[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
USAID'S FOREIGN POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT PRIORITIES IN THE ERA OF
GREAT POWER COMPETITION
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
April 10, 2024
__________
Serial No. 118-94
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov, http://docs.house.gov,
or http://www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
56-227PDF WASHINGTON : 2026
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey GREGORY MEEKS, New Yok, Ranking
JOE WILSON, South Carolina Member
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania BRAD SHERMAN, California
DARRELL ISSA, California GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
ANN WAGNER, Missouri WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
BRIAN MAST, Florida DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
KEN BUCK, Colorado AMI BERA, California
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee DINA TITUS, Nevada
ANDY BARR, Kentucky TED LIEU, California
RONNY JACKSON, Texas SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
YOUNG KIM, California DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida COLIN ALLRED, Texas
BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan ANDY KIM, New Jersey
AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN-RADEWAGEN, SARA JACOBS, California
American Samoa KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
FRENCH HILL, Arkansas SHEILA CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK,
WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio Florida
JIM BAIRD, Indiana GREG STANTON, Arizona
MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
THOMAS KEAN, JR., New Jersey JARED MOSKOWITZ, Florida
MICHAEL LAWLER, New York JONATHAN JACOBS, Illinois
CORY MILLS, Florida SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California
RICH MCCORMICK, Georgia JIM COSTA, California
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas JASON CROW, Colorado
JOHN JAMES, Michigan BRAD SCHNEIDER. Illinois
KEITH SELF, Texas
Brenden Shields, Staff Director
Sophia Lafargue, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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REPRESENTATIVES
Page
Opening Statement of Subcommittee Chairman Michael McCaul........ 1
Opening Statement of Subcommittee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks... 2
WITNESSES
Statement of Hon. Samantha Power, Administrator, U.S. Agency for
International Development...................................... 4
Prepared Statement............................................. 8
APPENDIX
Hearing Notice................................................... 62
Hearing Minutes.................................................. 63
Hearing Attendance............................................... 64
Materials for the Record
Statement for the Record, submitted by Rep. Connolly............. 65
Materials for the Record, submitted by Rep. McCormick............ 67
USAID'S FOREIGN POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PRIORITIES IN THE
ERA OF GREAT POWER COMPETITION
----------
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
House of Representatives,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:40 p.m., in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Michael McCaul
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MICHAEL McCAUL
Chairman McCaul. The Committee on Foreign Affairs will come
to order.
The purpose of this hearing is to discuss USAID's foreign
policy and international development priorities in the era of
great power competition. I recognize myself for an opening
statement.
I want to thank you, Administrator Power, for joining us
here today. I've enjoyed working with you over the years as the
United States continues to address the many challenges that we
face in the world today.
USAID is the U.S. government's primary humanitarian and
development assistance organization in the world. They are the
people who bring food to starving children, bring medicine to
the sick and dying, help rebuild schools and bridges and roads
when war or natural disasters have washed them away, and we're
seeing quite a bit of that today.
That is our soft power and that's why I think it's critical
that USAID have a cohesive strategy to grow America's soft
influence while using U.S. taxpayer money as effectively and
efficiently as possible.
One of the biggest success stories of U.S. assistance is
PEPFAR. To date over 25 million lives have been saved. The
president of Botswana personally told me that PEPFAR has,
quote, ``saved a generation from extinction'' and at the same
time it serves as one of America's best soft diplomacy tools.
I'm pleased to say that PEPFAR has been reauthorized. The
budget you have submitted to our committee has some good
provisions to project American leadership. However, much of
this budget reads more like a wish list than a strategic
document to promote American leadership.
The Chinese Communist Party poses a generational threat to
the United States and now more than ever American diplomacy is
critical to counter the CCP's growing influence. They use debt
trap diplomacy through their Belt and Road Initiative and
alarmingly to some extent they are succeeding.
In this great struggle for global balance of power the
choices are clear--freedom and democracy or oppression and
tyranny. Yet, this budget seems to place a higher priority on
DEI programs than combating CCP's malign influence.
The budget includes $3 billion earmarked for, quote,
``inclusive gender equity'' and another $200 million for,
quote, ``gender equity and quality action fund.'' Imposing
these political ideologies is not aid, in my judgment.
Now I'd like to turn to Afghanistan where the Biden
administration's chaotic and deadly withdrawal created a
massive humanitarian crisis that we are dealing with today. We
know for a fact that taxpayer funding aid is flowing to Taliban
fighters and loyalists rather than suffering Afghan women and
children. Hard fought gains to advance women's rights and
promote democracy and stability in Afghanistan were wiped out
by the decision to unilaterally withdraw.
Today Afghanistan is the most oppressive country in the
world for women and girls. Girls have been banned from
attending school. Women are banned from working for NGO's. This
greatly diminishes the ability to get aid to women and children
and the people who need it the most, and it further limits our
oversight capabilities.
The U.S. must adamantly oppose this treatment of Afghan
women and girls and we must work with our friends and allies to
pressure the Taliban to lift these edicts.
Turning to the Western Hemisphere, the crisis at our
southern border is the worst I've seen in my entire career. I
continue to believe that it is a direct cause and effect of
this administration rescinding the migrant protection protocols
known as remain in Mexico.
USAID plays and must continue to play a critical role in
combating the root causes of this migration. We need to turn
off the magnet of open borders and the lack of enforcement of
our immigration laws, which is creating this crisis at our
border.
So finally, Administrator Power, I want to thank you,
though, for being open and accessible and listening to me. We
may not always agree. We can agree to disagree but we can
always agree to have that conversation about what's most
important for the American people and I want to thank you
personally for that.
And with that, the chair now recognizes the ranking member.
STATEMENT OF RANKING MEMBER GREGORY MEEKS
Mr. Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I definitely want
to say thank you to Administrator Power for you joining us
today but all of your tireless work just trying to help people,
just trying to feed people, just trying to show the very best
of what the United States represents.
Your work and what you do on a continuous manner should be
really important. You know, you lead a very vital agency at a
time when USAID's work, its investments in development and
resilience and instability is desperately needed almost every
place around the planet.
Over the last year alone Russia has intensified its brutal
war against Ukraine. Gang violence in Haiti has accelerated the
humanitarian crisis there.
The bloody conflict in Sudan has displaced millions of
people and created the world's largest hunger crisis, and
Israel has faced the deadliest terrorist attack in decades and
the people of Gaza are now facing famine.
You know, what--yet, despite the increased need for USAID's
important work I see my friends on the other side of the aisle
want to cut your budget by as much as 12 percent. Though we
Democrats pushed back against these shortsighted cuts we were
disappointed that the Fiscal Year 1924 appropriations bill
ultimately included a 6 percent cut to foreign assistance and
many of us who supported that bill we only supported it because
we wanted to avert a shutdown, which would have had a
devastating--which would have had devastating consequences.
We must pass the delayed national security supplemental
that passed overwhelmingly in the Senate on a bipartisan basis
which contains over $9 billion for humanitarian assistance.
That's something that we need to pass. We must pass. We must
get it on the floor. We must pass it.
We cannot build a safer, more prosperous world if Congress
continues to gut diplomacy and development and I expect my
Republican colleagues will ask you, Madam Administrator, how
can the U.S. counter China's malign influence around the world
while at the same time what they're doing is failing to provide
you the funding needed to invest in the very tools required to
compete.
That's how we combat China is by funding you and giving you
the tools that is necessary. As we are cutting your budget
China is increasing its. That's no way to stop China's
influence.
Ukraine, already starved of ammunition as the GOP fails to
bring forward a supplemental, has seen half of its energy
infrastructure destroyed by Russia. Putin's war of choice
decimated Ukraine's agriculture industry which drives up food
prices globally as well as that's what causes inflation
globally also.
We must do something immediately in that regards, and it
also robs Ukraine of precious revenues keeping its economy
afloat during this war.
In Sudan the civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces
and the Rapid Support Forces has led to devastating violence
and we are seeing the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war
against ethnic minorities and a humanitarian crisis deepened by
the blocking of humanitarian aid. Eight million people have
been displaced and famine conditions are expected by this
summer in Sudan.
And, of course, in Gaza we have seen this conflict has
resulted in the destruction of more than 60 percent of homes.
Thirty-one percent of children under the age two are acutely
malnutritioned and famine is imminent or already occurring.
So I look forward to hearing from you, Administrator Power,
and how USAID can work to address this acute crisis,
particularly as UNRWA funding remains suspended. We must do
more to address the crisis in Haiti which is engulfed in a
growing catastrophe. Gangs now control more than 80 percent of
Port-au-Prince.
These criminal gangs are responsible for extrajudicial
killings, arms trafficking, systematic sexual and gender-based
violence, looting, and unprecedented coordinated attacks
against Haitian government institutions.
They have blocked the passage of water supplies and food,
threatening widespread hunger and public health crises. You
know, 5.5 million people, nearly half of the country's
population, including 3 million children are reliant upon
humanitarian assistance for their livelihoods.
Of course, we cannot speak about USAID's role in addressing
the development needs of Haiti without a conversation regarding
its security. The multinational security support mission in
Haiti is vital for turning the corner on Haiti's security.
But, again, my Republican colleagues continue to block U.S.
funding to support the MSS funding that has already been
approved by Congress.
USAID plays an indispensable role in how the U.S. addresses
all of these challenges. The foreign assistance that USAID
administers is not a handout but a strategic investment in our
future that is vital for U.S. global leadership and a stable,
more resilient world and the work is needed to be done now more
than ever.
And let me just conclude real quickly by stating that none
of these challenges can be properly addressed without talented
and dedicated workers at USAID and investing in their success.
I urge you, Administrator Power, to continue your efforts
to ensure the agency's workforce reflects the diversity.
Diversity is important in this country--in this country's
history.
We must always be--diversity is strength. It's strength and
an example for others to follow. The diversity of the American
people is important including further expansion of USAID's
successful educational partnership with minority-serving
institutions.
And with that, I yield back my time.
Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields. Other members are
reminded that opening statements may be submitted for the
record. We're pleased to have here today the nineteenth USAID
administrator Samantha Power before us today. Your full
statement will be made part of the record.
I now recognize you for an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF HON. SAMANTHA POWER, ADMINISTRATOR, U.S. AGENCY
FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Ms. Power. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you as
well, Ranking Member Meeks, all of you who've made time to be
here today. I know how much is going on.
[Disturbance in hearing room.]
Chairman McCaul. Order. The committee will come to order.
The committee will come to order. The committee will come to
order. The committee will come to order. The chair instructs
the Capitol Police to remove the protesters from the committee
room. The committee will recess until order is restored pending
the call the chair.
Are we coming to order? Administrator, you may proceed.
