG colleagues in Washington, D.C., far from the 25-percent incentive intended by the Overseas Differentials and Allowances Act (P.L. 86-707).
In January 2004, the salary of all members of the Senior Foreign Service serving overseas was raised to the Washington, D.C. level in response to new laws affecting the salary of all members of the Senior Executive and Senior Foreign Services. With the intelligence community posted abroad already receiving Washington, D.C. level salaries, AFSA asks, why are we penalizing our lower-rank Foreign Service employees for their overseas service?
AFSA seeks to create an Overseas Comparability Pay system equal to the locality pay provided to federal employees in the Washington, D.C. area to beginning in FY07, and requests the Subcommittee's support for this goal.
Mr. Chairman and members of this Subcommittee, the men and women of the Foreign Service are proud to serve our country. It will be their skills and dedication that determine success or failure for our foreign policy and the security of our nation. Winning on the battlefield is vital, but we must also win and secure the peace. The decisions you make with this bill will not only affect the lives of the members of the Foreign Service, but will determine whether our country's representatives will have the resources they need to achieve our foreign policy goals. Today, engagement in the world -- to stop terrorists and criminals, to fight HIV/AIDS, and to bring relief to refugees -- is not a choice. It is a necessity. Our choices are limited to "how well will we do it", not "if we will do it", and your bill will determine how effectively we reach our goals and protect our country.
Thank you again for allowing me to share the views of the Foreign Service as you begin the process of developing the FY06 Science, Commerce, Justice and State Appropriations legislation.
