A House GOP lawmaker is proposing specific, targeted cuts to the government agency that oversees Voice of America and other independent, U.S.-funded media services such as Radio Free Asia in a bid to force accountability for its alleged mismanagement.
Representative Tim Burchett (Tenn.) wants to reduce the salaries of three particular employees of Voice of America and the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees VOA, to exactly one dollar each, and he has introduced amendments to the State, Foreign-Operations, and Related Programs appropriations bill to do that. The USAGM has long been a target of bipartisan criticism, with its detractors pointing to various security and management deficiencies that have long colored its work.
Burchett’s proposal comes amid a continued House Republican investigation into the latest controversy, surrounding the rehiring of VOA official Setareh Sieg in 2021. His amendments would apply to Sieg, USAGM CEO Amanda Bennett, and deputy CEO Kelu Chao.
Sieg had been removed from her post at the end of the Trump administration, with top VOA officials alleging that she had lied about her education credentials and wasted government funds. But Biden administration officials assert that an independently conducted review cleared her of the charges. House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas0 launched an investigation into the matter two years ago.
“Setareh Sieg was fired under the Trump administration because she lied on her résumé and wasted taxpayer dollars,” Burchett told National Review in a statement last week. “The Biden administration was quick to hire her back for no good reason. There’s no reason Americans should continue funding her salary or the salaries of the people who hired her back. Let’s cut out the corruption and waste where we see it.”
McCaul wrote in a 2021 letter to then–acting USAGM CEO Kelu Chao that despite USAGM’s claims that a report exonerated Sieg, the agency has failed to provide proof of a Ph.D. she claimed to have received from the Sorbonne. The French embassy reviewed Sieg’s diploma and found that it “was not a diploma or transcript but rather the ‘minutes’ of an in-house degree.” The investigation began when USAGM whistleblowers brought concerns about Sieg, who previously ran VOA’s Persian Service, to Congress.
The probe has continued, with senior agency officials sitting for transcribed interviews with congressional staff this summer. During those interviews, agency officials acknowledged that top officials had been made aware of potential issues with Sieg’s handling of the VOA Persian Service budget and other concerns about her honesty, a GOP staffer familiar with the investigation told NR.
“The agency has chosen to deliberately prolong what could have been quietly resolved two years ago, appearing to take the position that it’s a higher authority when it comes to verifying credentials than the French Ministry of Higher Education,” said the staffer. “This will not end well for them.”
USAGM and VOA both told NR that they don’t comment on personnel matters.