Ms. Power. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me start--I will come, in fact, of course, to
discussing Gaza but start with just an image to put in your
minds taken from the lobby of the Republic of Korea's
development agency, which is their equivalent today of USAID.
In the lobby they display an old bag of flour from the
1940's marked with the words ``From the American people,''
which, of course, is what we put on all of our USAID
programming around the world.
This bag of flour, the remnants of it, is a reminder of how
the United States supported the people of Korea when they were
one of the poorest countries on the planet. Today, of course,
South Korea is one of the world's richest nations and last year
they spent nearly $4 billion providing aid to other nations.
This year they plan to increase that by 30 percent. That is
the Republic of Korea's story and that is the story of how the
United States over time has supported countries in charting
their own paths of development, a journey that has brought
extraordinary results not only for our partners but for our own
people.
We have helped stop the spread of diseases that threaten us
all. We have helped developed more resilient high-yield crops
that can feed growing populations.
We have helped people and nations rise up from poverty and
in doing so also invested billions in American small
businesses, opening up markets as well for American products.
Eight of our top 10 trading partners today were once the
recipients of U.S. assistance. Under President Biden's
leadership and in partnership with this committee with whom we
work really closely we are building on that remarkable legacy.
In Ukraine USAID has helped farmers withstand Putin's
brutal attempts to destroy the agricultural sector. Using
resources that you all mobilized in the supplementals we have
been able to get those farmers the seeds, the equipment, and
help them build the alternative export routes that they needed
while they obtained a military and logistic capability to
reopen the Black Sea grain route that had, of course, been such
a major export route before Putin's full scale invasion.
Just to pause for a second on what that work has produced,
Ukraine has actually rebounded its grain export numbers to near
prewar levels, some months even exceeding what they were able
to export in the agricultural sector. That is just remarkable,
but it also has had the effect of helping bring down global
grain prices by 26 percent since their high point in 2022.
In Nigeria we are providing community health workers with
X-ray and portable artificial intelligence technologies to spot
diseases like tuberculosis early, which has helped increase TB
diagnoses by a third in a single year so that patients can get
treatment and outbreaks don't spread across the planet.
Across Africa we are working to connect African and
American companies and reduce barriers to trade through the
PROSPER Africa Initiative, efforts that since 2019 have
generated some $86 billion in trade and investment, again,
building prosperity not only for our African partners but also
for those businesses that have connected here at home.
Bipartisan support for these efforts makes Americans safer
and more prosperous and provides a critical foundation for
American influence in a world where other global powers, as the
chairman and Ranking Member Meeks have alluded to, those other
powers are working aggressively to erode U.S. alliances and
diminish basic rights and freedoms around the world.
For example, the PRC's global lending spree has made the
PRC now the world's largest debt collector. That is an
important fact and one that I think we need to do more to
communicate about.
For every dollar of assistance that the PRC provides to low
income and middle income countries the PRC has provided $9 of
debt. So for every dollar of grant $9 in debt. The opposite is
true of the United States. For every dollar of debt we provide
we provide at least $9 of assistance.
The PRC's assistance, as you all know, tends to be
negotiated behind closed doors, which helps fuel corruption and
can often give rise to programs and initiatives that show a
flagrant disregard for human rights.
One famous example is the Safe Cities Initiative whereby
the PRC has provided surveillance and facial recognition
technology that can monitor critics, journalists, and
activists, and that technology has been provided to more than
80 countries.
We need American leadership to advance different models of
development and governance, models that honor freedom,
transparency, dignity and opportunity for all.
The Biden-Harris administration's Fiscal Year 2025 request
of $28.3 billion for USAID's fully and partially managed
accounts give us the resources to continue that leadership.
With these funds we will help nations around the world
strengthen food security, improve health, and drive economic
growth. We will also respond to historic levels of humanitarian
need.
USAID teams have been working day and night to address the
catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza where nearly the
entire population is living under the threat of famine.
[Disturbance in hearing room.]
Chairman McCaul. The committee will come to order. The
committee will come to order. The committee will suspend while
the Capitol Police restore order. The committee will suspend
until Capitol Police restore order. The Capitol Police will
remove protesters from the committee room. No more outbursts.
You may proceed, Administrator.
Ms. Power. I will, and I will wrap up here shortly.
Combining, again, the response to the catastrophe in Gaza
we are also, of course, working to address the crises that you
mentioned in Ukraine, Sudan, and beyond and a growing number of
natural disasters that are battering vulnerable people.
To put this in numbers, the number of people in
humanitarian need needing humanitarian assistance has increased
by nearly a third, from 274 million in 2022 to 363 million at
the end of last year--at the end of 2023.
Increasing by that amount in such a short period of time
really speaks to the level of need out there. So we will need
both the $10 billion in this budget request that you have
before you but also, as has been mentioned, desperately need
the $10 billion in the emergency humanitarian assistance in the
pending national security supplemental.
If we don't get these resources we will be forced to make
draconian cuts in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan. The list goes on.
I want to just wrap up by talking about our recognition,
though, also the need for tradeoffs and the need for cost
effectiveness. This budget gives us specific resources to help
us deliver better value for money.
We just last year inaugurated a new Office of the Chief
Economist and that team is already expanding our use of
rigorous analysis across the agency to identify those programs
that can give us the highest impact per dollar invested, the
so-called best buy, so that those can be scaled.
I'll give you just one quick example where this team
identified a poverty reduction program in Uganda, which is
offering a sequenced set of supports like trainings and
financial services that help refugees move from needing
humanitarian assistance to earning sustainable livelihoods for
themselves.
For every dollar being invested in that program households
are seeing over four times the return in economic benefits and
we are now expanding it to other nations.
You have given us the ability to launch something called
the Edge Fund, which is an incentive fund to fuel public-
private partnerships, and it is designed to apply the private
sector's unique comparative advantages to some of the largest
global development challenges.
These seed resources give us catalytic and derisking money
to work with companies like Citibank, Wal--Mart, Johnson &
Johnson. The list goes on.
And I'm very proud, Mr. Chairman, working with you, the
ranking member and others we have between----
[Disturbance in hearing room.]
Chairman McCaul. The committee will suspend while the
Capitol Police restore order. The committee will come to order.
Administrator, you may proceed.
Ms. Power. T1Simply to say that in trying to catalyze far
more private sector investment we have been successful in
growing public-private partnerships and private sector partner
contributions to USAID activities by over 60 percent just since
Fiscal Year 1921.
To continue to drive that progress we need to keep
investing in our workforce, make sure that it is nimble and
empowered to pursue truly catalytic change.
If we do make these investments I have no doubt we can
continue America's extraordinary legacy of leadership in
building a more secure and prosperous world for all.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Power follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman McCaul. Thank you, Administrator.
Let me just say I admire and appreciate your passion that
you bring to this job and it is a very difficult job that
carries a lot of responsibility.
I want to turn to Afghanistan. We heard testimony from
Generals McKenzie and Milley about the withdrawal.
[Disturbance in hearing room.]
Chairman McCaul. The committee will come to order.
The committee will suspend until Capitol Police escort the
protesters out.
What was clear in that testimony is that Ambassador Wilson
believed that we could hold on to the embassy and keep the flag
flying because, in his view, he believed we can normalize
relations with the Taliban.
That didn't work out so well. Now the Taliban is in control
of the country, and I talked about the impact on the women and
girls in that country. We have provided $2 billion since August
2021 and SIGAR produced its report that revealed, as I feared,
that U.S. cash shipments do in fact benefit the Taliban.
My question is how do you plan to revise this program to
ensure the Taliban is not benefiting from this assistance. In
other words, what is your alternative to cash payments?
Ms. Power. Well, one of the reasons that the voucher system
has become a system of choice in many parts of the world is we
are, of course, interested in working to ensure that citizens
are not dependent on humanitarian assistance and one of the
things that vouchers do is they allow markets to get created--
you know, shopkeepers to make money, goods to be procured and
manufactured locally.
So cash programs are an important part of the solution
through vouchers but they are also useful because vouchers
allow for more transparency, you know, where the money is
going.
So we are continually assessing our activities. As you
know, we work only with trusted partners like the World Food
Programme, UNICEF, and others that we work with all around the
world.
In Afghanistan, beyond our standard rigorous controls and
assurances and the requirement that every implementing partner
has to report any diversion, we have independent third party
monitoring that does site visits and tries to scrutinize those
transactions.
Again, we have seen partners that we fund actually
suspending assistance because of the diversion or because women
are not allowed to be employed depending--there's two sets of
reasons to suspend and then after conditions change restarting
assistance.
So happy to work with your teams----
Chairman McCaul. Can I ask you about that? Because the
NGO's were prohibited from hiring women. Has that changed? And
what have you done to try to help change that policy?
Ms. Power. Well, most of the U.N. or the U.N. system came
together and developed a set of principles whereby women had to
be beneficiaries of the resources, of course, and that women
aid workers had to be part of delivery.
I would say in force the Taliban edict remains the same.
Enforcement is uneven, and what our partners have done is find
ways to maneuver around it so as to ensure that women continue
to be part of the delivery system in some form.
That doesn't always mean it is the same form in which it
occurred prior to the fall of Kabul and the takeover by the
Taliban.
Chairman McCaul. Well, I just want to ensure the U.S.
taxpayer dollars are not directly funding the Taliban. I know
you can't completely assure that and it's troubling. We're
facing a similar issue with Haiti.
Until they have some form of government it's hard to
provide that assistance, as I very much know how desperately
it's needed, and I'm very empathetic to the people of Haiti.
Let me shift to your role as not just the administrator of
USAID but you sit on the board of MCC and the Development
Finance Corporation. These are the three main U.S. agencies
that really can combat the malign influence of the Chinese
Communist Party.
You talked about this in your opening statement. We are
looking at ways to be more effective against the Belt and Road
policies.
Can you comment on that but, specifically, we are working
on a bipartisan bill to reform the Development Finance
Corporation where we can provide them with more equity so that
you can have more private investment in these countries that
are almost held hostage to this debt trap that you talked about
that the CCP gets them into.
Ms. Power. Thank you, and thank you for your leadership in
securing the passage of the BUILD Act in the first place and
putting the D in development finance--in the Development
Finance Corporation.
We work really closely with the DFC. As I've made clear to
Scott Nathan and the DFC leadership, you know, we view USAID
teams all around the world. We have missions in more than a
hundred countries or programs in more than a hundred countries,
missions in more than 80 countries.
That's our ground game for deal spotting, for creating
regulatory reform that makes it possible then for the private
sector to come in whether partnering with DFC or not.
So we're pretty heartened by where the partnership is
going. About 20 percent of DFC's transactions this year were
supported by USAID in some fashion. I think that can be even
higher.
