With the administration’s sweeping and unprecedented cuts to foreign assistance programs and staff in recent months, including the dismantling of USAID and funding rescissions, many in the development community have been anxiously wondering if and when Congress will reassert its role as a co-equal partner with the Executive branch on foreign aid funding and policies. A notable step in that direction was taken when the House Appropriations Committee approved its FY2026 National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Appropriations bill prior to the summer Congressional recess.
Notwithstanding Congress’s July approval of most of the Administration’s foreign assistance rescissions of $8 billion, the House bill is an important marker of congressional prerogatives and how far Republican leaders are willing to push back against the Administration’s more draconian actions.
The House bill provides $46.2 billion for foreign assistance – a 22% cut from FY25 levels and a significant decrease to be sure, but far less severe than the administration’s proposed 83% cut. The bill rescinds $3.2 billion in prior-year funds, on top of nearly $8 billion already enacted. Here, too, this is far less than what the Administration had proposed to rescind: $21b. Taken together, these actions by the House are an encouraging sign.
Amidst these more “modest” reductions, there are notable areas that are protected from cuts. The House largely shields funding for global health and food security programs, as well as the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the International Development Finance Corporation. Importantly, it also provides continued support for long-standing congressional priorities in development assistance, including education, women and girls, agricultural development, and water and sanitation - to be funded from a new “National Security Investment Programs” account, which houses funding formerly appropriated under the Development Assistance and Economic Support Funds.
Encouragingly, the House bill also emphasizes a number of MFAN priorities for enhancing aid effectiveness and boosting innovation and accountability. The Committee calls for milestone-based funding, outcome-based pilots in areas such as health and food security, and expanded use of rigorous evaluations – including a $25 million earmark for impact evaluations. Transparency also gets a boost through requirements for regular, timely updates to ForeignAssistance.gov and for agencies to post unclassified reports online in an accessible, centralized way. The bill also maintains past years’ support for locally led development, including a directive for the State Department to report within 120 days on “progress toward empowering local leadership, reforming systems and processes, and coordinating relevant strategies.”
The House bill requires the Secretary of State to develop a multi-year strategy on aid effectiveness and transparency, developed with input from experts and practitioners. MFAN hopes this will provide a real opportunity for input from outside groups with expertise on how to modernize foreign assistance.
But it’s not all good news, to be sure. There remain several areas of concern in the House measure beyond the topline funding cuts -- and a last-minute change that removed protections against a “pocket rescission.”
For example, the bill would create the first-ever “earmark” for humanitarian assistance, preemptively locking up $300 million for one purpose only: ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTFs), instead of allowing State Department personnel and implementing partners to choose what is the most effective and life-saving response to each humanitarian emergency. While there’s no question that RUTF is a highly effective treatment for severe acute malnutrition, mandating specific spending for RUTF (or any other specific tool) hamstrings flexibility for frontline responders and could put children’s lives at risk. This would create a precedent that MFAN strongly opposes. The decisions about how much RUTF is needed to effectively respond to each disaster should be determined by the experts on the ground, not by Washington.
The bill also creates a $1.7 billion “America First Opportunity Fund,” intended to give the Secretary of State wide latitude to reprogram resources in response to emerging priorities. While flexibility is important and something MFAN has long supported, such a large, loosely defined fund risks becoming a vehicle for bypassing congressional oversight or for channeling aid toward transactional, short-term political objectives rather than long-term development impact.
Battles Ahead?
A major concern, of course, is whether the Administration will actually follow these congressional directives and implement programs rather than rescind money, including through
“pocket rescissions.” This mechanism, rarely used (the last time was 1977) and of highly questionable constitutionality, is when the executive branch withholds or cancels congressionally appropriated funds within the 45-day window of the funds’ expiration date (typically near the end of the fiscal year).
In an ominous move, House Republican leaders at the eleventh hour stripped out a provision originally included in their appropriations bill that would have blocked the administration from executing pocket rescissions. So, it didn’t come as a surprise last Friday when the Administration announced a pocket rescission of an additional $5 billion in foreign assistance funds.
The House bill does include language requiring congressional consultation before any reorganization or downsizing of assistance functions. The prohibition cover actions to “(1) expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize covered departments, agencies, or organizations, including bureaus and offices within or between such departments, agencies, or organizations, including the transfer to other agencies of the authorities and responsibilities of such bureaus and offices; (2) expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize the United States official presence overseas, including at bilateral, regional, and multilateral diplomatic facilities and other platforms; or (3) expand or reduce the size of the permanent Civil Service, Foreign Service, eligible family member, and locally employed staff workforce of the Department of State from the staffing levels previously justified to the Committees on Appropriations for fiscal year 2026.” It all sounds good on paper, but will the Administration just flaunt these restrictions? As with rescissions, the real test comes when the Administration ignores congressional intent.
A Step Forward—But a Cautionary One
In today’s environment, even mixed news can be a hopeful sign. In that sense, the House bill carries both a warning and a reassurance: the warning that foreign assistance remains vulnerable to more cuts and harmful restrictions, and the reassurance that bipartisan support for many assistance programs has not disappeared. On the latter, that’s no small thing.
About MFAN:
The Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) is a bipartisan coalition of international development practitioners, policy advocates, and experts committed to making U.S. foreign assistance more effective, accountable, and results-driven.
For media inquiries, please reach out to Tod Preston, MFAN Executive Director, at Tod.Preston@modernizeaid.net
