Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. TIFFANY. Mr. Chair, my amendment would prevent the enforcement of several arbitrary, self-imposed State Department restrictions that limit communication and cooperation between U.S. officials and their counterparts in Taiwan.

This amendment is similar to one that was adopted earlier in the Department of Defense appropriations bill. As I discussed then, these restrictions are not required by any provision of law and have been put in place at the behest of Communist China.

They make it difficult for senior U.S. officials to travel to Taiwan and to interact with their Taiwanese counterparts. In essence, these guidelines are designed to prevent and limit high-level, bilateral cooperation.

Not only does this make little sense, it is in direct conflict with existing laws that call for expanding such cooperation, such as the Taiwan Travel Act.

Mr. Chair, a State Department memorandum should never trump the laws we pass in this body or outsource American foreign policy to the CCP.

My amendment will make sure that neither of those things happen by scrapping these restrictive guidelines.

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Mr. TIFFANY. Mr. Chair, why do we allow the State Department through a bureaucratic memo to impose these unnecessary and counterproductive limits on communication and cooperation with Taiwan?

We don't have rules like this in place for the totalitarian rulers of Cuba or Russia, both of whom operate embassies just a few miles away from where we are standing right now.

We don't have rules like this for our interaction with Iran. John Kerry has met on several occasions with high-ranking Iranian officials, and the White House just paid a $6 billion hostage ransom to the ayatollah.

We don't have rules like this for U.S. interaction with Communist China. Biden administration officials continue to sit down at the table with the same CCP officials who our own Secretary of State has accused of committing genocide.

Yet, we continue to enforce these degrading conditions on Taiwan, a longtime friend and fellow democracy.

Mr. Chair, as the old Sesame Street song goes, ``One of these things is not like the other.''

It is time to stop treating our friends like enemies and our enemies like friends.

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Mr. TIFFANY. Mr. Chair, here is part of the memo that I read last night from the State Department:

You should not refer to Taiwan as a country or to the authorities of Taiwan as a government, instead, refer to Taiwan authorities or Taiwan counterparts.

That is the kind of thing that is happening in our State Department and it projects weakness to countries across the world, in particular, our adversaries, when we need a foreign policy that is strong, we are not receiving it now. That is why this amendment should be passed.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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