With regard to scoring, I know OMB and DFC are in touch and
hoping to come forward with compromise language. There are
different views on that, of course, up here on the Hill and
within the administration.
But it would be extremely important that something be
achieved in that regard, not least because even though we want
to see DFC grow and know it needs to grow, particularly in
light of geopolitical competition and then like of the
infrastructure and other needs around the world, everything
comes out of the same pot of resource constrained money.
And so, fundamentally, a scoring fix would also be very
advantageous for us being able to grow our public-private
partnerships, our economic growth programming, our efforts to
help countries deal with debt that they've incurred through
working with the PRC.
Chairman McCaul. And I think the issue is the way it's
scored by OMB it doesn't take into account the return on the
investment that they get per dollar. And I know the ranking
member and I are in agreement on this.
I've worked--and I've been talking to Senator Coons on the
Senate side, and we are working in a bipartisan way like we
normally do on this committee to reform this so it can work the
way that Congress envisioned it to work.
And I appreciate your candor on this. It'll be helpful in
terms of final passage. With that, the chair now recognizes the
ranking member.
Mr. Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Again, thank you, Administrator Power, for leading in USAID
and the role that USAID has played in trying to address the
dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.
USAID and several other international partners have raised
the alarm about the risk of famine in Gaza, particularly in the
north where evidence indicates famine is eminent or possibly
already happening and with the tragic killing of seven World
Central Kitchen employees in a drone strike I fear humanitarian
assistance delivery will become even more challenging.
So could you please update the committee on the status of
food security in Gaza and what we are doing to address it
beyond waiting for the construction of a temporary Department
of Defense pier?
Ms. Power. Thank you.
Well, let me just say that the conditions are as dire as
any I have seen in my career and we have made some progress, I
would say, a particular acceleration of progress in the last
few days with more throughput--you know, more food and material
getting into Gaza, over 400 trucks today or yesterday and the
day before, and those are the first time that we have been able
to clear that number.
But we need to go way beyond that because in addition to
the fact that there were 500 trucks getting in commercial and
humanitarian before October 7th the level of destruction as was
alluded to, I think, by you in your opening statement, the
destruction of granaries and markets and arable land and then
the fact that so few trucks got in over so many months means we
have massive catch up to do if we together are to avoid the
worst form of famine imaginable.
So, again, you had very little--almost no child
malnutrition before October 7th and you now have a massive
spike, and particularly in the north one and three kids are
suffering from malnutrition.
And, again, the reports of famine also spreading to the
south makes sense, again, because so little assistance has
gotten in commensurate to the needs of more than 2 million
people.
Mr. Meeks. Thank you for that. And, as you also know, I
continue to be deeply concerned for the people of Haiti. In
fact, last month both you and Secretary Blinken responded to
this crisis denouncing new humanitarian assistance funding for
Haiti totaling more than $58 million and, you know, I want to
support programs that alleviate the suffering of the Haitian
people, reduce violence and support the peaceful transition of
power in a process that is Haitian owned and led.
So my questions to you, Madam Administrator, is how was
USAID addressing these objectives in the immediate and long
term and what steps has USAID taken to ensure community-led
organizations inside Haiti and the diaspora are included in
programming, planning, and implementation?
Ms. Power. Thank you. Well, with great difficulty is the
short answer, particularly because of the breakdown of law and
order in the capital and the gang takeover of many
neighborhoods that until recently were stable.
Haiti has been challenged in terms of lawlessness and gang
violence for a long time but this is certainly a scale of
violence that we have not seen before.
I will say that most of USAID's programs outside of the
capital are still functioning. Ninety-two percent of the
clinics that you help us fund are still operational in Haiti.
We are working, of course, with the State Department in
looking at ways we will be in a position to support the
political transition that needs to move forward, has needed to
move forward, as you well know, and a message you've delivered
many times because, you know, again, the political, the
security, the humanitarian, they all go together.
And so the Transitional Council needs to move forward, need
to assume temporary powers but then move quickly to elections.
At the same time, we really need this multinational security
police support force--police force to be able to deploy.
In addition, that will then make it easier to resume
training of the Haitian National Police who have really been
courageous in trying to stand up to the gangs in these recent
weeks of deterioration.
But we can't look at just the political or just the
humanitarian or we'll be in stopgap security, political,
humanitarian.
We need to deploy resources against all of those and,
therefore, I hope--really sincerely hope that the holds will be
lifted on the support that we are trying to provide the Kenyans
so that they can get the predeployment training and equipment
that they need to be able to do the job when they do deploy.
Mr. Meeks. Thank you. I'm out of time.
I yield back.
Chairman McCaul. If I could just add to that.
I have requested a briefing from the National Security
Council on this very issue. I want to be supportive. But until
I've been briefed on what the plan is and where the money and
guns are going to I cannot in good conscience send money and
guns down to a lawless society without a government.
We have a long history in this country of arming countries
with weapons and cash and it blows back on us. I want to make
sure that what we're doing here is makes sense not only for the
American taxpayer but for the Haitian people because if we arm
the warlords and fund them they will be the victims. The people
of Haiti will be the victims.
So with that, I recognize Mrs. Young Kim.
Mrs. Kim of California. Thank you, Chairman McCaul and
Ranking Member Meeks, for holding today's foreign assistance
budget hearing.
I want to thank Administrator Samantha Power for joining us
and for your testimony. I especially appreciated your reference
to South Korea.
After the Korean War, obviously, Korea has now become one
of the economic superpowers and now as you mentioned they are
now from recipient country to become a powerful donor country,
providing $4 billion to help other countries.
So that is a remarkable success story and, obviously, you
make a very good case of why we need to continue to stay
engaged in U.S. providing foreign, especially development
assistance.
So today with the Japanese prime minister coming to
Washington, DC, and addressing the joint sessions of Congress
this week I wanted to raise the trilateral relationship between
the United States, South Korea, and Japan.
I support the increased collaboration within this
relationship on global development and health issues,
particularly as Japan and South Korea emerged as leading
bilateral donors especially in Southeast Asia.
I recently welcomed Assistant Administrator Schiffer to my
office so we can discuss the issue ahead of myself and
Congressman Ami Bera leading a bipartisan delegation on our
trip to South Korea.
So I just wanted to mention that and ask you if you can
share USAID's efforts to leverage this emerging relationship to
increased cooperation on development and global health issues
with our Indo-Pacific allies.
Ms. Power. Thank you so much and thank you for all of your
leadership on so many of the issues that we're going to be
talking about today.
You know, I think this is one of the most exciting growth
areas that I've seen. You know, I was part of the Obama
administration for 8 years. I was out for 4 years, then came
back, and it's really a sea change in our ability to sit down
with our Korean and Japanese partners and, you know, brainstorm
and plan together.
We see it happening at the country level. In Ghana, as you
probably were briefed by Assistant Administrator Schiffer we
have--a trilateral memorandum of cooperation on universal
health coverage where we each try to leverage our specific
areas of expertise and bring them to bear in a coordinated way.
One of the things I've only actually begun to sort of dig
into the details on is we, in September of last year, I believe
it was, signed a new memorandum of cooperation looking at
electricity transmission lines in Sub-Saharan Africa and we're
looking together between us, the Koreans, and the Japanese
through Power Africa to develop 1,500 kilometers of new
transmission lines to end energy poverty, and this follows the
successful development of 2,000 kilometers of transmission
lines under the previous agreements.
So I think you'll start to see almost a contagion here as
missions get the experience of working trilaterally begin to
branch out from health to agriculture to education, et cetera.
But we're really trying to push it from headquarters.
Mrs. Kim of California. Thank you. You know, I also
recently traveled to Southeast Asia where partners are eager to
work with the United States and they are in desperate need of
many of USAID's programs, particularly in the capacity building
area and technical assistance.
This is urgent, given the growing influence of the Chinese
Communist Party in the region and as U.S. allies in the Indo-
Pacific such as South Korea, Japan, we're talking about, and
Taiwan, they have adapted their own strategies to bolster their
development programming in Southeast Asia.
So can you talk about how USAID is working with our allies
in Northeast Asia to pursue the co-development or co-financing
programmings in Southeast Asia?
Ms. Power. Thank you. Well, I think what I saw on my visit
last year to Vietnam is that the kinds of relationships we were
just discussing, again, are playing out at the Ambassadorial
level, at the embassy level.
One of our great comparative advantages as the United
States is that we have these large teams at our missions
constituted, largely, of citizens of the countries in which we
work.
So in Vietnam that's hundreds of Vietnamese who work for
the U.S. Government in pursuit of development and that is
something we offer to our Japanese and our Korean counterparts
and say, look, we have the spotters--a little bit like what I
was saying on Development Finance Corporation--to ascertain
where together we can make the greatest impact.
So, you know, I think I hope to have more examples to
offer. I think clean energy transition in Indonesia is already
an area of collaboration.
In Vietnam work in the Mekong together and, you know, just
as I was saying with the PRC now the world's largest debt
collector there is a real opening, and notwithstanding all of
the PRC investments in recent years you're actually seeing a
fairly precipitous decline in their investments through the
Belt and Road Initiative and into infrastructure.
That creates really important possibilities for the
President's global initiative on infrastructure as well to be
something that we do together trilaterally with the Japanese
and the Koreans.
Mrs. Kim of California. Thank you very much for the great
work that you do. I look forward to continuing our
conversation.
Ms. Power. You too. Thank you.
Mrs. Kim of California. Thank you.
Chairman McCaul. The gentlelady yields.
Mr. Sherman is recognized.
Mr. Sherman. I yield 30 seconds to the ranking member.
Mr. Meeks. I just want to thank the chairman for agreeing
to look at to consider freezing--unfreezing the money going to
Haiti.
Unfortunately, you know, we tried to set up a meeting with
the NSC before we left but our schedules didn't work out. So,
hopefully, we'll be able to schedule something this week.
I talked to your staff, but it's really important that we
schedule that meeting very shortly so we can see if we can
release that money because the Kenyans and the MSS forces will
need that dollar.
Chairman McCaul. I appreciate that. Perhaps the
administrator can help facilitate the meeting. It shouldn't be
that difficult to get a briefing, for God's sakes. I would
think so.
Thank you. I yield.
Mr. Sherman. Speaking of briefings, I'm seeking a
classified briefing on Israeli deployments and preparedness on
October 6th and I hope to work with--I've been assured that I
can get it for myself but I'd rather have it for the whole
committee. I look forward to working with leadership.
I see in the audience my friend Sufi Laghari, who has
worked tirelessly for human rights in southern Pakistan Sindh,
and I want to recognize that this is the second anniversary of
the disappearance and likely abduction of 7-year-old Pria
Kumari, a Hindu girl in Sindh province who, perhaps like so
many others, have been subjected to abductions, forced
conversions, and forced marriages.
