Rebuilding Usaid

Floor Speech

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Ms. DEAN of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I have with me just some of the products USAID had used around the world to save lives and to protect nutrition.

On February 19 of last year in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 5-year-old Suza Kenyaba died of malaria. The shipment of antimalaria drugs that could have saved her life was stranded in a distribution warehouse just a few miles away from her clinic after United States Government payments to local contractors were frozen, ordered by the President of the United States.

Suza was not alone. According to The Washington Post, 95 percent of malaria medication shipments in the first 6 months of 2025 were either delayed or did not arrive at all. In Suza's province, death caused by malaria tripled.

There is no mystery about what happened here. Suza died because President Trump, in his first year back in office, slashed humanitarian aid by nearly 70 percent and people died.

Just look at USAID, which Trump's billionaire buddy Elon Musk, now the world's richest man, bragged about ``feeding it into the wood chipper.'' The result of this deliberate, gleeful destruction has been nearly 750,000 deaths around the world, nearly one person a minute, an irreplaceable humanitarian loss.

In sub-Saharan Africa, as many as 159,000 people are estimated to have died due to the interruption of critical USAID and PEPFAR funds. Nearly 700,000 more children are expected to develop malaria and nearly 164,000 could die from malnutrition.

These figures are from researchers around the world, and I have seen the work close up right on these different countries.

Due to the interruption of critical USAID funds, it is likely that the final death toll by 2030 is estimated to be even higher, maybe more than 9 million people. Nearly all of these deaths can be prevented, and they were being prevented for pennies on the dollar.

I serve on the Appropriations Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee. I have seen the numbers on how, sometimes for pennies a day, American food and medicine saves lives, but it does so much more.

We often argue that we spend less than 1 percent of our budget on foreign aid. I argue we should spend more on foreign aid because it returns to us in our national security and, of course, in security around the world.

What happens when we withdraw from that indispensable leadership position? Representatives from China or Russia, adversaries, visit these locations and say, how can we help you? And how would you ever trust America again?

For less than 1 percent of the Federal budget, we save millions of lives. We save people from starvation, stop pandemics before they start, and build a network of alliances and goodwill that will help achieve America's goals worldwide.

This President may imagine a fortress of America, disconnected from the world, hoarding our tremendous prosperity for ourselves or for himself, but we cannot wall ourselves off from disease and disorder. One way or another what happens abroad affects us here at home. If America does not lead, our adversaries will.

Mr. Speaker, I ask Mr. Trump to restore the funding to USAID.

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