some of the biggest issues facing america this year have the state department at the center: iran, cuba, the climate talks in paris.









one that hasn<u+2019>t been resolved? the state department itself.









the department hasn<u+2019>t been reauthorized by congress in more than a decade. the last time congress passed the foreign relations authorization act, which sets rules for state, was in 2002<u+2014>so long ago that the law refers to www.state.gov as an <u+201c>internet website.<u+201d>









the lack of authorization doesn<u+2019>t mean the department can<u+2019>t operate; it still gets money every year. but every two years, lawmakers are supposed to update america<u+2019>s overseas priorities and how they<u+2019>re executed. the last time that happened, saddam hussein was still alive and the department of homeland security didn<u+2019>t exist.









<u+201c>if you have a reauthorization that<u+2019>s 12 or 13 years old,<u+201d> said scott adler, a political scientist at the university of colorado, boulder who has written a book on reauthorizing agencies, <u+201c>that was a completely different world.<u+201d>









without a reauthorization bill, congress exerts ad hoc power over state: appropriators can specify funding for different agencies and attach restrictions to the money; lawmakers also find other routes to push their foreign-policy agendas, like inserting provisions into the pentagon authorization. meanwhile, the 116-page document that<u+2019>s supposed to govern state grows slowly obsolete.









whenever congress does take up the law, it tends to get hung up on politics and then flame out<u+2014>often over suspiciously domestic-seeming issues, like money for groups that favor abortions overseas. partisan fights over the u.s.<u+2019>s role in the united nations have also killed legislation.









a big<u+00a0>problem is that the members of congress who head the foreign-policy committees<u+2014>like joe biden and john kerry, when they were in the senate<u+2014>tend to ignore the grunt work of the law and instead focus on the theater of the hearing room.









<u+201c>guys like biden and kerry cared less about an authorization bill and more about their ability to impact foreign policy by being a diplomat and being a part of the group of unique statesmen, apart from the administration, that could still represent the united states globally,<u+201d> said ilan goldenberg, a senior fellow at a center for a new american security who has worked for state and department of defense and was previously a staffer at the senate foreign relations committee.









[update: after deadline, a<u+00a0>state department official defended kerry's work as chair, noting he introduced a reauthorization bill in 2012.<u+00a0>"the fact that the state authorization bill wasn<u+2019>t passed by the full senate during his tenure is more a reflection of senate dysfunction and politics than it is of his leadership and priorities as chairman," the official wrote in an email. and philip arsenault pointed out that biden<u+00a0>chaired the foreign relations<u+00a0>committee when<u+00a0>the 2002 reauthorization passed.]









in the past it<u+2019>s been the senate where the bill gets held up; in 2013, a year after the attacks on the u.s. embassy in benghazi, the house passed a state reauthorization that strengthened embassy security by a lopsided 384-37 vote. the senate never took it up.









this year there<u+2019>s actually been some senate movement on the issue. the senate foreign relations committee held a hearing on state department reauthorization in april and unanimously passed legislation in june. senator bob corker, the chair of the committee, wants to increase security for overseas embassies and streamline agency operations. among other provisions, the bill requires the white house to designate an interagency hostage recovery coordinator (which the administration has created on its own), requires the government to create a <u+201c>strategy for the middle east in the event of a comprehensive nuclear agreement with iran<u+201d> and expresses concern about russia<u+2019>s actions while reaffirming support for post-soviet nations.









but corker<u+2019>s effort to attach the legislation to the national defense authorization act failed, and his office declined to say what his next move would be.









for state-watchers, it<u+2019>s just another example of a long and humbling truth: washington cares more about the military than statecraft. while state hasn<u+2019>t been reauthorized in 13 years, the department of defense has been authorized every year for 53 years in a row.









<u+201c>i chalk it up number one to the american public and congress cares, as a whole, less about funding the state department and more about the pentagon,<u+201d> said goldenberg.









<u+201c>the pentagon,<u+201d> he said, <u+201c>is much sexier stuff.<u+201d>










the state department hasn<u+2019>t been authorized in 13 years
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