Imagine for a moment that you’re cleaning your couch and as you clean you find an assortment of coins that add up to a dollar. As you count the coins, consider these coins as a reflection of the federal budget.
How much of this money does the United States spend on foreign aid, as a percentage of the federal budget? As you consider the international priorities, such as funding global education, clean water, food, medicines, and yes, occasionally condoms and political theater, imagine the cost. Are we talking about one third of our federal budget? Surely not. One quarter? No. In recent years, President Joe Biden doubled the amount spent by USAID. Surely that made it register as a significant cost to U.S. taxpayers. So, is it even 5%? Not even close.
Heather Deal
The most recent USAID budget allocation was $42 billion. That does sound like a lot. However, our federal government’s allocated spending comes in at almost $7 trillion. That math includes a lot of zeroes, but the proportion we are talking about for foreign aid is 0.5% of our federal budget. That’s half a penny if our federal budget was that dollar in coins you found.
Why are Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and President Donald Trump so doggedly focused on one half of one percent of our budget?
We do so much good work around the world with so relatively little. Why is this under attack? And yet, why do we care so much when it is so little?
One government official announced that in the global battle for goodwill, the U.S. loaded up all our troops and headed home. Why is the conversation about foreign aid politicized in this way?
“In the global battle for goodwill, the U.S. loaded up all our troops and headed home.”
It is true that our global relief and development work is not only about good deeds but also about goodwill. This goodwill not only ensures people have food, health care and education they need, but it also bolsters our diplomacy and helps create a safer world for everyone. It creates environments where people don’t need to turn to gangs, terrorist groups and other bad actors out of desperation, but creates communities and countries that thrive.
Providing lifesaving medication for multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis requires an ongoing commitment to research, to culture, to understanding local communities and an investment in medicines, yes, but also in the lives of foreign officials as we partner to understand the evolving nature of these bacteria and their effects in the communities they lead. In India, one team of researchers is making TB breakthroughs that will save millions of lives. We have helped to fund this research — and now we have just walked away from these laboratories and life-saving conversations.
Similarly, providing educational support around the world is not simply about teaching children to read. In Rwanda, a USAID-funded curriculum in one region of this war-torn country (where violence is again erupting) has focused on technical and vocational training that does far more to foster entrepreneurship and reduce child soldiering than it does to teach simple language and science skills. The results would have implications for future generations. Until now.
And even the provision of condoms and sexually themed theater is a foreign act of service and goodwill. For women and children who are vulnerable to trafficking and the sex trade, education and protection of every form saves lives and communicates both care and a commitment to health and well-being in foreign nations. One USAID program in Afghanistan used innovative interventions to create a network of 50 business associations serving more than 30,000 women and 100,000 children. Their website boasted of its success; now the page is blank, and these young women are on their own.
“China and Russia far outspend the U.S. in foreign aid.”
One theme of the recent change is that America is carrying too much of the load internationally. Yet, we know China and Russia far outspend the U.S. in foreign aid. One program focused on roads and bridges has resulted in 10 times the amount of foreign aid in one Sub-Saharan African nation. That is true all over the developing world. Now, we are completely giving up our social and political investments in well over 100 countries.
Sixteen years ago, I joined a group of fellow undergraduate and graduate students and faculty to travel to Rwanda and learn how they recovered from the Rwandan genocide and the AIDS epidemic. We traveled on roads built by Russia, over bridges built by Brazil, in cars made in China, to a small clinic built by Americans. The clinic was profound, but the investment was small. The infrastructure created by the foreign aid systems of our global partners and competitors contributed far more goodwill and long-term change.
Seeing this, we encouraged our government to do more, and the numbers began to rise, as did the goodwill. Marco Rubio, now responsible for the empty shell of USAID, repeatedly praised our international investments, not simply for their benevolence, but moreover because of the political impact of doing good.
As part of our education and advocacy, our professor was invited with a group of activists, musicians and actors on a trip to the 2005 G-8 summit in Edinburgh, Scotland. “Make Poverty History” was the theme of the trip coined by the Irish bandleader of U2, Bono. Our professor met with Bono’s team and the advisors to President George W. Bush on that historic trip.
As a result, “compassionate conservatism” became Bush’s mantra for his efforts to bolster American influence for good. His investments, such as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, truly made a profound difference around the world. Twenty years later, this one program has been hailed as a phenomenal life-saving initiative created with bipartisan support, and the 2024 Congress reauthorized support for the PEPFAR program whose impact continues to be felt all over the world. HIV/AIDS has taken so many lives and yet this program has combatted that, resulting in tens of millions of lives saved through extraordinary treatments and interventions. Now, the program has been brought to a screeching halt. People who implement the program are being returned home.
In the battle for goodwill, we are walking off the battlefield. I am not one to perpetuate the use of military metaphors, but this one resonates.
And may we consider its implications as we struggle to do what is right and good, not only for the children who need it most, but for the sake of all of the invaluable relationships our work has fostered all around the globe.
Heather Deal is a Ph.D. candidate in the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work at Baylor University and is a dual master’s-degree alum of the School of Social Work and Truett Seminary. She also serves as director of development for Baptist Women in Ministry.
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