Ms. Power, you do the most important work perhaps in the
world. We are face--and I want to thank you for doing it. We
have got the supplemental bill that's come over from the Senate
and all the talk is that's money for Ukraine, money for Israel,
perhaps Taiwan.
But there's a lot of money in that bill for humanitarian
purposes, some of it Congress explicitly indicates where you're
supposed to spend the money and the rest we give the
administration discretion.
If we pass that bill can we be assured that, assuming the
security conditions are adequate so that you can actually
operate and, you know, things can deteriorate, we realize, can
we be sure that money will be spent in Armenia, in Tigray, in
Sudan?
Ms. Power. Yes, and I'm happy to elaborate.
Mr. Sherman. And Eastern Congo and the Rohingya refugee
camps in Myanmar--correction, in Bangladesh?
Ms. Power. Yes. And maybe I'll just--just because you often
ask about Ethiopia specifically I'd just give you one fact as
to why this is so very urgent.
The humanitarian response plan in Ethiopia right now which
is, you know, it's not something that's been mentioned prior to
you mentioning it is--the proposal is for 3.2 billion people.
That's--excuse me, $3.2 billion. That's the level of need, 15.5
million people. It is 4 percent funded right now.
Mr. Sherman. Oh, my God.
Ms. Power. We are way down in terms of----
Mr. Sherman. We, obviously, have to--I do want to move on.
And I think the ranking member, of course, brought up the
humanitarian needs in Haiti and Gaza, and I believe that money
from that supplemental bill would go there as well, security
conditions permitting, correct?
Ms. Power. Correct. Correct.
Mr. Sherman. Now a somewhat harder question. There are two
reasons to give foreign aid. One, it's the moral right thing to
do and the second, the title of this hearing, that it helps our
geopolitical position.
And we all--we're politicians. We recognize that cutting
the ribbon, the taking credit for good things, is important
politically. And so you have people on the ground who tend to
just want to focus on getting the job done, feeding the hungry
people.
We had resistance 10, 15 years ago against even putting the
flag on the bag because we had partners who didn't like
America. They wanted the American grain.
And so, obviously, you cannot legally give money to any
terrorist organization or any organization that provides
material aid to terrorist organizations.
But is a part of your process in deciding which partners to
fund looking at whether those organizations use their very
powerful and U.S.-enhanced bully pulpit to attack America and
its allies or to support our foreign policy?
How do you get people in your organization who just want to
feed people to care about the second reason we fund foreign
aid--the geopolitical?
Ms. Power. Well, let me actually thank the chairman because
some of the legislation that his team and maybe working with
you have initiated on branding is really, really important
because it's actually the law.
Mr. Sherman. I'm particularly concerned that an
organization very close to Hamas, rhetorically, at least, is
getting and has over many years while they've supported Hamas
rhetorically been getting aid from USAID, and I'll put
additional material in the record and provide it for you as
well.
Ms. Power. Okay. Thank you.
Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields.
The chair recognizes Mrs. Wagner.
Mrs. Wagner. I thank the chairman, and thank you,
Administrator Power, for being here.
For decades the United States has promoted global
prosperity and self-sufficiency through its international
development programs, an approach that recognizes the dignity
and inherent value of our partner countries.
China, on the other hand, uses its so-called development
programs to exploit and coerce. But instead of empowering
countries to resist China's influence and pursue prosperity the
administration is pushing its radical agenda on our development
partners, sacrificing effectiveness and efficiency in service
of unrealistic and, I think, unfair climate goals.
Administrator Power, according to the Atlantic Council,
China's investment in sub-Saharan energy infrastructure grew by
a factor of 10 over the 2010's and more than half of the $52
billion in energy loans issued by China's two main development
finance institutions between 2000 and 2022 were allocated to
fossil fuels.
Our partners simply want greater access to electricity for
their people. They should--this should be a no brainer for the
United States. Why is the administration forcing costly clean
energy projects on our African partners that are not responsive
to their needs and taking pragmatic approaches like natural gas
off the table?
Ms. Power. Thank you. It will not shock you to hear that I
need to reject the premise of the question because I think two
aspects of it are at odds with what we find in the world.
First, as it happens, we have an all of the above approach
to electrification and to energy. It is absolutely true that we
want to lower emissions. We also recognize some of the
deleterious health effects of pollution that stems from
fossil----
Mrs. Wagner. If I could----
Ms. Power. If I could just finish and maybe make the second
point because it may be more to your point.
Mrs. Wagner. But your point is wrong. Half of the $52
billion is going to fossil fuels. So please explain that.
Ms. Power. Half of whose?
Mrs. Wagner. Of--I am telling you that the energy
infrastructure grew by a factor of 10 and more than half of the
$52 billion in energy loans issued by China's two main
development finance institutions were allocated for fossil
fuels.
Ms. Power. I know you're talking specifically about Africa.
So I would just--I don't know if you've seen the African
Union's strategy on energy which came out, which basically puts
the pursuit of clean energy at the center of it, and that is in
line with what we hear from our African partners all the time.
Not for some ideological reason or because they're woke but
because----
Mrs. Wagner. Why is natural gas on table?
Ms. Power [continuing]. Affordable energy and the prices of
solar and other clean energy solutions.
Mrs. Wagner. Why is natural gas off the table?
Ms. Power. It's not off the table. Again, it's part of--I
could come back to your staff and share with you some of the
funding that we have done particularly, as you know, to render
other forms of energy more stable. Sometimes that's part of the
solution.
Mrs. Wagner. We'd like that because all they want is
electricity and they're using it by fossil fuels.
Ms. Power. They want electricity and in some instances,
many of the places we work, which are very remote areas which
don't have a chance of getting connected to the grid soon, a
pop-up solar installation can be the only hope of a community--
--
Mrs. Wagner. Let me--let me move on.
Ms. Power [continuing]. Actually getting access to
electricity.
Mrs. Wagner. Let me move on. The administration has
contributed $1 billion toward the Just Energy Transition
Partnership, JETP, in South Africa, which plans to transition
the South African power grid toward clean energy solutions by
paying owners to close their coal plants earlier than
otherwise--than they otherwise would.
Today, coal-fired power plants provide over 80 percent of
South Africa's electricity and with the current energy crisis
plaguing the country the South African people view the JETP
very unfavorably.
How do you respond to African governments who view this
administration's refusal to support any nongreen energy
projects as hypocritical?
Ms. Power. So as it happens I attended President Biden's
bilateral meeting with President Ramaphosa of South Africa
where he asked what we could do to accelerate the
implementation of JETP and where additional resources could be
provided to hasten the transition.
So, again, we're just, I guess, maybe hearing from
different constituencies.
Mrs. Wagner. Eighty percent of South Africa's electricity
is coal fired.
Ms. Power. And they recognize the emissions effects, the
health effects, and ultimately the need to begin to transition
workers to other forms of labor.
Mrs. Wagner. They don't like J--they don't like it one bit.
My time has expired. But I very much need a meeting with you,
ma'am, because I want to go over some of these specific----
Ms. Power. As the chairman attested I'm happy to give you
my cell phone. We can talk later this evening.
Mrs. Wagner. That's awesome.
Ms. Power. I'm very eager to dig into the details of these
remarks.
Mrs. Wagner. I appreciate it and I yield back to the chair.
Chairman McCaul. Sounds like a date.
The gentlelady yields.
Ms. Power. I can't wait.
Chairman McCaul. The chair recognizes Mr. Keating.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Are you sure that I'm in order for now? I just didn't want
to take anyone else's time.
I just want to address that. Thank you for being here,
Administrator. I wanted to--am I right? That's what I thought.
Okay.
Ms. Wild. Can we restart my time?
Chairman McCaul. I will reset the clock and my apologies.
Ms. Wild. No problem.
Chairman McCaul. Ms. Wild is recognized.
Ms. Wild. Thank you very much.
Administrator Power, thank you so much for being here
today. I appreciate your service and your time today. Last
week, I led a letter to Speaker Johnson on the critical need to
include humanitarian aid in any supplemental package that we
consider in the House, aid for Gaza as well as aid to other
deeply vulnerable areas around the world.
First, let me just ask as a preface would you agree that
humanitarian aid also functions as an investment in our own
national security?
Ms. Power. Yes, because I think as awful and messed up as
so many situations are right now for civilians imagine people
being taken off the rolls for being able to get a voucher or
access to some small amount of food.
Where do they go? Where do young men go? What are the other
opportunities for them? And if I could just do one--I know you
have many more questions.
But the word supplemental when it comes to humanitarian
assistance is a little bit of a misnomer.
Ms. Wild. I agree. What would you prefer to see used?
Ms. Power. Well, let me explain why it's a misnomer first,
which is simply that our base humanitarian assistance were
moved into the very generous Ukraine supplementals for the rest
of the world.
So when we--what has happened is the supplementals have
become the place where people have sought to put a large share
of our humanitarian assistance. So if we don't get a
supplemental it's not just that we're not getting new money--
supplemental money to deal with Sudan, a new war that happened
between this year and last, or Gaza, which started on October
7th.
It is that we are not even where we would have been--we'd
be down a third from last year. Basically, we have 40 percent
more needs and 40 percent less resources.
Ms. Wild. Okay. I get your point. We need to--I agree with
you and I've noted that problem. Last year, I had the
opportunity to see the devastating impact of hunger
particularly on children when I traveled to Kenya, and saw
USAID and the World Food Programme in action and I was
especially impressed by the importance of these ready to use
therapeutic food.
The acronym is RUTF, which is not a particularly great
acronym. But anyway and it says right on it U.S. aid from the
American people for children with severe acute malnutrition,
and I learned amazing things about this little package
including that this provides enough caloric intake for a child
for 1 day.
And my question to you is what needs to be done to ensure
that these are more widely available? Now, granted, this is not
a full, you know, complete complement of nutrition and so forth
but it certainly helps a lot in curbing child hunger.
Is that true?
Ms. Power. Absolutely. We launched an unprecedented
investment in RUTF 2 years ago at the General Assembly and got
other countries not only to match the several hundred million--
the $200 million that we invested but to go beyond that.
That has helped because supply chains, of course, depend on
predictability and advance notice. So knowing there were going
to be these big bulk orders has made it more readily available
because there were some bottlenecks in the supply.
Ms. Wild. Can I stop you for 1 second? Are these being used
in Gaza?
Ms. Power. They are a part of the WFP UNICEF convoys and
are getting in there but we need to scale them, given the
degree of malnutrition. Their exact--I was--actually that was
going to be my next point is this is precisely what we need to
reach those kids under five who have severe acute malnutrition
now.
Ms. Wild. And are there enough of these being made or do we
need to scale up the production of these?
