Lawmakers are clashing over proposed federal spending cuts while weighing the lasting impacts of past cuts made under President Donald Trump’s second administration, debating the impacts of reduced foreign aid and domestic agency funding.
Just one year after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative enacted sweeping cuts to multiple federal departments, members of the House Appropriations Committee considered how cuts to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are affecting children in South Africa amid ongoing concerns over worsening humanitarian conditions.
Earlier in the hearing, several Democrats stated that the USAID cuts directly contributed to the deaths of children in countries like South Africa. Representative Michael Cloud (R-TX) countered that just because cuts to USAID were made in recent years, it does not mean the program has become less effective.
“Washington, D.C. measures success by how much dollars we send out, as opposed to whether they're accomplishing what they're supposed to accomplish,” Rep. Cloud said.
Rep. Cloud said recent data shows child mortality in South Africa is actually declining. Data from United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank support that long-term trend, but U.N. agencies warn that cuts to global health funding could slow or reverse that progress.
But Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Russel Vought said the cuts to USAID do not reflect a lack of support from the State Department for these countries.
“This administration, the State Department, is working with these countries to have these agreements that ensure that the money is being really well spent,” Vought said, adding that this ensures funds are going to those who need it.
Rep. Cloud said that under President Joe Biden’s administration, funding would “go out the door” with Congress having little to no visibility into where it was going. Vought said new technology introduced by the OMB now tracks how the money is spent.
“A lot of these billions of dollars have been going to bad actors working against us,” Vought said. “Our purposes, our agendas, even foreign entities, foreign states, that I know. In the last few weeks of the administration, $80 billion went out the door.”
Have All Cuts Helped?
A report from the Office of Inspector General showed that the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) lost 25% of its workforce, and the research service working to combat the new world screwworm, the parasite threatening Texas agriculture, lost 23%.
“Immediately after these resignations and the loss of all of the expertise, we saw this drastic increase in the screwworm coming into the United States,” Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-GA) said. “And our farmers are really concerned about that.”
In the proposed budget for the next fiscal year, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) would face a $4.9 billion budget cut.
Vought said combatting the ongoing parasite spread and future infections is of “highest priority” for the OMB. Vought said he monitors it daily, while also checking in regularly to ensure the department has the resources to combat it.
“We don’t believe that this is an issue that is under-resourced,” Vought said. “We believe that USDA has everything it needs to both create a long-term capability here and also find as many shots on goal to be able to deal with this in real time for farmers.”
