WASHINGTON – Tonight, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) went to the Senate floor to introduce and ask for unanimous consent on a resolution reaffirming the sense of Congress that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s independence is essential for advancing the national security interests of the United States.
The resolution is a direct response to President Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s potential elimination of USAID and pause to the vast majority of U.S. foreign assistance programs, including reports that President Trump would sign an executive order folding the agency into the State Department— moves that are illegal without congressional approval.
“We know that diplomacy and development stand alongside defense in being critical to our national security,” Senator Coons said on the Senate floor. “Who wins if we do in fact shut this all down? It's our adversaries. It's terrorists, it's drug cartels, it's Russia, it's China, it's those we've held at bay through the great work of this organization and its dedicated servants for decades.”
Senator Coons spoke on the unlawful efforts to defund and destroy USAID by President Trump and Musk and demanded clarity amid purges of USAID’s top personnel, aid freezes, and chaos. He highlighted USAID’s vital humanitarian assistance work during global conflicts and other crises, including efforts to counter terrorism recruitment in the Philippines and to reduce the number of children pulled into gangs supporting organized crime and human trafficking. He also pointed out that while Republicans claim to be concerned about cutting costs, our entire foreign aid budget accounts for less than one percent of the federal budget.
U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho) objected.
The resolution introduced by Senator Coons expressed “the sense of the Senate that [USAID] is essential for advancing the national security interests of the United States.” The resolution has 42 cosponsors. The full text of the resolution is available here.
Earlier today, the Washington Post published an op-ed from Senator Coons highlighting the dangers posed but the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle USAID.
A video and partial transcript of Senator Coons’ comments are available below.
SENATOR COONS: “Mr. President, if I might further expound on the resolution and respond to the comments by my colleague, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee on which I serve. The resolution I sought to advance today is a simple statement of fact. It reviews the history of USAID, its creation as an independent agency, and its recognition in a law I helped write just last year—that to reorganize it explicitly requires congressional consultation and notification in advance.
The statement of the resolution, the core point, is that USAID is essential to the national security of the United States, because it mitigates threats abroad before they reach us here, it promotes global stability, it addresses the root causes of migration and extremism, and secures the leadership and influence of the United States in an era of strategic competition with the People's Republic of China.
Let me speak to a few points, if I might: the power of the purse, process matters, one percent, and who wins. Rolling back the decades of work and relationships that the nonprofits and AID do around the world is creating a vacuum – a vacuum that will be filled by bad actors. So in a country where we've long-funded the PEPFAR program, started by President Bush, long-supported on a bipartisan basis, that provides anti-retrovirals and testing and nurses and support and clinics; to abandon that, to defund that, to shut that down, simply creates an opening for a bad actor to come in and say ‘The Americans abandoned you. Sorry for your luck. Here we are. We want to help.’ The Chinese have invested hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars advancing their interests through investing in infrastructure, building partnerships in critical minerals, becoming the leads on port operations, and delivering humanitarian aid. We should not shut down our assistance to the world in a way that creates this vacuum. Who wins is the first question. My concern is our adversaries.
Second, process matters. As those of us who are lawyers know, it's backwards to start with an executive order that shuts down the funding for an organization and entity, to invade and occupy its headquarters, to have an unelected department get into its systems, to lay off and furlough its senior leadership, and then notify Congress of the intent to begin a conversation about reorganization. I welcome a chance to have a conversation about the future of our development assistance around the world, and my hope is that it will continue, because I have case after case to review here about the good work it does. But to shut down the funding and to cause lots of our partners to lay off their key staff, then begin a conversation about reorganization, is to get it backwards in terms of process and the law.
I'm an appropriator. Why should we bother coming to an agreement on appropriations here in the Senate, pass a law, send it to the president, he signs it – and then in the next Congress and the next president, they can shut it down and claw it back? It gets to the very question of the power of the purse, which in Article 1 of the Constitution is the power of this body. Going forward, of course, as my colleague said, elections have consequences. It is true that President Trump and the new majority here will put their imprimatur on the policy priorities across a wide range of agencies and programs, absolutely. I expect that discussion and that fight – but this is reaching back and shutting down.
One percent – one percent, actually, less than one percent of the total federal budget goes to these vital humanitarian programs around the world. I'll give you a few examples of what has been stopped in its tracks: a U.S. organization funded through AID has stopped its counterterrorism work in the Philippines that was reducing recruitment and radicalization. We walked away from that work. In Mexico, an organization that reduces the number of children recruited by gangs to help move drugs and migrants across our border has had its funding cut off. I remember trips I took, bipartisan delegations I was a part of, that went and visited AID-funded work where folks were delivering critical care. St. Mary's clinic in Kibera – in Nairobi, in Kenya: one of the worst informal settlements – slums – I've ever been in in my life, and these dedicated, caring, capable folks delivering vital life assistance. In Liberia during Ebola, I will never forget meeting with the nurses, doctors, volunteers, the Liberians who were helping save lives. Why does this matter? Today there is an Ebola outbreak in Kampala, Uganda, and it's the disease monitoring and testing, it's the clinics and the nurses that keep these diseases controlled and managed on the other side of the world before they come here.
Failing to sustain this work in an efficient and effective way is to fail to show the values of the United States, to show we're not a reliable partner, it’s to show that the decades of bipartisan support for critical initiatives like PEPFAR have been abandoned because they're no longer considered a smarter strategic investment by one party, while the other party will fight for it.
My fondest hope is that we will yet find there is bipartisan support for continuing and sustaining these investments, but it's unclear, because the unelected leader of DOGE, Elon Musk, is even now tweeting, ‘shut it down, close it off.’ My hope is that Secretary Rubio's comments today on television about sustaining many of the critical functions of AID will win out, but I'm not confident – because it's unclear to me who's really driving this initiative.
Let me close: We know that diplomacy and development stand alongside defense in being critical to our national security. President Trump's first defense secretary, General James Mattis, said to us in a hearing that if foreign aid were to get cut, he would need to buy more bullets, because foreign aid around the world helps us build relationships of support, combat terrorism and extremism, advance our values and priorities, and make us safer and more secure. I cannot think of a more troubling development than this long-trusted, capable, bipartisan effort at helping bring our values to the world and helping secure our nation would be cut off, abruptly, roughly, in a way that violates the law and the spirit of our long bipartisan compromise.
Who wins if we do in fact shut this all down? It's our adversaries. It's terrorists, it's drug cartels, it's Russia, it's China, it's those we've held at bay through the great work of this organization and its dedicated servants for decades. My hope is that even though this resolution was opposed and thus defeated tonight, that the determination to support this great work will survive and thrive and prevail.”
Senator Coons is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. He is the former Chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations.