US Congress passes budget bill, but questions remain on foreign aid

The U.S. Congress passed a budget bill late on Friday, averting a government shutdown, but experts say questions persist on foreign assistance funding. Rather than writing and passing a specific budget for the 2025 fiscal year, which is already nearly halfway through, Congress instead passed a continuing resolution that will fund the government at 2024 levels through the end of September. That means Congress is technically appropriating about $60 billion in previously agreed-upon foreign assistance. “In this environment of change and disruption, having Congress pass level funding for foreign assistance” could be seen as a “huge win,” said Lisa Bos, vice president of global development policy, advocacy, and learning at InterAction. But big questions remain: Will Congress — either at the behest of the administration or of its own volition — move in the weeks or months ahead to pass a rescission package to claw back some of the funding approved in this bill and codify the cuts made by the Trump administration? Or will Congress “assert its power of the purse” and make sure the administration is spending the money it approved? Some lawmakers are already discussing a rescission package, several sources told Devex. But any potential cuts aren’t reflected in the continuing resolution passed Friday — perhaps because the administration has not yet indicated the funding, or cuts, that it wants. If Congress were to rescind all the funding for the thousands of foreign aid programs the administration has terminated, that would amount to billions of dollars. The administration could also decide to “reprogram” or reallocate the funds, which typically requires congressional notification. Bos said she was grateful that there will be a separate debate about a rescission, rather than it being a part of the discussions around a continuing resolution. “Our view is that lumping too many things all together doesn't allow good, strong debate on the merits of USAID and on some of the programs. And we're hoping that that's a conversation that we can have sooner, rather than later, where [Capitol Hill] is more engaged and consulted and involved than they have been to date,” she said. Some thought that this budget bill was an opportunity for lawmakers to provide guidance or put guardrails to force the administration to spend the funds Congress approved — which many Democrats wanted — but that did not happen. Congress had previously passed stop-gap measures buying more time to pass a budget bill, which led to Friday’s decision to extend the continuing resolution through the end of the fiscal year. The result, a full-year continuing resolution as opposed to an annual budget bill is not unheard of, but it is uncommon. Budget experts said a continuing resolution is not as good as specific annual budget bills because it doesn’t account for changing needs. While it’s better if Congress come to an agreement and pass appropriations bills on a bipartisan basis, “we’re in such a different environment, it’s really hard to make the same determinations,” said Erin Collinson, the director of policy outreach at the Center of Global Development.”I think the big question is now what?” And Congress has an important role to play in determining that, said Justin Fugle, the head of U.S. government policy at Plan International. “They have not been involved very much so far in the foreign aid review, in the dismantling of USAID,” but they could help define what foreign aid looks like in the State Department and how USAID and its functions live on, he added. Looking at some of the longer-term budget discussions, particularly in the Senate, it appears that at least some lawmakers are “clearly envisioning a future of foreign aid and they have to start to build the new mechanisms that are going to be utilized to implement all of that,” Fugle said. The continuing resolution requires that each agency submit a spending, expenditure, or operating plan for 2025 funding to Congress, including at the program, project, and activity level, as well as by country, region, and central programming. Those reports, while typically not public, could provide further information about the Trump administration’s plans. The president’s budget request for fiscal 2026 would also lay out his administration’s priorities and funding needs, but it’s unclear exactly when that will be released. Historically, while Congress considers the president’s budget request, it does not necessarily closely adhere to it. In Trump’s first term for example, Congress repeatedly rejected deep cuts to foreign aid that the administration proposed. But most experts agreed that those dynamics have changed significantly. While Congress could try to put forward a rescission package in the coming months, the Trump administration could also use a tactic it tried in its first administration – rescission requests at the end of a fiscal year, where if Congress doesn’t act swiftly, funding would just expire in a de facto rescission. In the first Trump administration, there were attempts about six weeks before the end of the fiscal year to rescind some foreign aid funds, but the administration ended up withdrawing the requests due to pushback, including from lawmakers. If the administration does not spend money appropriated by Congress, there could be further legal action challenging its impoundment of funds. The issue has already been a key part of arguments in some USAID-related legal actions.