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Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I am on the floor today to talk about the nomination of Ambassador Julieta Valls Noyes, to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.

Originally nominated last July, Ambassador Noyes' nomination was reported favorably out of the Foreign Relations Committee in October.

Since then, she has waited in limbo for all of us to act. Ambassador Noyes has a distinguished 35-year career with the State Department, serving in important and challenging roles, many of those roles tied directly to the work she would be doing at the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, often referred to as PRM.

As Ambassador to Croatia, she presided over the final stages of a refugee resettlement program after the Balkan wars, while hosting regional conferences and trainings for prosecutors, police, and judges on refugee-related issues.

As Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, Ambassador Noyes oversaw the nations with 11 Western European countries and the European Union, some of our country's most critical partners.

From 2005 to 2007, Ambassador Noyes was Director of Multilateral and Global Affairs in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, where she ran international negotiations on human rights--both at the United Nations in New York and in Geneva.

In that capacity, she also held consultations with the European Union, with the African Union, with other partners. And she was a member of high-level delegations that presented periodic reports to the United Nations on U.S. compliance with major international human rights treaties.

She has been recognized as a strong manager. She has overseen large teams. She has administered huge budgets.

In addition to all of this, she is the daughter of Cuban refugees who directly benefited from the work of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, so she has a personal connection to the importance of the Bureau's work.

When you think about that list of qualifications, she is really the ideal person to lead PRM. What is the rush, some may ask. PRM hasn't had a confirmed Assistant Secretary since the days of the Obama administration.

Well, all the more reason that it should have one now. It shouldn't be a rudderless organization when addressing so many important issues for our Nation.

PRM has a major role in human rights and humanitarian efforts rights abroad as well as providing aid to refugees here at home.

PRM is responsible for directing more than $3 billion in lifesaving humanitarian aid around the world to more than 84 million forcibly displaced people. Eighty percent of those are women and children. So if you care about the plight of women and children around the world, you want to have an experienced leader making sure those dollars are efficiently allocated to the best effect.

PRM leads the rebuilding of the U.S. refugee assistance program. PRM works with other governments to promote regional migration resolutions. PRM advances international population policies that save mothers and babies and prevent gender-based violence around the world.

PRM leads diplomatic efforts for international burden sharing to better reduce suffering and to be more effective in saving lives.

And PRM is a critical part of our national security infrastructure, vetting those who come into our country, ensuring they don't pose a risk to our safety and security.

The Bureau is doing all this, but they are doing it without a leader to make sure they do it in the most effective, professional, competent fashion.

The Bureau is doing critical work every day to address these challenges, and those challenges are growing as more and more countries are disrupted by war and by famine and by corruption.

So this Bureau deserves to have someone leading those efforts who has the type of background that the Ambassador has. All of us who want to see these programs administered effectively have a stake in having competent leadership in place.

462, Julieta Valls Noyes, to be an Assistant Secretary of State; that the nomination be confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to the nomination; that any related statements be printed in the Record and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I would love for us to have a full, ordinary process here on the floor and to have all of us on both sides of the aisle support that process.

I come to the floor to ask for this unanimous consent because that process has been frustrated, and we now have been without a leader for this entire administration.

My colleague made a point about Afghanistan, and he said we need to know how many Americans are in Afghanistan. If you want better action on the issue of Americans as refugees abroad or stranded abroad, then you want to have a responsible leader, an accountable leader, heading up the Bureau of Population, Migration, and Refugees.

So let's do our job here in this Chamber because when we fail to enable such a critical organization, responsible for billions of dollars around the world being provided to millions of people, responsible for the vetting of people coming into our country, when we fail to do our job to put somebody in charge, we are only wounding ourselves.

This is exactly the type of partisan paralysis and destruction that is damaging our Nation. We need to get this confirmation completed.

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