24 SEPTEMBER 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL very polarizing and sensitive. And so we needed to really explain how this was necessary to advance our foreign policy interests, our national security interests. The main thing is: The United States made this commitment, and there are a lot of individuals who provided loyal and dedicated service for a long time only to discover that this option was no longer available as a practical matter. That’s why we had to make this change. FSJ: Yes, and thank you for that. Now let’s move over to the Foreign Service Families Act, another really helpful piece of legislation for the Foreign Service community. That passed as part of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Bill. The act has helped expand employment options as well as other support services for FS family members similar to those already available to military families to alleviate the challenges that come with life in the Foreign Service, such as frequent moves and language barriers. Can you tell us how you came to advocate for this and how it’s going? Sen. Van Hollen: When I came to the U.S. Senate, I teamed up with Dan Sullivan, a Republican senator from Alaska who had also served earlier in the State Department under the second Bush administration. He had a real interest in national security and foreign policy. Long story short, we formed the [Senate] Foreign Service Caucus to create a bipartisan forum to address the needs of the Foreign Service but also [those of] civil servants within the State Department. There are lots of other caucuses. There’s an Air Force caucus, an Army caucus. Under the umbrella of the Defense Department, you’ve got multiple caucuses that support the men and women who are part of the military services. So, we thought it was very important to create a similar caucus in support of the Foreign Service. And one of the things we got to work on was drafting the Foreign Service Families Act. I present that background because one of the models we looked at was the kind of benefits that are provided to military family members when they are deployed overseas. The military had established a number of programs to make it easier for spouses of service members deployed overseas to find interesting and productive work. We decided to apply a similar model to the Foreign Service, and it included a number of provisions to create more opportunities for Foreign Service spouses who are part of the embassy overseas, and also some other very tangible benefits—for example, making sure that Foreign Service families domiciled in a particular state are granted in-state tuition for public universities while posted overseas. The Foreign Service Families Act was sort of the anchor that we wanted to build on. FSJ: Do you have any related priority issues on your list for 2025? Sen. Van Hollen: Now we’re going back to look at some other areas [where we can help]. For example, making sure that Foreign Service families overseas get internet coverage—we were successful at getting this applied to hardship posts, but we want it to be applied universally. There’s another issue that applies mostly to folks who are involved in diplomatic security: I mentioned earlier the Foreign Service Families Act allows people to get out of rental contracts when they’re told to move overseas, but it did not apply when you’re required to move from one part of the United States to another, so we’re working on extending that protection.
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