Good afternoon Chairman Deutch, Ranking Member Wilson, and members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear with Assistant Secretary Leaf and speak with you today about the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Fiscal Year 2023 request and our work in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
Last month, Administrator Samantha Power spoke with you about USAID’s global vision underpinning our Fiscal Year 2023 budget request and how important Congressional funding is for us to extend peace, prosperity, security, and human dignity to people around the world. Nowhere is that work more critical than in the Middle East and North Africa where people face not only considerable challenges to security and stability, but also meddling and interference from countries such as Iran, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and Russia who exploit regional tensions and divisions to advance their own ends.
USAID’s partnerships in Asia span more than thirty countries, from Kazakhstan in Central Asia to Kiribati in the Pacific Islands. Home to half of the global economy and over 60% of the world’s population, the fates of countries across this diverse and dynamic region are deeply intertwined with that of the United States.
The Biden-Harris Administration’s FY 2023 discretionary request of $29.4 billion will build on these steps forward, giving us the ability to invest in the people and systems to meet the world’s most significant challenges so the United States can seize this moment. Last week, with bipartisan support, you passed a nearly $40 billion package for Ukraine that will provide vital assistance to our support of displaced peoples, to the country’s recovery, and to the secondary effects on food, fuel and fertilizer that we’re witnessing as a result of the Russian Federation’s belligerence. And your bipartisan support for a robust FY23 topline for the State Foreign Operations Senate bill will help us meet this moment and advance American interests and the critical foreign policy and development priorities before us.
The Biden-Harris Administration’s FY 2023 discretionary request of $29.4 billion will build on these steps forward, giving us the ability to invest in the people and systems to meet the world’s most significant challenges so the United States can seize this moment in history. Last week, with bipartisan support, you here in the House of Representatives took a major step in that direction by passing a nearly $40 billion package for Ukraine and we are hopeful for its imminent passage in the Senate.
The consequences of Putin’s unprovoked, unjustified war in Ukraine extend beyond the battlefield, beyond Ukraine, and beyond Europe. While Vladimir Putin is leaning on noxious lies and disinformation to justify a war of aggression, the United States, through the generosity of the American people, is defending the Ukrainian people in their courageous fight for basic human rights, democracy, and self-determination. USAID is proud to stand with the Ukrainian people and we are grateful for the support from Congress. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I look forward to answering your questions.
The United States Agency for International Development appreciates the opportunity to submit this statement for the record on HR 5830, the America Mitigating and Achieving Zero-emissions Originating from Nature for the 21st Century (AMAZON21) Act.
The Biden-Harris Administration’s FY 2023 discretionary request of $29.4 billion will build on these steps forward, giving us the ability to invest in the people and systems to meet the world’s most significant challenges so the United States can seize this moment in history. Last night, with bipartisan support, the House took a major step in that direction by passing a nearly $40 billion package for Ukraine and we are hopeful for its speedy passage in the Senate.
We are grateful to the U.S. Congress for its passage of the bipartisan Global Fragility Act that underpins the U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability and demands a fundamental shift in how we work to prevent conflict globally. We are looking forward to working with those in civil society and expert communities who not only advocated for the Act, but will be with us, hand in hand, as we take implementation forward. With this new collective effort, we are ready to execute this ambitious framework with our global partners to anticipate and prevent conflict and promote stability around the globe.
In March, the Administration requested $22.5 billion in additional COVID-19 response funding, including $5 billion to support the immediate needs of the global COVID-19 response. This global funding would enable a significant expansion of our Global VAX surge efforts to another 20 to 25 countries and other global COVID-19 vaccination priorities, including the rollout of boosters and pediatric doses. With more than 30 countries qualifying as severely undervaccinated, it remains critical to expand the initiative beyond the 11 surge countries we currently support. This request will also enable us to shrink the severe gaps in global access to testing, oxygen capacity, and antiviral treatments—enabling lifesaving services for more than 100 million people—as well as enhanced monitoring of potential or emerging variants.
Failure to continue our supplemental global funding would abdicate U.S. leadership even as the People’s Republic of China continues its transactional approach to pandemic response and global health; it would weaken health systems that are crucial to fighting this and future pandemics; and it would amount to a surrender to the inevitability of dangerous new variants. Failing to provide supplemental global funding would also jeopardize our long-term baseline pandemic preparedness, global health, and health security investments. In sum: it would be a geopolitical, ethical, health security, and economic mistake of historic proportions.
If the world’s free nations, with the United States in the lead, are able to unite the efforts of our allies, the private sector, and our multilateral institutions, and marshal the resources necessary to help our partner nations, we have a chance to extend the reach of peace, prosperity, and human dignity to billions more.
Thank you. It’s an honor to testify alongside these guardians of democracy. As we’ve just heard, autocrats don’t just destroy democracy and the rule of law in their own countries. They use lawfare and other subversive tactics to wield influence over other countries, stifling open discourse, corroding the integrity of economies, and interfering in politics and policymaking. But they cannot do it alone.
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Last updated: July 04, 2022
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