Ms. Power. Well, everything is--unfortunately, it comes
back a little bit to resources. People aren't going to make
them if they're not going to be purchased so we need to
mobilize more resources for humanitarian assistance generally
of which this is a critical subset.
Ms. Wild. And I assume the distribution of them as well. Is
that right?
Ms. Power. The distribution, I think we have the networks
through WFP and UNICEF to ensure that, again, if we have the
resources to purchase them, if we have the resources to take
care of----
Ms. Wild. Even in Gaza?
Ms. Power. Oh, access is critical in Gaza, yes. Sorry.
Ms. Wild. That's what we need, distribution. Okay.
Ms. Power. I thought you mean globally. Yes.
Ms. Wild. Okay. I'm going to really be quick on this last
one. I want to talk about the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
and specifically Section 620(I) which provides that no foreign
assistance will be provided to any country which prohibits or
otherwise restricts the transport or delivery of United States
humanitarian assistance.
Are you aware of any U.S.-provided humanitarian assistance
that is being restricted by the Israeli government?
Ms. Power. Well, I think President Biden has been clear
that there have been significant restrictions that have impeded
delivery and we are trying to work those through and have made,
again, accelerated progress in recent days--you know, customs
restrictions, things that have left assistance, for example,
flour sitting in a port that could be in Gaza.
So we are trying, again, through our diplomatic engagements
and the kind of pressure that President Biden has been exerting
for many months to get more assistance in.
Ms. Wild. Do those rise to the levels of violations of
620(I) or not to that level?
Ms. Power. My understanding this is something that
Secretary Blinken is managing and you'll have a chance, I'm
sure, to engage him on. But the National Security Memorandum 20
that was issued not long ago is taking 620(I) and those
elements into consideration. I think that report is due out in
early May.
Ms. Wild. Thank you very much. Thank you for your
indulgence, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman McCaul. The gentlelady yields.
The chair recognizes Mr. Kean.
Mr. Kean. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to
Administrator Power for being with us today.
I'm going to start with a general question. Investments in
global health research and development not only help the United
States develop innovative solutions to global health challenges
across the world but also invest dollars back into the American
private sector, into research institutions alike.
In New Jersey alone over $1.5 billion has been invested
into research institutions and nearly 20,000 new jobs have been
created. What specific programs in global health generate R&D
investments in U.S.--our industry and also in research
institutions?
Ms. Power. Well, I would--just since we're coming out not
that long ago from COVID, you know, take note of the 700
million vaccines that were made here, purchased by the United
States and given away for free--huge soft power in that but
also that's American companies and workers are benefiting from
that.
I think we see--you know, I mean, I think about it, of
course, from the standpoint of protecting, you know, the health
and safety of Americans by investing in surveillance and labs
and the like but a lot of the research partnerships that the
United States--that USAID has with American universities also
are not only on, you know, seeds and agricultural related
innovation but also in the health sector and I'm happy to have
Atul Gawande come and brief you on the specifics.
Mr. Kean. I would appreciate that. Thank you.
Regarding Ukraine, the United States has provided $22.9
billion from direct budget to help Ukraine meet the emergency
needs of its citizens. What kind of oversight procedures are in
place to ensure that this assistance is not subject to waste,
fraud, and abuse?
Ms. Power. Very extensive. We started very early on when
this direct budget support began to flow, which is provided
only for verified expenditures through the West Bank. So those
expenditures have to be verified before the money flows. It's
not like you hand over a check for a billion dollars every
month and it goes from there.
But we brought Deloitte on in order to do spot checks
across the various ministries that were receiving these funds,
the funds, of course, going to first responders, to teachers,
to health workers and health services.
We have just done a big open source contract and awarded a
contract, I should say, to KPMG to do an audit of all of the
direct budget support. OIG has--our Inspector General has
significantly ramped up the staff working on oversight
specifically of direct budget support including in Kyiv.
Mr. Kean. Have you--excuse me, has USAID begun to implement
OIG's recommendation calling for an action plan to verify the
accuracy of expenditure reports for health care workers?
Ms. Power. Yes, and thank you for mentioning that.
Notwithstanding the title of the report, actually in the report
itself it talks about the remedial steps that USAID has already
taken to address what amounted to--I don't want to call it
clerical errors but errors in how we were actually verifying or
gaps--let me put it that way--in how we were doing the
verification on salaries specifically. But as soon as that was
brought to our attention it is something we smothered and
addressed which the report testifies to.
Mr. Kean. Okay. And all U.S.-provided DBS to Ukraine has
been in the form of grants?
Ms. Power. Correct.
Mr. Kean. And why has USAID not structured its direct
budget support to Ukraine as loans?
Ms. Power. I'd say two main reasons. One, given Ukraine's
budget challenges in light of Putin's aggression the cost of a
dollar of a loan is likely to be somewhere between 80 cents and
a dollar. So the benefit for the taxpayer----
Mr. Kean. But if it was forgivable, for example?
Ms. Power. But would come--say that again.
Mr. Kean. If it's forgivable.
Ms. Power. If it was----
Mr. Kean [continuing]. As others--you know, as many
European Union nations when they do their direct budgeting.
Ms. Power. Yes. So then----
Mr. Kean. They're forgivable from the very beginning.
Ms. Power. Correct, and the way the Europeans have
structured them, again, as, you know, low interest and, you
know, multi years into the future payment recycles.
But the second reason is that, you know, programs like the
nearly $16 billion IMF program are contingent on a certain
amount of capital and liquidity in Ukraine itself and that IMF
investment, which was very unusual for the IMF to operate in a
war zone at that scale, was also presumed the continuation,
again, of the degree of liquidity that we and the Europeans and
the Japanese and others have been able to provide.
So I think there'll be significant shortcomings. Having
said that, we have to get direct budget support to Ukraine. Our
partners have front loaded a lot of the assistance, still
hoping that this vote is going to occur, still hoping that
these resources are going to flow.
And, again, I think it's worth recalling, as you make this
point so often, Putin is not only trying to take over Ukraine
militarily, having failed to do that because of the courage of
Ukrainians and the security assistance we have provided, he is
trying to destroy the economy and the State, and that State
going bankrupt, the morale consequences of having no teachers
paid in schools or not being able to get health care because of
Putin's aggression the ripple effects of that and the gift to
Putin of depriving Ukraine of those resources it really can't
be overstated.
Mr. Kean. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields.
The chair recognizes Ms. Titus.
Ms. Titus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Administrator Power, thank you for being here. As I know
you know that Ugandan constitutional court has, largely, upheld
the country's really draconian anti-homosexuality act and
they've allowed the criminalization of aggravated homosexuality
punished by the death penalty.
This is now to be the law of the land and it's already
resulted in many, many human rights violations including 180
forced evictions and 176 cases of torture. Unfortunately, this
is kind of a current pattern that we're seeing, a larger trend
and abuse of LGBT rights.
My bill the GLOBE Act would reaffirm U.S. position as a
leader in championing human rights and we have put sanctions or
penalties on countries like Uganda that trample on those
rights.
I wonder if you could talk about how USAID works to prevent
violence and human rights abuses like we're seeing in
vulnerable communities like in Uganda and speak about the
importance of our USAID programs that respond to violence and
stigma and discrimination against the LGBTQ community.
Ms. Power. Thank you so much. Yes, it's an extremely
disturbing law and an extremely disappointing court ruling. Let
me just maybe just step for a second outside of your question
and note the deleterious health effects on the Ugandan
population writ large by virtue of the passage of the anti-
homosexuality act.
It is not only LGBTQI+ individuals who are afraid to come
forward, for example, to receive their anti-retrovirals but it
is also people who aren't a member of that community for fear
of being tagged and criminalized and potentially arrested by
virtue of association, for example, with the PEPFAR program.
So we have seen, you know, a dramatic decrease in uptake of
life-saving services as a result of the passage of this law. We
have also seen--and this is something, you know, that also
happened because of a business warning put out or business
advisory put out by the State Department--but, you know,
private sector investment, foreign direct investment in Uganda,
going down--companies that might have been tempted to set up
shop there nervous about their employees and the fate of their
employees.
So while I haven't seen a good study showing the
measurement, again, of the broader ripple effects there's no
question that the law has done health harm and economic harm to
the people of Uganda even outside that community.
I think, you know, we are trying to be nimble and our team
on the ground has just done an incredible job doing small
grants but also PEPFAR I really would applaud for thinking
through what this new penalty, as it were, for being part of
the LGBTQI community or for seeking PEPFAR treatment means so
much more discreet forms of delivery, for example, for
medicines so that people are able to get access to their
medicines in a manner that makes them feel safe, for example,
going to a kind of neutral mailbox, a lockbox of a sort, rather
than going into a PEPFAR clinic.
So these are the kinds of accommodations we have to make in
order to try to ensure as best we can that people keep seeking
the support that they need in order to be able to live healthy
lives even as their dignity is trampled by this law and its
enforcement.
Ms. Titus. Do you see this spreading as it seems to me in
other countries and addressing it there in similar ways?
Ms. Power. I mean, certainly, as you know, there's pending
legislation in a number of African countries and there is--it
is an issue that when times are tough economically or
governments feel under pressure or public pressure because
they're not seem to be delivering this is an issue that has
tended to be demagogued. This is a community that has tended to
be blamed, you know, through history but certainly in recent
history.
So we worry about that a lot. We do a ton of diplomacy. We
do a lot of contingency planning and programming and we take
the cue of the communities that are most vulnerable in terms of
understanding how best to combine public and private diplomacy.
Ms. Titus. So this is yet another front where you're out
there with this soft diplomacy and this real assistance and
helping it on all levels?
Ms. Power. Trying.
Ms. Titus. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman McCaul. The gentlelady yields.
Mr. Barr is recognized.
Mr. Barr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, for
holding the hearing and Administrator Power, thank you for your
service and also thank you for your responsiveness with my
constituent Joe Montgomery in Lexington, Kentucky, and his
company Square One Technology who is seeking to provide water
purification systems in Kenya.
Can you share USAID's goal for water purification in Africa
and the benefits to U.S. foreign policy to have U.S.-made water
purification systems provide this capability to countries
across Africa?
Ms. Power. Well, I can say that the Water for the World Act
is celebrating its anniversary this year and we are shifting to
working with municipalities and utility companies at the
center, so not just building pipes but really looking at
standards, standards that then could lend themselves, for
example, to the embrace of U.S. technology without weighing in
on any particular firm because we do open procurement and the
like and competitive bidding processes and so forth.
But absolutely, as I was saying in my opening statement,
when we can secure regulatory changes on the ground often it is
done in a manner that allows first movers like those in the
United States who have benefited from those technologies sooner
to be able to take advantage of those opportunities.
So as we shift, again, to this emphasis on municipalities
reform and embrace of new technologies at the center rather
than just all the work out in the rural areas and so forth on
piping and sanitation that should create opportunities along
the lines of what you're describing.
Mr. Barr. And I think in addition to the humanitarian pull
of this project there's a strategic value in providing that
soft power overture to places in Africa where Belt and Road is
alive and well and where we can counter with USAID efforts.
Administrator Power, in March the U.N. Security Council
embarrassed itself by passing a resolution calling for a cease-
fire in Gaza that was not directly tied to the release of
innocent hostages currently held by Hamas terrorists.
Instead of providing the moral leadership and clarity the
moment required by voting against that resolution the United
States abstained. Among the countries voting for a cease-fire,
however, were several countries who receive U.S. assistance--
Mozambique, who last year received $469 million from USAID,
Ecuador who received $46.5 million from USAID, Sierra Leone,
who last year received $29.5 million from USAID, to name a few.
These are countries that will happily take money from the
U.S. taxpayer and yet openly vote against our interests in
international bodies like the United Nations.
How is USAID being strategic with its foreign assistance,
ensuring that our assistance aligns with our strategic allies?
Ms. Power. Well, I think assistance decisions, which are
influenced heavily by the strictures that come to us in our
appropriations bills regionally and sectorally--we are 90
percent earmarked by sector. But that doesn't--and there's
significant earmarks by region but your question is still very
valid.
I would just say there are a number of factors and I would
take maybe the countries that you've mentioned--Sierra Leone,
you know, this was a place that was nearly felled by the Ebola
epidemic.
A lot of the investments we have made in Sierra Leone are
in the health sector in order to give them better surveillance,
lab capability, and the like.
As we saw in the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, those
investments are incredibly important to preventing something
like that from happening again. We all remember the panic here
in this country when we had our first Ebola case, which
happened to be from Liberia.
Mozambique--most of those investments are in the public
health sector, again, on TB, on global health security, on HIV,
and Ecuador, the narco trafficking collaboration that we are
doing, you know, has great bearing as well for our own
security.
So I'm only saying that there are factors and it has to be
a composite assessment.
Mr. Barr. I understand, and just reclaiming my time.
And you make--you answered the question persuasively and
you make the point about compartmentalization and we're
achieving objectives.
But I am curious whether or not USAID coordinates with our
U.N. Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield in using the soft power of
USAID to provide a little additional leverage for our interests
at the United Nations because we're doing some very generous
and positive things for these people but they are not
demonstrating a reciprocal appreciation for that assistance on
a strategic level and I would like to see USAID maybe exercise
a little additional muscle in that regard.
Ms. Power. I think, certainly, having had the job that
Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield has, you know, there's probably no
better partnership between a U.N. Ambassador and a USAID
administrator than a former U.N. Ambassador and I think, you
know, she's done a very good job bringing that broader context
to bear.
At the same time, I will tell you having had her job we are
also consistently going into other countries and asking them to
do a whole set of things for us and as we don't win every one
of these votes and Israel in particular is an area where
there's a lot of voting divergence with some countries that we
work with really well on other issues.
But when it comes to showing up against Russian aggression
in Ukraine or to join a statement, you know, which is getting
harder but condemning the genocide against the Uyghurs in the
PRC we are going back in again and again.
And so, you know, I think, to look at the broad voting
convergence is something that I used to do when I was in her
job and I know she does every day to see where is a country or
how are they shifting--is there a moment of opportunity where
they're shifting more in our direction, and that's something we
have actually seen with Ecuador over the course of the last
four or 5 years.
Mr. Barr. Thank you for your response there and, you know,
not just with Israel, not just with Ukraine, but also Taiwan.
So with that, I yield.
Chairman McCaul. The gentleman yields.
The chair recognizes Mr. Jackson.
Mr. Jackson of Illinois. Thank you very much. Thank you for
your leadership and your service, Honorable Ms. Power, and
thank you for understanding that people that need food can also
maintain their dignity and have their conscience and speak
their mind, and I appreciate you not weaponizing the resource
of food that we have been blessed with so abundantly, that we
do have friends, and in every family we can have disagreements
and we can come back together. So not weaponizing food is a
major concern.
I have a concern about the use of food right now in the
Gaza Strip, and are you satisfied with the resources that we
have that are going to stop starvation? This is a period of,
indeed, of fasting that now has turned into famine. What are
the political implications of us not getting food in there that
can be unintended?
Ms. Power. Well, first, let me just say we need to pass the
national security supplemental. Recall that the 1924 budget,
which, again, presumes a national security supplemental does
not have in it enough humanitarian assistance to keep us even
close to flat.
We'd be down 30 percent from where we were last year and
needs--and 50 percent from where we were 2 years ago because of
the Ukraine supplementals providing that plus-up for the rest
of the world.
So we need resources. But to your point I think President
Biden has been really, really clear that there have been too
many restrictions, too many delays, not enough points of
access. You know, we did air drops. We are doing air drops. We
are trying to build a maritime pier.
But nobody thinks that those are solutions to reaching the
food needs of more than 2 million people. We need sustained
land access including to the north, including through new
checkpoints and crossing points.
So a series of commitments, I will say, over the last few
days have been made but there's just not a minute to spare in
seeing the implementation of those commitments and that's
what's important.
Mr. Jackson of Illinois. Administrator Power, when have you
last heard of airdrops being used to supply some humanitarian
food assistance?
Ms. Power. Well, I mean, humanitarians are always----
Mr. Jackson of Illinois. Food air drops.
Ms. Power. Humanitarians are always very reluctant to use
airdrops because they're very imprecise. They don't come in in
bulk. You know, our airdrops, for example, have meals ready to
eat. They're a last resort, and they were needed in Gaza
because there was insufficient land access.
Mr. Jackson of Illinois. Are there any other----
Ms. Power. Yes. I mean, we have had to use them in Deir
Ezzor, in Syria. I started my career in Bosnia where they were
used in eastern Bosnia because of the Serb encirclement of
Bosnian towns.
They are used but they're more expensive, less efficient,
less, of course, scaled by definition than what we always need
and what people deserve, which is land access--sustained land
access, not only to prevent famine, which of course we must do.
That's a, you know, five-alarm fire.
But you mentioned in your comments, I mean, to be able to
live with some form of dignity, not, you know, rushing against
a convoy because you think it might be the last truck that ever
comes to town with food for your kids. You know, that is not
what we as humanitarians believe is a sound humanitarian
approach.
But for that to change there have to, again, be more than
just the Kerem Shalom crossing. But the Erez Crossing has to be
opened. The hours have to be extended even more than they have.
A corridor from Jordan is now being built. We can get these
numbers way up.
Mr. Jackson of Illinois. If I can ask in--reclaiming my
time.
The Sudan crisis is something that's not given much
attention to but I'd like to conclude with a crisis closer to
home regarding Haiti. What is the condition of the food
conditions in Haiti and what can we do about it?
Ms. Power. Well, again, you know, it's really important to
get the security support police from Kenya deployed to Haiti
because the biggest impediment to delivery in Haiti is gang
violence and is the, you know, needs of humanitarians to be
able to safely not only pass through particular neighborhoods
but also to be able to alert communities that the food is
available and for those communities to know they can come and
safely access those resources and the gangs have made that
harder.
So we are getting food and even fuel in and moving but it
is nowhere near what it was, you know, even 6 months ago and
even then I think we all would have said it is insufficient,
and because the economy has shut down and so many businesses,
for example, you know, even American companies that had worked
in Haiti have had to pull out because of the insecurity.
A larger and larger share of the Haitian people are now
dependent on humanitarian assistance. But there's no answer
without security and political transition as well.
Mr. Jackson of Illinois. Well, I thank you very much for
your generosity, your consistency, and I just find it hard to
believe that the world's greatest military is being deterred
and put in standoff in Haiti by a gentleman named Barbecue,
gang violence, and we have a military and they have gangs and
we cannot penetrate.
I yield back my time. Thank you, Chairman.
Mr. Self [presiding]. Thank you. I recognize the gentleman
from New Jersey, Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ambassador, great to see you again. Just a couple of
things.
First of all, thanks for underscoring that the PRC is the
world's largest debt collector. I chaired a hearing in this
room just a couple of hours ago and it was about the malign
influence of China on the U.N. and one of the things we pointed
out in the hearing was that we provided $18 billion in 2022 to
the United Nations and its related agencies like WFP and
others.
And what did China do? Two billion. I mean, when it comes
to the voluntary we have an assessment of $3 billion. Fifteen
billion of the $18 billion is voluntary and there seems to be a
gross under appreciation of that by people at the United
Nations and elsewhere.
So that was brought forward in our hearing this morning but
thank you for your point about the debt collector. Let me just
ask you about the pause.
Obviously, the--to UNRWA aid is that investigation still
ongoing, especially in light of what has happened vis-a-vis the
appropriations bill which precludes funding to UNRWA?
Ms. Power. As you know, the State Department funds UNRWA,
not USAID, although our partners work through UNRWA because
they are the distribution system.
Yes, I believe the two investigations--you'd have to check
with State--but are ongoing, one on the specific individuals
and the 12 to 15 individuals against whom the Israelis
presented these allegations.
The second, the independent investigation from outside, is
on the policies and procedures around vetting such that, you
know, allegations of this gravity, you know, could be possible
or that individuals conceivably could work for UNRWA and be
perpetrating crimes like the horrors of October 7th. But both,
to my understanding, are ongoing.
Mr. Smith. But I know you will have some input, obviously,
since so much of what you humanitarian wise. But I would ask
you, in 2003 I offered an amendment to the Foreign Affairs--
Foreign Relations Act, passed the House, that the money should
not go to UNRWA.
We knew then what a malign influence they were on children,
child abuse really, teaching Palestinian kids to hate Jewish
people and Israel and the United States, and a bill that I have
that this committee passed as well just a few weeks ago doing
the same thing and, of course, the full House and Senate have
joined in on that as well.
So I would hope that the top to bottom look at UNRWA and
the due diligence to ensure us that like-minded UNRWA types
don't just get the money and we find out that someone who used
to work for UNRWA is now becoming the facilitator of that aid
with the same basket of hate filled anti-Semitism that UNRWA
has.
Ms. Power. I mean, you know, I think all organizations
operating in such a complex environment as Gaza, of course, are
horrified by what appears to have emerged--again, we'll await
the findings.
But I do think it's important and I don't know,
Congressman, if in your prior efforts to defund UNRWA any
distinction was drawn. But, you know, you also have UNRWA
operating in Jordan and you have the king of Jordan, you know,
making abundantly clear that at a time of great instability
when Jordan is a great partner to the United States--USAID has
one of its biggest missions there--but for Jordan to suddenly
have to take over the schooling of 2 million kids of
Palestinian descent would be, you know, something that they are
not capable of doing.
And, you know, in Gaza as well the work of those 13,000,
you know, humanitarians who are teachers, who are health
workers, you know, you know well because you've been in so many
of these countries we don't have an NGO out there or another--
this is not your traditional U.N. agency where you can have,
like, schools in a box--you know, teachers in a box, health
workers in a box.
They were almost--like, Hamas was the State and Hamas won
the election back in the day and Hamas, you know, obviously,
had far too much influence on certain individuals or even
certain individuals who were it seems like potentially part of
Hamas.
But the fact is the administration of schools and health
systems was UNRWA and there's not an NGO or another U.N. agency
that could perform the function of a State like that, or at
least I haven't encountered one in my years of humanitarian
service.
Mr. Smith. I would hope that every effort will be made to
do so. Let me ask you, finally, you know, there's been a great
deal of concern about PEPFAR and what the administration did to
integrate promoting abortion.
I mean, I sat right here a couple seats away when Henry
Hyde led the effort in 2003 to enact PEPFAR, a tremendous bill.
I did the reauthorization of it the last time for 5 years but
we had protections, pro-life protections to ensure that it
stayed on point on trying to mitigate and end the pandemic of
HIV/AIDS.
Can you assure us that the NGO's that are getting the
money, especially pursuant to the guidance that has been given
to them by the administration--I have a copy of the guidance--
as well as reimagining PEPFAR that they're not promoting
abortion?
Ms. Power. What I can assure you of is that USAID follows
the law. PEPFAR follows the law. USAID does not fund abortions.
PEPFAR has saved 25 million lives.
Mr. Smith. I know that and I'm----
Ms. Power. But the amount of misinformation about PEPFAR--
--
Mr. Smith. But providing moneys to NGO's----
Ms. Power [continuing]. That's being propagated is so
unfair----
Mr. Smith. With respect----
Ms. Power [continuing]. To the people who have saved those
lives that you have seen in the field working.
Mr. Smith. I've been out in the field. But the problem is
that we have given them a dual mission to bring down pro-life
laws. It's right in the guidance that has been tendered to all
the----
Ms. Power. That is false.
Mr. Smith. It's right there in black and white. I'll put it
in the record. Thank you.
Mr. Self. I recognize the gentlelady from California, Ms.
Jacobs.
Ms. Jacobs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
Administrator Power, for being here and for all of your work in
what I know is incredibly difficult global challenges right
now.
I first wanted to ask you about your localization agenda
that I was so excited when you announced. I was really proud
that this committee last month passed my locally led
development and humanitarian Response Act on a bipartisan basis
which would institutionalize reforms that would make it easier
for USAID to work with local partners.
Can you discuss how this bill would enable USAID to work
more with local organizations?
Ms. Power. Well, thank you. I sometimes feel like you know
more about localization than I do so I feel like I should
defer. But this has been a huge priority. As you know, we're
making these giant investments.
We do not want our investments and the good that they do to
end when large international organizations or contracting
partners depart or when a contract or a grant expires.
So I think accessibility is one of the things that your
bill has emphasized--you know, translating requests for
proposals into multiple languages. I think, you know,
artificial intelligence and ChatGPT, you know, are going to
make it more easy for local organizations to understand what
we're looking for and to respond.
Raising the de minimis rate for assistance to 15 percent
would mean that these small organizations who don't have the
big accounting firms and the lawyers, you know, to compete for
our assistance get some overhead and, you know, have the
ability as well to invest in their own capacity.
And then we're still working on SAM registration which you
have emphasized as well, making that easier. You know, I've
been in a situation where a war breaks out or Putin does
something horrible and we see a local organization that we
would love to work with but the barriers to entry through the
SAM process are just too high.
And then, last, what I--also incredibly grateful for
potentially allowing the restriction of competition to local
organizations for acquisition. We can already do that for
assistance but to extend that to acquisition is really
important. So grateful for all.
Ms. Jacobs. Thank you. I now want to turn to the dire
situation in Sudan.
I just returned from the Chad-Sudanese border where I heard
directly from Sudanese refugees about the terrible situation
that they are fleeing. You know, April 15th will be 1 year
since the war started. We see 25 million people need aid. Tens
of millions of people have been forced from their homes.
Without the supplemental passing U.S. humanitarian
assistance faces a 40 percent cut and we heard that the World
Food Programme may be unable to serve any Sudanese refugees in
Chad starting this month.
Can you discuss the challenges to humanitarian funding and
access in Sudan right now and what no supplemental would mean
for the Sudanese people?
Ms. Power. Well, last year, thanks to the generosity of
people here and the taxpayer, we were able--we, USAID, were
able to provide $600 million in funding, which is, you know,
I'm really proud that we were able to do that but also
horrified that a country that is entirely capable of feeding
itself and a population that's immensely educated and dynamic,
you know, is stuck because of these two fighters--you know,
military men who decided to put their own lust for power above
the welfare of their people.
The U.S. Government as a whole gave close to a billion
dollars and invested that in just keeping people alive. You
know, this is not--this is no way to live, let me put it that
way.
But even with those resources both Hemedti and General
Burhan have imposed abominable restrictions on our humanitarian
aid partners. I mean, whether it's, you know, delaying visas
or, you know, having these long convoys of resources where
there are starving people, you know, just up ahead and refusing
to allow those convoys to pass, you know, this is something,
again, that we raise again and again.
Special Envoy Perriello now has taken up this charge full
time and engaging with both parties has been, again, modest
progress in getting at least some access. But to lose the
supplemental means falling off a cliff and if Perriello, if the
U.N.--new U.N. Special Envoy are able to press and secure
access how tragic would it be that we finally get the access we
need and then don't have the resources to actually fund WFP or
UNICEF.
Ms. Jacobs. Absolutely. And just in my remaining time I
just want to say, you know, I know Ms. Wild asked you about
620(I). My reading of the National Security Memorandum 20 is
that it actually has a different standard.
The standard is that not only does our partner country have
to not inhibit aid but actually has to facilitate and not
arbitrarily deny the delivery of any U.S.-supported
international efforts to provide humanitarian assistance.
Would you say that given your experience right now that
Israel is in compliance in facilitating the delivery of U.S.-
supported international efforts to provide humanitarian
assistance?
Ms. Power. Well, first, I would say that I think 620(I) is
covered by the higher standard in the National Security
Memorandum. So I think that's what is meant and, again, the
secretary is managing that process. USAID has provided input on
that question but we'll have to await the report in early May.
A number of commitments have been made. They need to be
implemented with haste.
Ms. Jacobs. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Self. Thank you. I recognize the gentleman from South
Carolina, Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Administrator, I appreciate--I'm so grateful for your
service. I always--one of the highlights of my service is going
around the world to see USAID programs successful.
One that I just will never forget in a very rural area of
Afghanistan to see a sign with the clasped hands of the flag of
Afghanistan and the United States, and it was a rusty sign
indicating the location of a school that had been built.
And the rusty sign indicated to me that anybody could have
taken it down anytime but they didn't. They were appreciative
of what was done one on one to help people.
And then in the Middle East I'm so grateful for your
immediate aid to the people of Turkey. With the recent
earthquake in southeastern Turkey with the critical facilities
at Incirlik Americans acted immediately with your leadership to
provide assistance to the victims.
And we so appreciate this vital NATO ally. We so appreciate
the democracy of Turkey. We are all celebrating a hundred years
of Turkish democracy and 75 years of NATO membership. Turkey is
a shining beacon of hope for the--and success for the region.
And recently I visited in August Ankara and Istanbul and
the advances of the Turkish people with a very vibrant and very
appreciated Turkish-American community is so meaningful, and so
thank you for what you've done for the people of Turkey.
Additionally, I'm concerned and the opposite--the
dictatorship of Assad in Syria. The White Helmets are one of
the best and only volunteers of civilian humanitarian
organizations operating in the non-Assad regime areas.
Every day they respond to assaults on villages and civilian
infrastructure by the Assad regime and its puppet master of the
regime of the war criminal Putin. They provide life-saving
medical aid to children with horrific wounds and operate in the
absolute worst of conditions.
Following the catastrophic earthquake, again, the
earthquake that struck both Syria and Turkey the White Helmets
immediately mobilized and were able to save hundreds of lives.
It's really sad but it has come to my attention there are
cuts proposed in the already modest budget from $7 million to
$3 million for Fiscal Year 1925.
We have asked for a clarification. What is the commitment?
What will be done?
Ms. Power. I mean, I'm in awe of the White Helmets and have
been since they first came to my attention, I think, back in
2012 probably was the first time I learned of their
unbelievable bravery.
They then became the target of mass Putin misinformation in
a way that, you know, affected my work at the U.N. because we
had to spend a lot of time truth telling about what the White
Helmets actually did, and it's been a great source of pride for
me at USAID.
In fact, after the earthquake to make one of our first
grants, because of the exchange I've just had with
Congresswoman Jacobs you might understand that giving a grant
to a local organization is quite hard because USAID is sort of
hard to work with. We have a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of
compliance requests.
But we were able to speed the paperwork and get resources
out the door. I will look at the cut. It may just be that that
is part--because you're bringing that to my attention that that
is part of the broader cut because our assistance is down--our
humanitarian assistance is down 40 percent and needs are up 40
percent. So that just may be part of the overall cut across the
board.
Mr. Smith. Administrator, I am so grateful you know who
they are, you know how significant it is and, gosh, the helping
the people of Syria, help the people in Turkey too with the
cross border earthquake and it just would be so helpful to have
funding sufficient for their actions to resist war criminal
Putin and the dictatorship--murderous dictatorship of Assad.
Another issue we have with UNRWA in light of the UNRWA
employees involved, clearly, by video on October 7th I'm
grateful that there has been an effort to block funding to
them. What is USAID doing to increase your own capacity to
provide humanitarian aid to Gaza but not relying on the U.N.?
Ms. Power. Well, there's UNRWA and then there's the rest of
the U.N. family. As it happens it's the State Department that
funds UNRWA but our main partners are organizations like the
World Food Programme, which is also a U.N. agency, UNICEF, Save
the Children, International Medical Corps--the distribution
network, the trucks, the workers who are there en masse coming
from----
Mr. Wilson. And my time is up but I do want to congratulate
your working with the World Food Programme formerly led by
Nobel Laureate, former Governor of South Carolina David
Beasley. Thank you very much.
Ms. Power. Indeed. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Self. I recognize the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr.
Phillips.
Mr. Phillips. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, Administrator Power, and heartfelt gratitude to
you, to everybody at USAID, for what you do, how you do it, the
importance to humanity and also to building the American brand,
which I think you do beautifully.
