U.S. Capitol
ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you Mr. Chairman McCaul. Thank you, Ranking Member Meeks, and to all of you for being here today and to all distinguished members of the Committee.
Before I start with my prepared statement, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the Embassy personnel and escorting police forces in Nigeria who lost their lives yesterday and to extend my deepest sympathies – and of course the sympathies of the American people and I’m sure all of you – to their loved ones who are grieving this devastating loss.
Their convoy was brutally attacked while en route to a U.S.-funded distribution of emergency humanitarian assistance to people who were displaced by last year’s historic flooding. Other members of the convoy are still missing, and the State Department is working closely with Nigerian authorities to locate them.
The individuals who were killed paid a great service to both our country and their own, and they should be remembered as heroes who dedicated their lives to building a better future for the people of Nigeria. I sincerely hope that we can honor their memory – both by holding responsible those behind this atrocious act, and by continuing to foster greater peace, prosperity and stability in Nigeria and beyond.
Unfortunately, as you all well know, such violence is not unique to Nigeria, and indeed, the decades of development gains that have laid a foundation for an era of relative peace, relative stability, and relative prosperity are at serious risk, globally.
During our lifetimes, it is wonderful, actually, to behold that the United States has helped accelerate tremendous progress in reducing extreme poverty around the world, and fighting disease, and addressing hunger, getting kids into school, and fueling democracy’s rise.
But now, many of those very same trends have moved into reverse. The pandemic decimated health systems, leading to a resurgence in diseases from measles to tuberculosis. It also battered many nation’s finances. After a decade of heavy borrowing and more recently rising inflation – exacerbated by Putin’s war – 60 percent of the world’s poorest countries are at or near debt distress. And natural disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity, leading to a sharp rise in humanitarian needs. The upshot of all of this is stark: for the first time in decades, literally since the late 1950s, human life expectancy is on the decline – while extreme poverty is on the rise.
At the same time, democracies everywhere are under attack. Our rivals are using transnational corruption, digital repression, disinformation – and in Ukraine, actual artillery and missile fire – to undermine freedom, to elevate autocrats, and to curry favor. A quarter of the world’s population face conflict, a rate not seen since World War II, with the horrific violence in Sudan serving as just the latest example.
It’s a daunting list of challenges. And I know some, and maybe even some here today, question whether the United States should be taking on these challenges through our development investments, or whether the scope of the challenges is too great to make a meaningful difference.
But the fact is our national security, our prosperity, hinges on this work. Deprivation and indignity abroad can fuel resource competition, political fragility, and extremism that endangers us here at home. Disease outbreaks can cross oceans, as we’ve seen so recently, and recessions in foreign markets can threaten our own economic growth.
If we don’t lead efforts to take on these challenges, as the Chairman alluded to and Ranking Member Meeks did as well, the People’s Republic of China and Putin are ready to step in, whether through opaque loans on unfavorable terms, or with mercenaries in tow.
An international order that values democracy and human rights and respects international borders is not a given. Indeed, authoritarian actors are challenging and aiming to reshape it. We have to invest in the stable and more humane world that we need.
USAID is privileged to have a leading role in tackling the most significant challenges of our time, in close coordination with our interagency partners, advancing diplomacy and defense. And we are grateful to the American people – and to you – for giving us the resources to make a major difference.
That said, we know that to drive progress on the scale that we need, in this era, in this moment, we have to bring other countries, the private sector, multilateral institutions, foundations, and local organizations in our partner countries along with us.
So USAID has set out a new reform agenda aimed at delivering progress beyond our development programs – using our expertise, our convening power, our advocacy to draw in others, to leverage more resources, to spark innovation, and to inspire broader movements for change.
The Biden-Harris Administration's FY 2024 request of $32 billion for USAID’s fully- and partially-managed accounts will allow us to make more of that transformative impact. And again, we recognize that we have to use any resources we get as leverage to pull in others.
Alongside our partners, we’ll invest in countries experiencing democratic openings, helping them show that democracy delivers tangible results for citizens. We will work with nations to attract private sector investment and drive broadly shared economic growth. We’ll support countries that are rebuilding their decimated health systems. And we will meet growing humanitarian needs not just with emergency assistance, but long-term investments in resilience.
And, crucially, we will invest in USAID’s workforce to carry out this ambitious agenda. Since 2019, because of the state of the world and the generosity of this body, our operating expense funds have increased at half the rate that our programming has grown – giving us more to do with fewer people and resources. So we are incredibly grateful, again, for those plus ups in programmatic money and resources spent out in the world, but our team and our staffing needs to keep up.
This budget, that we have proposed for Fiscal Year 2024, will help us invest in the people and systems we need to power an Agency that is nimble and responsive.
We know that, with the United States leading the way, the world can drive meaningful progress against our toughest challenges – because we have decades of gains in global health, in education, and in prosperity to prove it. It’s on us, now, to resume that progress.
Thank you so much.
FY 2024 Budget Justification
