Rebuilding Usaid

Floor Speech

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Mr. BEYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to open this Special Order to discuss the destructive, counterproductive, and tragic choice by the Trump administration to disband the U.S. Agency for International Development and to dramatically cut U.S. international assistance.

I thank the many Members who will be joining me this evening to raise this important topic and for their leadership in fighting back against this senseless decision.

Lois Frankel).

Ms. LOIS FRANKEL of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Beyer for yielding and for bringing us together on this very urgent and important issue.

This is very personal to me because after college, my son, Ben, was commissioned as an officer in the United States Marine Corps. He served overseas in two war zones, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq.

Like so many military parents, I lived with the fear of getting that knock on the door. My family was blessed. Ben came home safely, and later he returned overseas, this time working for USAID, America's civilian development and humanitarian agency.

Ben taught me something I have never forgotten. That is because he said when he came home: Mom, the way to peace is not just through bombs and bullets. It is through soft power, such as helping people, building relationships, creating opportunity, and preventing conflict before it starts. That lesson changed the way I looked at America's role in the world.

When I came to Congress, one of my missions was to help keep our sons and daughters out of harm's way by strengthening American soft power. Never has this mission been more urgent.

For 6 months, we have been in a costly war with Iran with no clear end in sight. It is a stark reminder that real security requires not only military strength but diplomacy, development, and humanitarian leadership.

I diverge because when Mr. Trump was elected, then came DOGE, and then USAID was eliminated. Programs were canceled, and thousands of experienced professionals were shown the door. Decades of experience and relationships were torn apart. The Trump administration dismantled one of America's most important national security tools.

Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, what USAID looked like to Fatima, a mother in northeastern Nigeria.

For most of her life, Fatima walked long distances to collect water from a stream shared with cattle, or she bought water from vendors when her family could afford it. She worried whether the water was safe for her children. Then a USAID-funded project drilled a borehole and brought clean water directly to a tap at her home. There was clean water for her children. There were no more long walks just to meet one of life's most basic needs.

That is soft power.

Then there is Apsana, a 16-year-old girl in Nepal who had never attended a formal school. Her brothers went to school while she stayed home. Then a USAID-funded program brought teachers directly to girls like Apsana. For the first time, she was getting an education and a chance at a future beyond early marriage.

Then the U.S. funding stopped. All over the world, teachers stopped coming. The classrooms disappeared.

Here in Washington, we canceled programs. For Apsana and millions more, we closed the doors to classrooms with brighter futures. May I add, I think we went from 500 programs to 2.

I know what Americans are asking. Why should we care? Why should American taxpayers care about a mother in Nigeria or a girl in Nepal?

It is because helping them helps us. Clean water prevents disease. Educating girls creates stronger economies and more stable communities.

Of course, we should reform programs that don't work. We should demand results and accountability. Demolition is not reform. Foreign assistance is not simply a charity. It is national security. It stops disease before it reaches our shores. It restores and creates stability before the instability allows extremists to exploit it. It creates friends, allies, and future trading partners. It builds good will toward the United States without firing a shot.

For Fatima, American soft power meant clean water. For Apsana, it meant a chance to choose her own future. For America, it means fewer costly crises, fewer wars, and fewer of our sons and daughters sent into harm's way. That is what my son, Ben, learned after serving in war.

Sometimes, Mr. Speaker, a well, a vaccine, a bag of food, or a schoolbook could do more for American security than a bomb ever could.

To the thousands of USAID professionals who spent their careers preventing disease, fighting against hunger, educating children, empowering women, responding to disasters, and representing the very best in America, I want to say thank you. Thank you for your service, the lives you saved, the communities you strengthened, and the good will you built for our country because your work mattered, and your mission still matters. We may have lost an agency, but we will not abandon the mission.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues who are here, and I know they agree with me when I say we must work to restore America's humanitarian and development leadership, rebuild the expertise and partnership that were lost, and make sure that America leads not just through military might but through the power of our generosity, humanity, and diplomacy. I know that is what my son taught me, and the mission stays ahead.

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Mr. BEYER. Dean).

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Mr. BEYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman very much for her eloquent words.

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Mr. BEYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Sherman for speaking.

Mr. Speaker, last year, President Trump teamed up with his trillionaire donor Elon Musk to dismantle USAID and pause or permanently cancel a large portion of our international assistance programs.

This was done in the name of furthering Trump's America First policy, but it is mostly combating mostly fictional and exaggerated claims of waste.

The authors of this policy claimed that their goal was to achieve deficit reduction, to further Trump's America First policy on largely imaginary claims of waste.

Far from reducing waste, the headlong rush to shutter USAID has forced the government to set aside billions of dollars for lawsuits, pay former employees to stay at home, and settle outstanding agreements with contractors.

Our national debt passed $40 trillion this week, the latest in a strong string of facts to show how little Trump and company actually care about fiscal responsibility.

The decision and the chaotic and callous way it was implemented has led to needless death, suffering, and damage to our national security and international reputation.

But the worst impacts have been the devastation this has inflicted on poor and sick people around the world.

In defense of the aid cuts, Elon Musk claimed zero people in Africa died. Secretary Rubio likewise claimed no one has died, claiming that lifesaving aid programs would be maintained or replaced.

These statements are lies, and they are insults to our intelligence.

Available government data shows large reductions of spending from 2024 to 2025, such as a 48 percent cut to global health programs, 39 percent cut to the Food For Peace program, a 65 percent cut in development assistance, and a 21 percent cut to international disaster assistance.

Several large-scale independent studies and reporting from numerous news outlets have shown the human toll on these reductions.

I thank my colleagues who pointed out names and photographs. Let me give some examples.

The Gates Foundation estimates that child deaths will rise for the first time in the 21st century in 2025, and projects that if the aid cuts continue at a similar scale, we should expect an additional 12 million child deaths by 2045--12 million kids.

Harvard University's Atul Gawande, one of the leading public health experts in the world, published an analysis nearly a year ago finding that hundreds of thousands have already died as a result of the USAID cuts, less than 10 months after they were implemented.

A study published by UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health projected that the elimination of foreign aid funding last year would lead to 14 million preventable deaths by the end of this decade, over a third of them children.

In a more granular report, research from Oxfam has shown that cholera cases have risen by 62 percent in 2025 compared to the previous year, just as USAID clean water and sanitation programs were cut--one-to-one correspondence.

These are numbers, but each statistic represents suffering and misery that our government chose to inflict on some of the most vulnerable people in the world. I love and greatly appreciate The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof. He has gone to Africa and written in heartbreaking detail about the individual human costs of aid cuts.

He writes about deaths of children in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Uganda dying due to the lack of ordinarily available food assistance, medicine, mosquito nets, and other U.S.-provided aid.

I am a Representative that serves Northern Virginia, so I have heard from hundreds of former USAID employees and their private sector partners who worked on these cut programs.

Besides the justifiable outrage felt by these men and women due to how they were treated by this administration, by Elon Musk, and his band of DOGE acolytes, what has really struck me is the grief that they feel being unable to continue to serve our country and help some of the world's most vulnerable people.

They understand that U.S. international assistance is not charity. It is a critical component of our national security strategy, alongside diplomacy and defense.

They reduced the risk of lethal diseases, like Ebola and the avian flu, from spreading to our shores. They promoted economic growth and democracy in developing nations, enhanced counterterrorism initiatives, and alleviated international crises and disasters.

But it is up to us to build and improve what remains of our aid infrastructure. We can and we should work to reduce the risk of this happening again, and I look forward to rebuilding USAID in the years to come.

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