Trump’s Foreign Aid Revisions Find Skeptics at House Hearing

WASHINGTON — Trump administration plans for an 85% cut to the State Department’s diplomacy and development programs drew tough scrutiny from a congressional committee Thursday.

President Donald Trump and his Republican supporters say the U.S. foreign aid budget cannot be justified while the nation confronts a $1.8 trillion deficit.

“We spend so much and the return has been so little,” said Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla., chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere.

Sometimes U.S. funding is spent in ways that depart from the State Department’s mission of promoting American values, she said.

Salazar mentioned examples of $250,000 for a Mexican nongovernmental organization that advocates for sex workers, $70,000 for a musical in Ireland promoting diversity, and $32,000 in Peru to produce a gay sex education comic book for children.

“What does that have to do with democracy,” Salazar asked.

Her complaints about irresponsible spending won support from Robert A. Destro, U.S. assistant secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from September 2019 to January 2021.

“Spreading freedom is a laudable goal but the hard question is how successful the State Department has actually been,” Destro said.

He mentioned examples of Cuba, Syria and Venezuela, where the United States has spent large amounts of money trying to instill democratic values in its people but received minimal benefit from the investment.

“The country is not made of money,” Destro said.

He said changes to foreign policy being developed now create a “generational” opportunity to realign priorities between Congress and the presidency.

“We need to focus on the outcomes of programs and that’s something we just don’t do,” Destro said.

Other lawmakers and foreign policy experts cautioned that abandoning programs that promote democracy could weaken American influence worldwide and open possibilities for adversaries to take bigger leadership roles in international affairs.

“We will pay the price as Americans for generations to come,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas. Russia and China will fill in where the United States leaves off, he said.

He urged Congress to intervene in what he described as Trump’s abuses of authority in “reforming” foreign policy, such as by eliminating the U.S. Agency for International Development.

USAID was an independent agency that administered civilian foreign aid and developmental assistance. Congress gave it $21.7 billion for fiscal 2024, or 0.3% of the federal budget.

It has been one of the world’s largest aid agencies and accounted for most U.S. foreign assistance, such as for health programs, economic development and democratic governance.

In January, Trump signed executive order 14169, which directed a near-total freeze on foreign aid. Weeks later, he placed most Agency for International Development employees on administrative leave, thereby essentially shutting it down.

“This is not reform, this is sabotage,” Castro said.

Tom Malinowski, a former congressman and State Department official, said Trump is cutting out the “basics” of worthwhile foreign aid.

Foreign aid that promotes democratic principles “is our comparative advantage over adversaries,” Malinowski said.

He added, “When a program is terminated, it sends a message that we don’t care about those people anymore.”

While Congress considers how to respond to the president’s foreign policy changes, powerful international forces are arranging responses that hint at a more adversarial posture toward the United States.

A European Council on Foreign Relations policy brief this week recommended that European nations try to find a political path that counters Trump’s aggressive focus only on U.S. interests.

“Europeans need to respond in kind,” the policy brief said. “They should reshape the rules-based order to salvage what they can, fight back against the assault on their democratic model, resist coercion and diversify away from the U.S.”

Despite criticism, Trump is forging ahead with plans to gain control over Greenland, Gaza, Panama and to make Canada the 51st state. He also has been applying pressure on Ukraine to make concessions to Russia as their war continues.

His dramatically higher tariffs are reshaping world economics.

On Thursday, the U.S. House passed a Republican-led bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, following up on a suggestion from Trump. The bill now moves to a vote in the Senate.

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