Tillerson’s proposal reduces the number of new diplomats being hired and includes the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development’s possible consolidation, according to officials briefed on the proposal. The staff cuts would amount to about 3 percent of the department’s roughly 75,000-strong workforce.
The proposal is a response to the Office of Management and Budget’s call to slash the State Department and USAID budgets by 31 percent through deep cuts to foreign aid and other programs, said the officials, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the as-yet unreleased plan and requested anonymity.
Tillerson’s plan would entail a 26 percent budget reduction, they said.
In an interview with NPR that aired Friday, Tillerson said he intended to reorganize the department to make it more efficient and focused.
"What we really want to do is examine the process by which the men and women -- the career foreign service people, the civil servants, our embassies -- how they deliver on that mission," he said.
"We want to hear from them, we’re just about to embark on a department-wide listening mission," he said, adding later: "I look forward to hearing their ideas. Because I know there’s going to be opportunities to allow them to be more effective. Now, out of that we’ll determine what the State Department looks like."
Cutting more than a quarter of State Department’s current $50.1 billion budget would require dramatic reductions in programs and staffing, cuts that many in Congress and elsewhere oppose.