GOP-led House panel to hold hearing on USAID
The GOP-led House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the U.S. Agency for International Development on Feb. 13, as the Trump administration moved to effectively shut down the agency and institute a mass foreign aid freeze.
Committee Chair Brian Mast (R-Fl.) announced the hearing and the first Republican-chosen witnesses, who include William Steiger, the former chief of staff at USAID during the first Trump administration. During his time at the agency and as a public policy fellow for the Wilson Center, Steiger worked on outlining reforms to USAID and strategies for aid recipients to move to self-reliance.
Former Republican Rep. Ted Yoho (Fl.) is also scheduled to be a witness. Yoho served as chairman of the Asia-Pacific Foreign Affairs Subcommittee.
Committee Democrats had urged Mast to hold an “urgent” hearing to address Trump’s actions at USAID, his freeze on foreign assistance and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s involvement.
USAID staff on Thursday were reportedly reduced to about 300 employees from a workforce that had been estimated to be around 10,000.
Democrats called for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who says he is now the acting head of USAID, to appear before the committee.
Unions representing employees at USAID, the main humanitarian arm of the U.S. government, have argued the Trump administration’s actions are unconstitutional and a violation of the separation of powers because Congress has appropriated funds for the agency and legislation to support it. The unions have sued to stop the administration’s actions.
The agency, which provides food, shelter and medicine to hundreds of millions of people around the world and is touted by supporters as a key tool of America’s soft power, has come under scrutiny for reforms in previous administrations. But Democrats have seethed over the Trump administration’s initial blanket foreign aid freeze and the sweeping cuts as outside the bounds of the power of the president.
The frozen aid freeze has triggered uncertainty and massively disrupted operations among the aid community that relies on federal funds, impacting the continuity of care for HIV/AIDS patients in Africa, under PEPFAR, disrupting experimental medical treatments around the world and preventing American food exports in reaching their destination, song some of the impact.
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