For five hours on Wednesday, USAID’s Samantha Power faced question — after question, after question — from United States lawmakers.
Power was on Capitol Hill to discuss the agency’s 2025 budget proposal. But as the hours ticked on, it wasn’t just USAID that came to the forefront. It was the fractures within Congress and lawmakers’ deep-rooted fissures around U.S. foreign assistance.
“The pressures on the international affairs budget have become too great, and our processes are overwhelmed,” said Sen. James Risch, a Republican from Idaho, at the start of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or SFRC — the first of two at the capitol that day. “We’re at the point, really, where it’s time to start making difficult choices.”