The White House has hailed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” as a “once-in-a-generation piece of legislation” that puts “America First.” Most of the public debate focused on its extension of lower taxes for the rich, the ballooning federal debt and massive cuts in Medicaid spending. Yet equally important is what the act would do to the US’ standing abroad as a champion of the world’s neediest people and the “soft power” influence that effort provides.
The budget act was hardly US President Donald Trump’s first assault on the US’ humanitarian leadership. On his inauguration day, he issued two executive orders concerning US refugee programs. One, titled “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid,” states that the “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy” was not aligned with US interests and acted in ways antithetical to the country’s values. It called for a 90-day pause in development assistance and review of related programs to ensure their “efficiency and consistency” with US foreign policy.
The other, “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program,” states that the US could not absorb refugees without endangering Americans or compromising their access to taxpayer-funded resources. The Trump administration has indefinitely suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program, which helps resettle refugees in conjunction with private sponsor groups; it is one of the most successful humanitarian programs and public-private partnerships in US history. The administration has also excluded more than 22,000 people already approved for admission, including Afghans who had worked with the US during the war in their homeland.
By late March, the White House had helter-skelter canceled 5,341, or about 86 percent, of US foreign assistance programs — even though US Congress, which has the power of the purse in the federal government, had authorized their funding. Researchers at the Boston University School of Public Health estimate the loss of US aid led to 176,000 deaths during this period, and might exceed 320,000 by year’s end. Yet the savings from gutting refugee assistance programs is vanishingly small, a small percentage of the roughly 1 percent of US spending devoted to international affairs.
The Lancet last month reported that budget cuts and the shuttering of the US Agency for International Development — whose programs have saved an estimated 91 million lives over the last two decades — could cause 14 million deaths in low and middle-income countries by 2030.
The impact of the US cuts would be felt for generations, undermining the possibility of a constructive immigration policy at home, and diminishing US power and standing abroad. Meanwhile, China has exploited the situation by funding aid and humanitarian programs of its own, particularly in the strategically vital Indo-Pacific region, as well as in Africa and South America.
I work with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) USA, a branch of a 45-year-old non-governmental organization that has aided refugees from 57 nations. It serves some of the world’s neediest people, including unaccompanied children, the severely handicapped and the chronically and terminally ill. Its work, and that of similar organizations, has promoted a secure and productive world that values human life and dignity.
Feed the Future worked in 20 countries to lift 23.4 million people out of poverty, relieve 5.2 million households from hunger and remove 3.4 million children from the threat of stunted growth caused by malnutrition. In the last school year, JRS Chad served 32,975 Sudanese children in 21 refugee camps, offering them educational support and, by extension, child protection. The US President’s Malaria Initiative, launched under then-US president George W. Bush, has helped save 11.7 million lives and has prevented 2.1 billion cases of malaria since 2000, primarily among children under the age of 5 in African countries.
The president’s executive orders sideswiped hundreds of such organizations, bankrupting humanitarian and development programs that operate on barebones margins, and forcing staff layoffs in some of the world’s poorest communities. The administration offered waivers on cuts if recipients could demonstrate that they were engaged in “lifesaving” activities (narrowly defined), but our applications for waivers were not acted upon, and even programs that were terminated, then reinstated faced delays in funding and would no longer receive advances to allow them to cover upfront costs.
Now the budget legislation would make it that much harder to revive humanitarian aid and refugee programs in the years to come. The White House has also urged Congress to retroactively cancel more than US$9.4 billion in congressionally authorized spending, including US$1.3 billion from two of the main refugee assistance programs funded by the US Department of State. The president would eliminate these accounts next year and merge unobligated balances into a new International Humanitarian Assistance account, or IHA. The White House has said the new IHA fund would support disaster relief only “when it fulfills the President’s foreign policy aims.”
The cuts to aid agencies are not just costing lives. They represent an attack on traditional US virtues. The budget law redirects US$170 billion to US immigration enforcement agencies, which already account for two-thirds of all federal law enforcement spending. This despite the fact that illegal entries at the southern border have fallen to near-record lows over the past 18 months, obviating the need for massive additional allocations for the wall, detention, technology, staffing and military deployment.
It is a dangerous time in the US and the world, and Congress and the courts need to weigh in strongly. A first step would be for lawmakers to step up and ensure that the administration returns congressionally approved funding to humanitarian agencies this year. Payment for contractually obligated work is a core objective of the legal action brought by a coalition of the government’s implementing partners on foreign assistance. A second step would be to ensure that these agencies can continue their work in the future, so that the US still leads in saving lives, and promoting a more stable, peaceful and prosperous world.
Donald Kerwin is vice president of policy, research and partnerships for Jesuit Refugee Service/USA. He is also editor of the Journal on Migration and Human Security. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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