Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, 2 months ago I came to the Senate floor to urge the majority leader to schedule a vote on the nomination of Gayle Smith to serve as Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, also known as USAID. Here we are, 7 months after the President nominated her to fill this position. The Senate will have a chance in a few minutes to vote on Gayle Smith's nomination to head USAID.

I fully expect that today's vote will lead to her confirmation. We are witnessing a humanitarian crisis in Syria and across the Middle East that grows worse by the day, posing a risk to European stability and cohesion. Having someone at the head of USAID is absolutely critical. The United States, with our unparalleled capacity to mobilize international support for humanitarian relief, should continue to play a leading role in assisting both Syrian refugees and the neighboring countries that are hosting them.

Having an effective leader such as Gayle Smith at USAID is a critical part of that effort. Last month I had the opportunity to lead a delegation of three other Senators to Greece and Germany.

Senator Durbin, Senator Warren, Senator Klobuchar, and I all went to see firsthand the plight of refugees from the war in Syria and the incredible burden that both Greece and Germany are under as a result of these unprecedented refugee flows.

Many of us--and we heard this when we were in Greece--believed that the rate of refugee arrivals would slow with the coming of cold weather. In fact, the exact opposite has happened, and the humanitarian situation has only become worse.

Of course, USAID's work is not only limited to the situation in Syria; it extends to the 60 countries and regional USAID missions around the world, including in Afghanistan, where USAID development work is critical to the long-term success and security of that country.

I am relieved that we are finally going to get to vote on Gayle Smith and that the majority has overcome the objections of the one Member who, for the last 7 months, has been holding up her nomination. That Member was willing to put at risk the massive investment of resources the United States has made in Afghanistan and other parts of the world just to score political points on an issue that was completely outside of Gayle Smith's portfolio at USAID.

As things have moved on Gayle Smith, I am hoping this type of obstruction is going to end, and we will soon vote not only on Ms. Smith's nomination but also to confirm other critical national security nominees, especially the pending Foreign Service nominations that have been approved by the Foreign Relations Committee and that could be voted on by the full Senate today.

For example, in May the President nominated Tom Melia to be Assistant Administrator for USAID for Europe and Eurasia. This is a critical position not only because of the development work but because these are two regions that are under extreme pressure from Vladimir Putin. These regions would both benefit from USAID programs that would bolster their ability to act independently of Russian influence. Tom Melia is still unconfirmed, despite the fact that the Foreign Relations Committee approved his nomination in July. In addition, the nominee to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Sweden has been pending for over a year. Sweden has become a much more critical ally in terms of the refugee issue that Europe is facing. The nominee to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Norway--again another critical ally--has been pending since May. The nominee to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, a critical post for the United States, one of our neighbors and main allies in this hemisphere--these have all been pending since June.

At a time when the world is facing national security challenges on a number of fronts and nations are looking to the United States for leadership, we cannot afford to sideline ourselves by failing to confirm nominees for these diplomatic posts.

I recognize Senator Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as well as his Democratic counterpart, Senator Cardin, who have worked very hard to secure the confirmation vote for Gayle Smith to serve as Administrator for USAID. I know we are working hard to get these other nominees to the floor, but at a time when our leadership is so important, when there are so many challenges facing us around the world, to fail to have those key spokespeople for the United States in positions of so many critical situations is unacceptable. We need to move these nominees. We need to continue the work of U.S. foreign policy.

I am sure we will have a very broad bipartisan vote in support of Gayle Smith. What is unfortunate is that we couldn't have done it 7 months ago when she passed through the committee.

I yield the floor.

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