What Defunding USAID Would Cost the U.S. and the Rest of the World

Jan Kumar (Southampton), Lynn Bakamjian (East Hampton), Karen Hardee (Washington, D.C.), Sandra Jordan (Bethesda, MD) and Karen Newman (London, UK) are all global health and human rights specialists.

Elon Musk is on a mission with Donald Trump’s blessing to destroy USAID. Though it is doubtful that either of them knows much about what USAID does or how it works, that doesn’t stop them from spreading baseless smears about the agency on their bully platforms to make Americans believe it is a corrupt waste of money. Suddenly cutting off funding for the organization is cruel and short-sighted. It shows indifference to the tragic human toll it will take and ignorance of what the U.S. stands to lose.

We have worked on USAID-funded projects our whole careers. This is to set the record straight. USAID employs smart, dedicated, non-partisan professionals committed to making the world a better place for all of us. It typically delivers aid through both U.S.-based and foreign technical assistance organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and universities with specialized expertise.

Working with host governments, USAID supports programs to strengthen systems, increase capacity and improve outcomes in agriculture, healthcare and education- particularly for women and girls. It delivers food for emergency relief as well as equipment and essential supplies following natural disasters and crises caused by political conflict. It conducts medical research, provides healthcare commodities and supplies and prevents outbreaks and spread of infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, Ebola, West Nile virus, COVID and bird flu. It promotes democracy and human rights, and supports climate change solutions. All of this work fosters good will toward the United States and promotes American security.

We have spent our careers working on projects under USAID’s Global Health Bureau focused on improving reproductive health. Rooted in human rights, this work directly improves the health and lives of women and teenage girls as well as those of the children they choose to have. It increases their chances of pursuing education and job opportunities, and engaging in their communities and governance. It leads to smaller families and populations, which reduces pressure on social services and natural 2 resources. Slowing down population growth and unleashing the human potential of women and girls promote economic and social development. While serving people in countries most Americans will never visit, we advance America’s well-being by making this interconnected world a better place for all of us and buying good will the world over.

USAID was founded by Pres. Kennedy in 1961 to provide disaster relief and help to improve the lives of the poor and powerless across the world, and to counter adversaries of freedom. Kennedy considered the work of USAID as a moral obligation of the world’s wealthiest nation. Humanitarian and development assistance is also regarded as “soft power”. The dividends such investments pay include strengthening international relations to win strategic allies and trade partners, fostering political stability, curbing immigration, containing disease outbreaks to prevent them from reaching our borders, and mitigating climate change.

Development and humanitarian assistance represents one of three tools, the three Ds, in America’s foreign policy. The others are Defense and Diplomacy. Development aid has long been the least understood of the three, and therefore the least popular. It is certainly the least expensive, costing Americans less than 1% of our annual budget, compared to more than 13% for defense.

Another little- known fact is that a lot of foreign aid funding actually goes directly toAmericans. In 2020 USAID bought $2.1 B worth of produce from American farmers to distribute for relief abroad. USAID funds also go to American staff and contractors- both

U.S.-based and field-based- who work with counterparts overseas to implement projects, as well as to American airlines, manufacturers and small businesses who provide goods and services under a “buy-American” government policy. In 2020 USAID obligated $896 million to American small businesses.

Contrary to what Musk wants you to believe, USAID is not a rogue, left-wing organization running off on its own. Until now it has enjoyed strong bipartisan support. Its program priorities and strategies are set in cooperation with the US Embassy in each country, taking defense, diplomacy, development and national security priorities into consideration.  Each national strategy is approved by USAID/Washington. The agency’s overall budget is developed by USAID in cooperation with the State Department.

3 Congress appropriates and even directs some of its funding, which cannot be spent until Congress is notified and each USAID Mission has an approved Operational Plan. The agency follows rigorous procurement procedures. Detailed monitoring and evaluation plans are built into every project it supports. It is subject to a lot of scrutiny in programming, budgeting and reporting. 

In 2023 USAID worked in 130 countries. Here’s a partial list of its many accomplishments:

• Health-related impact: Each year USAID saves millions of lives through immunization efforts and essential, often life-saving, health care. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) initiated by Republican Pres. George W. Bush, has saved more than 25 million lives. USAID efforts have contributed significantly to increasing life expectancy and drastically cutting both infant and child death rates in the developing world and the number of people worldwide who are “chronically undernourished”. During the COVID pandemic USAID mounted a robust response to provide vital aid that saved countless lives around the world.

• Strengthened infrastructure and systems to increase capacity: This includes safe water and sanitation systems, food production and distribution, healthcare systems and medical education, as well as increasing renewable energy capacity.

• Gender equality: It has accelerated efforts to advance gender equality and improve the health and education of women and girls; and has made major contributions to improving maternal and child health and increasing access to voluntary contraception (but does not fund abortion).

• Democracy/ National security: USAID’s efforts have increased the number of democratic nations around the world and countered malign influence and actions of our adversaries, notably Russia and China.

• Environment: USAID participates in an alliance committed to reducing plastic waste; it has mobilized more than $40 billion in private investment for the generation of clean energy.

The abrupt and illegal shuttering of USAID hurts us all, at home and abroad. We will all pay a huge political and humanitarian price for a billionaire’s pique about an organization he doesn’t understand. He has shown ruthless indifference to the havoc and suffering he leaves in his wake.

We can choose to invest in the developing world, or we can choose not to, but the price of not doing so, not only in terms of wholly preventable suffering and death, but also in terms of what it will cost Americans in the long-term, will be much, much greater.

If you don’t want millions of people, largely children, to die unnecessarily of malnutrition or disease; if you don’t want to condemn poor women and girls to a cycle of unwanted pregnancy and poverty; if you don’t want another pandemic to reach our shores; if you don’t want an endless tide of desperate immigrants arriving at our borders seeking refuge in the United States; if you don’t want hate and terrorism aimed at Americans to rise and for China and Russia to fill the vacuum our pull-out would create, we urge you to speak up to save USAID.

Jan Kumar (Southampton), Lynn Bakamjian (East Hampton), Karen Hardee

(Washington, D.C.), Sandra Jordan (Bethesda, MD) and Karen Newman (London, UK)

are all global health and human rights specialists.