New bill to move U.S. foreign aid money out of Washington, DC
New bipartisan bill would shift a greater share of U.S. foreign aid dollars to local communities
Dear Unlock Aid community,
We have some news for you –
Today, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate introduced the “Locally-Led Development and Humanitarian Act.” And that’s not all. The House Foreign Affairs Committee also passed this legislation today, getting it one step closer to becoming law. This progress builds on the work of activists who have tired for decades to challenge big aid agencies to change the way they work, including to direct more funding to local, frontline providers.
Click here to read the press release published by the House and Senate bill sponsors.
Last week was Sunshine Week, which showcases open government and the importance of transparency. We published this Follow the Money microsite to illustrate that there’s not much ‘foreign’ about foreign aid. Most of this money goes to a handful of insiders that make up what USAID Administrator Samantha Power calls the “industrial aid complex.” While many of the aid industry’s biggest players promise to pass on most of what they make to frontline groups, the reality is they keep the vast majority of it for themselves. Transparency gaps in USAID data obscure the full scale of the problem.
U.S. global development is stuck in an antiquated model. People who went into this work did so with good intentions and to serve a higher mission. But so many now find themselves locked into a broken system that produces perverse outcomes that no individual would ever make.
In fact, these challenges aren’t limited just to the ways the U.S. invests around the world. Communities within the United States are also too frequently locked out from accessing public resources that are designed to benefit them. Decisions in Washington, DC, are too often made about local communities without local communities:
Following Hurricane Katrina, local vendors in Louisiana were locked out of large Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) contracts to rebuild their states while big out-of-state federal contractors netted billions.
Following the New Mexico fires in 2022, too few U.S. Forest Service Community Wildfire Defense grants reached affected local communities. The Center for American Progress noted that “the United States will not be able to achieve climate resilience or build equitable economies if rural communities are locked out of solutions.”
In 2023, when fires struck Lahaina, Maui, response fell to local groups while state and federal aid lagged – despite Indigenous communities warning for years that unchecked development would put the islands at higher risks for fire.
The Inflation Reduction Act created $60 billion for environmental justice investments, but “many of the small, community-based organizations that would benefit from funding the most … simply don’t have the time or resources to navigate the complicated bureaucratic process of applying for funding.”
America needs to do better. Those closest to the problems are closest to the solutions. It’s not enough to debate how much we should spend on what priorities if those resources don’t ultimately flow to those communities most in need – and if those communities don’t have a meaningful say in how these resources are spent.
This bipartisan bill, introduced in the U.S. House by Representatives Sara Jacobs (D-CA) and Cory Mills (R-FL) and in the U.S. Senate by Senators Chris Coons (D-DE), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Tim Kaine (D-VA), and Pete Ricketts (R-NE) takes a big first step towards fixing these issues in the context of U.S. foreign aid spending. Just as all development is global, this bill can also serve as a model for other U.S. federal agencies that are struggling with similar challenges, especially as we roll out funding across the nation for the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and new infrastructure spending. Click here to see why we’ve endorsed this bill and learn more about what it will do.
Momentum is building in Congress
Last year, we embarked on a six-month listening tour to speak with hundreds of communities and leaders in the U.S. and around the world. We asked, “If we could start over, how would we redesign the U.S. approach to global development?” Based on those conversations, we developed a new set of principles to underpin the U.S. approach to engaging with the rest of the world.
In these final months of this term of the Biden-Harris Administration, we’ll be pushing for this legislation and other initiatives that promise to reshape the U.S. approach to global development — and we hope you do, too. Share this post on social media today and signal your support.
To progress,
Unlock Aid
P.S. Next month, we’ll be flying dozens of organizations from around the world to join us in Washington, DC to meet with lawmakers. We’ll be pushing for a package of reforms focused on: innovation; results and aid industry accountability; shifting resources and decision making to local communities, and; championing an entirely new model for U.S. global engagement to transition our relationships with hundreds of nations away from paternalistic aid to mutually-beneficial trade. Let us know if you want to get involved!