What the US midterm elections mean for development

When Americans voted on Tuesday, foreign aid probably wasn’t at the top of their minds, but the closely contested congressional elections are likely to have an impact on global development funding and priorities.

The results are still unclear, with some key races too close to call and a December runoff needed to determine the outcome of the Georgia Senate race. The most likely scenario, however, is that Republicans will win enough seats to have a slim majority in the House of Representatives, and Democrats will narrowly hang on to their control of the Senate, according to experts.

It wasn’t the overwhelming Republican victory some predicted given that midterm elections historically go to the party not in power, although the political shift will have repercussions on President Joe Biden’s agenda, including on development issues.

The Senate result rests on the outcome of the still too-close-to-call Senate races in Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia. Republicans need to take two of those three states to wrest control of the Senate. If Democrats win two, they keep control because they can rely on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote in a split 50-50 Senate.

The consensus among development experts is that a thin Republican majority in the House is likely to lead to gridlock. That could still be the case even if the Grand Old Party gains control of the Senate because the party won’t have strong majorities in either chamber — and Democrats still control the White House.

“Very slim majorities over the last two years have made progress challenging and very slim majorities with a different majority will be the same,” just with a different set of likely priorities, said Tom Hart, the president of the ONE Campaign.

What’s clear however is that a divided Congress with a slim Republican majority in the House could lead to division and chaos. A Republican lobbyist told Devex a slim majority is a “worst-case scenario for Republican governance” because it empowers the fringe of the party.

Ultra-conservative candidates are likely to have more power, House leadership will have to manage intra-party divisions, and they’ll still need to work across the aisle to get things done. Regardless of who controls the Senate, they will also have to work in a bipartisan manner to get the 60 votes required to get major legislation passed, a high bar given the entrenched polarization in Congress.

“What you might see is a completely log-jammed lame-duck Congress for two years,” said Keifer Buckingham, the advocacy director of Open Society Foundations.

Foreign aid has been a rare area of bipartisan cooperation in recent years, despite deep divisions among lawmakers. Most recently, for example, the Global Malnutrition Prevention and Treatment Act became law.

The election is unlikely to change that, though everything may become harder as the election ushers in some leadership changes, shifts priorities, and continues to put pressure on the aid budget.

The budget

Foreign aid budget battles have been challenging and a divided Congress or slim majorities by either party in both chambers won’t make things any easier.

Divided governments are typically associated with less spending, Erin Collinson, director of policy outreach at the Center for Global Development told Devex.

The far-right segment of the Republican party is likely to push hard to slash nondefense discretionary spending, including foreign aid.

Initial House budget proposals may include deep cuts to foreign aid funding, but the end result is likely to be a flat budget, a Republican lobbyist told Devex. While Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, and Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky, Republican House Appropriations Committee leaders, who have been viewed as aid champions, have helped fend off aid cuts in the past, both said that they don’t believe the double-digit increases requested by the Biden administration are merited, the lobbyist pointed out.

If Congress cannot come to any budget compromise, the government may be funded through a yearlong continuing resolution, or CR, which just extends current funding levels. Congress often punts on the budget vote by resorting to short-term CRs that only last for a few weeks or months, which prevents agencies from making long-term spending plans. An annual CR in lieu of a budget bill would avoid some of those planning challenges, but it is not an effective way to govern, ONE Campaign’s Hart said.

“It would not be catastrophic but it doesn’t enable us to respond to urgent crises and shifting needs,” he said.

So it will be important to see if Congress can approve a package of budget bills before the current Dec.16 deadline.

The Republican lobbyist said Congress is likely to pass a short-term measure through February, buying more time to wrangle over the fiscal 2023 budget.

Others are more optimistic. The leaders of the Senate appropriations committee are both retiring and are likely to push for the budget bills to pass. Hart said the “incentives to move the bill and clear the decks will outweigh the more cynical scenario.”

Democrats could pass a budget package in the House without Republican votes before the end of the year, but in the Senate, 10 Republicans would have to come on board to approve the bills. Hart said this is doable.  

“I think the specter of yearlong [continuing resolutions] makes it more urgent and compelling,” he told Devex. 

Another key concern is that in recent years a sizable amount of federal foreign aid spending, particularly for global health and humanitarian response, has come from emergency supplemental funding bills. Getting those supplemental funding bills approved going forward may prove more difficult.

Those bills are traditionally seen as a separate pool of money outside the normal budget process, but in recent years that designation has become blurred as Republicans treat them more like traditional non-emergency spending. If they take power, Republicans may demand that supplemental funding is offset with cuts or funds from other parts of the budget, or they might balk at increases to the base budget given that there’s already emergency money, Buckingham said.

Experts were split about the fate of future supplemental funding bills, including for Ukraine. Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, a possible future speaker of the House, has said he doesn’t want to write blank checks to Ukraine, but Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, the current Senate minority leader, has generally been supportive of further assistance to Ukraine

Policy priorities

Regardless of how the election plays out, there are a number of key pieces of development legislation that the next Congress will need to take up.

One of those is a reauthorization of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. The program has generally had bipartisan support and experts expect that to continue.

Rep. Mike McCaul, the Republican from Texas who is likely to become the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman if the GOP wins the House, has supported PEPFAR in the past.

Often the path of least resistance is the simplest bill possible — in this case, it would be one that just extends the current authorization of PEPFAR for another five years. That could well happen with PEPFAR reauthorization, rather than having a protracted debate about how it might change.

The Global Food Security Act is on track to be extended by the end of this calendar year. It has passed the House, and the Senate is considering attaching it to the National Defense Authorization Act, which must pass. That type of must-pass bill may become even more critical in the upcoming Congress because attaching other legislation to it may be the only vehicle to move it through gridlock.

Another key reauthorization is the Farm Bill, which will impact international food assistance. During the Trump administration, there was pushback against a recent movement to increase local purchasing of food aid and providing cash assistance instead of goods to those struggling with food insecurity. But if there are fewer far-right members of Congress, that pushback may be tempered, said Bill O’Keefe, the executive vice president for mission, mobilization, and advocacy at Catholic Relief Services.

Bipartisanship will be tougher on some issues such as gender equality — a trend we’ve already seen, said Justin Fugle, head of policy at Plan International USA. For example, the Keeping Girls in School Act, which was approved by HFAC earlier this year, had to remove any references to child marriage or early pregnancy to gain support because those issues were seen as related to abortion, he said. 

One of the administration’s key priorities in the U.S. Agency for International Development is localization, but the election isn’t likely to hamper the localization agenda, which is largely bipartisan. Several experts pointed out that the push for localization can be traced back to the Bush administration and was a key element in former USAID Administrator Mark Green’s strategy during the Trump administration.

A House staffer told Devex that some key Republican staffers are well-informed on localization, but that there still needs to be a lot of education about the issue. Much of the skepticism is based on the fact that USAID has tried this before and it hasn’t worked. But the staffer said that “no one is putting their foot down against it.”

Committee leadership

A new Congress will mean new faces on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee, potential new subcommittee structures, and a change in leadership.

If Republicans take the House, Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas, is likely to become chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. McCaul has worked with the development community on a number of issues and while he is likely to prioritize countering China and oversight on Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal, he may also work on global food security and global health security. He recently sponsored the global malnutrition bill.

McCaul has also expressed an interest in aid innovation and effectiveness, so those might be areas to watch as well.

Republicans are also likely to create an oversight subcommittee, which may take the place of the international development subcommittee. There are also some discussions about an additional subcommittee focused on global threats including cybersecurity, food security, and global health security, Devex has learned.

If Democrats are able to secure a 51-seat majority in the Senate, it would give them an edge on the Foreign Relations Committee, which currently has an even number of Democrats and Republicans. That could make it easier to move nominees for key government posts out of committee, a process that has frequently stalled during this Congress, CGD’s Collinson said.

Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, is likely to continue as chairman if Democrats retain power; if they lose the Senate, ranking Republican member Sen. James Risch of Idaho will take the job.

Regardless of the election results, there will be changes on the Senate Appropriations Committee, where the top Republican and the top Democrat are both retiring. Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont who currently chairs the committee, has long been a champion of development funding. If Democrats keep control of the Senate, his replacement is likely to be Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, who doesn’t have the same background but has been supportive of development issues, experts said. If Republicans take the Senate, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is likely to become the chair.

The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee responsible for the foreign aid budget will have the same top leadership: Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, both of whom have been supporters of development spending in the past. The only difference is that the chair would switch based on which party wins the election. The House Appropriations Subcommittee responsible for the state and foreign operations budget is also likely to maintain its current leadership.

Update Nov. 10, 2022: This article has been updated to clarify that language in the Keeping Girls in School Act had to be changed in order to win approval from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.