I want to support so many of my colleagues' contention that
we must pass the Senate supplemental bill with $10 billion for
emergency aid, and along with our chairman, Mr. Wilson, who's
leaving--I'm the ranking member of the Middle East, North
Africa, and Central Asia Subcommittee, so I'm going to direct a
few questions about that region to you starting with Lebanon.
The World Bank, of course, has described the circumstances
there has some of the worst since the mid 19th century. The
currency has been devalued 98 percent. Lebanese people have
about 4 hours of electricity per day.
A million Lebanese children do not have access to quality
education and, of course, there are about a million and a half
Syrian refugees putting a lot of strain on the very few
services available in Lebanon.
The Economic Support Fund request includes, of course, a
targeted increase for Lebanon but I'd welcome some perspective
from you on what you're seeing there and the role of USAID in
supporting the Lebanese and Syrian refugees.
Ms. Power. Well, just in brief, I'm sure you have other
questions but, you know, we can't--in answering this question a
year ago we would talk about many of the same conditions that
you described but we now have on top of it the really
significant escalation in clashes between Lebanon and Israel
and fairly significant displacement within--additional
displacement within Lebanon of Lebanese, some people being
displaced for a second or third time.
So, again, we need the supplemental because we need the
humanitarian resources to be able to fund the organizations and
the trusted partners who would go out and meet humanitarian
needs.
But stepping back to the more evergreen issue of Lebanese
politics we also need, you know, government formation and
stable transition and, you know, the private sector and others
to be able to know that Lebanon's governance and its rule of
law are sound.
And so that is where in addition to, you know, providing
tactical economic counsel at a time of relative economic
unraveling for the economy we are also as a government, as a
whole, you know, really pushing for the tough political
decisions that haven't been made in really now quite some
number of years.
Mr. Phillips. Can you speak to anything USAID is doing
right now on the ground?
Ms. Power. I mean, providing humanitarian assistance to the
newly displaced of whom I think there are more than--close to
200,000 people who have been displaced we're doing a lot on
electrification. As you know, power--you drive through Lebanon
now and it's----
Mr. Phillips. A few hours a day?
Ms. Power. So, you know, when I visited recently we were,
you know, working with local communities and private investors
to stand up solar off grid in the Beqaa Valley and elsewhere
because there are parts that have not been connected with the
grid.
That in turn is beneficial both to the Lebanese host
communities but also to the Syrian refugees so for them to
see--the Lebanese host communities to see some benefit accruing
or more international attention being lent when they've opened
their homes and the strain of the demands on their
infrastructure are certainly showing.
So those are some examples. But, again, the political and
the economic and the security all go together--three legs of
the triangle.
Mr. Phillips. Okay. And moving to another challenge,
Tunisia, I know President Saied is overseeing backsliding and
erosion of civil society and I know we're limiting our direct
bilateral support.
But I would welcome your perspective also on Tunisia, what
role you are playing right now and what we should be and can be
doing.
Ms. Power. Well, I mean, it goes without saying that the
checks and balances, notwithstanding the effort to centralize
power and to chill speech and dissent our support for those
players who are still out there bravely standing up for the
Tunisian democracy that they dreamed of and worked so hard to
try to put in place that support is really important.
You know, just stepping back, though, I will say that cuts
across the board to our development assistance in the 1924
bill, cuts that are, you know, going to be to our development
assistance account, roughly, 10 percent are going to take a
toll on even that vital democracy rights and governance
support.
So at just the time that we see democratic backsliding we
want to be in a position to surge support for those who are
contesting it. Instead, that is going to become more
challenging because of the cuts.
Mr. Phillips. Okay. I'm running out of time. I was going to
ask you also about the Syrian camps Al Hol and Roj but I think
I'm out of time, unfortunately.
So thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Self. I recognize the gentleman from California, Mr.
Issa.
Mr. Issa. Thank you, Chairman.
Ambassador, good to see you again. Why is it you take the
toughest job there is at the worst possible time and you arrive
here seeming like, you know, I'm just getting started, I've got
the energy--we're going to do this.
You're the only person I know that comes before a committee
like this with a positive attitude and leaves with a positive
attitude and I want to commend you for that because the
questions are inherently tough and mine will probably be no
exception.
It was touched on earlier--even though UNRWA wasn't our
direct authority and certainly wasn't yours Congress on a
bipartisan basis now has essentially said we cannot trust the
United Nations, specifically UNRWA, in Gaza.
That means that by definition many of the same people who
worked for UNRWA will need to be rehired by some successor
organization. Others will need to be recruited.
With your vast experience both at the U.N. and now at USAID
how would we go about ensuring that we vet people in a very
different way, we vet programs in a different way, and at some
time, God willing, in the near future we begin rebuilding Gaza
for the Palestinians and 1.2 plus million who will hopefully be
returning to what will become homes again?
That's probably the largest job, perhaps, since World War
II to look at an area so dense and have to rebuild.
One, is your organization up to being a partner in that and
if not who?
Ms. Power. I mean, this is a very challenging question. Let
me just say in the here and now there is no substitute for the
humanitarian backbone that they provide. Just the sheer numbers
of individual, the experience they have, their knowledge of
communities--again, where the trucks come from, who knows the
routes and just--and I'll get to your question.
But one little parenthetical is Israel, about a month ago
in light of the allegations--the horrific allegations--made a
decision that UNRWA could not participate in convoys to the
north--humanitarian convoys.
But what that meant was, fundamentally, there could be no
convoys to the north because you can't--as bombs are falling
and kinetic operations are underway and terrorists are being
pursued you can't, you know, suddenly invent an entire
humanitarian infrastructure, which I know is not what you're
suggesting. Yes.
Mr. Issa. No. Ambassador, just to narrow it for sake of
time----
Ms. Power. Yes. Okay.
Mr. Issa [continuing]. After World War II both in Europe
and in Japan we recognize that you come as you are and use what
is available. That includes the people who know these routes,
the people who were teachers, the people who provided
humanitarian aid.
I don't have any illusion that suddenly we're going to find
thousands of replacement people. My question really was how do
we vet? How do we participate in a vetting that can cause the
people of Israel, the people of the United States as taxpayers,
and Congress and yourself to have comfort that what happened,
what has been discovered under the grounds of Gaza, won't
happen again?
I have no illusions. Many of those people may not love
Israel but they would--they do care about their people or
foreigners who cared about people.
So I'm not saying that--and maybe others here on the dais
would say it. I'm not saying that you're disqualified if you
work for UNRWA. I'm saying that at the top there has to be new
confidence.
You're too young but I'm not to remember when the Red Cross
had no confidence and we brought in Elizabeth Dole. She didn't
fire everybody but she did begin rebuilding confidence in that
great organization.
How do we rebuild the confidence to take care of the worst
humanitarian disaster in modern times?
Ms. Power. Well, despite whatever energy I might have,
positive energy, I hope, fundamentally this is not something
that I have dug into personally. But the second----
Mr. Issa. You're just one phone call away from the
president giving you this job. You know that.
Ms. Power. But the second investigation underway--there's
one into the named individuals that the Israelis brought
forward who are alleged to have been complicit in or actively
participated in October 7th.
The other investigation is on this question, on the
policies and the procedures and the vetting, and that's for
UNRWA itself.
But I would presume that whatever lessons are gleaned about
UNRWA would be the ones that would be applied as well to other
organizations who, of course, the organizational leadership are
all worried, you know, that, you know, allegations like that
could be brought forward.
But their presence, again, in Gaza is so small that their
ability to take--which I know, again, is not what you're
suggesting, but to take up what UNRWA has been doing in war
time is not present.
I will say also--last point--is that other donors are going
to make a huge difference here. We are following the law. The
Biden administration--you know, we think it's really important
to confer--UNRWA to continue to do its vital work, particularly
in places like Jordan, elsewhere in the region, but also in
Gaza, where the needs are so great but that we're going to
follow the law and that is not going to be possible for the
U.S. to fund.
Other countries are stepping up and doing more to sustain
UNRWA and, you know, I think we want to make sure that they are
also using their leverage on behalf of UNRWA reform if UNRWA
ends up, you know, being the organization of choice for the
rest of the world, going forward.
Mr. Issa. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Self. I recognize the gentleman from Illinois, Mr.
Schneider.
Mr. Schneider. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
being here.
I want to thank you for the work you do. You know, broadly,
I say the world is safer and U.S. interests are better served,
advanced, and protected when America leads and we work with our
allies and partners.
And I've often talked about in this room the three-legged
stool of defense, diplomacy, and development and how the three
need to work together, and USAID is certainly a critical
component of that.
You know, the agency is unparalleled in its ability to help
counter the root causes of extremism, uncontrolled migration,
and international crime caused by poverty and hopelessness.
USAID cultivates freedom, democracy, stability--three
crucial components of an effective American-led international
order. And so, again, thank you for what you do. But for all
these reasons it's also why I'm disheartened by voices shying
away from our responsibility to lead.
For example, Fiscal Year 1924 appropriations already
included counterproductive cuts to USAID's budget and I pray, I
hope, that my Republican colleagues won't do the same in 2025
and I just want to start with that.
Let me shift, though, and talk about Gaza. We have already
talked quite a bit about it. You know, three key things that I
see we need to immediately surge massive quantities of
humanitarian aid, in particular, food into Gaza.
We know that, but we need to be able to sustain those
quantities of aid over time and, ultimately, we need to break
with recent history and work to create a new vision for Gaza, a
new, better future for both Palestinians, Israelis and everyone
around the region.
So I've got a number of questions but I'll start with from
the beginning of this war Hamas started October 7th I've been
doing all I can to convince Egypt and Israel to open border
crossings for aid, first Rajah and then Kerem Shalom and now
Erez.
Can you talk about how aid is getting across the border and
how it is or is not being distributed once it's across the
border throughout Gaza?
Ms. Power. Well, in brief, of course, inspections in
Nitzana and in Kerem Shalom I also visited last month to see
the process in Kerem Shalom and, you know, it is really
important that just in the last week you've seen the number of
hours that the inspections are able to occur expanded. This is
something President Biden has been pushing for, you know,
almost the full 6 months of the war.
So those--you know, again, expanding the throughput of
inspections is how we have been able to get up now to, I think,
420 trucks yesterday, which is double where we were a week ago.
So that's one answer.
Also, moving supplies from Jordan. In El Arish as you
probably saw----
Mr. Schneider. How about once it's in Gaza how----
Ms. Power. Oh, sorry. To the distribution in Gaza, I think
their, you know, scarcity of flow in created a much more
challenging situation on the other side because the prices went
up, the gangs were incentivized, the civilians grew desperate,
and movement became very challenging.
We are hopeful and the government of Israel uses this
expression now too, that flooding the zone with food will
render, you know, access more secure and more stable but Israel
has to be a part of that, too. The number of convoys turned
back at checkpoints or have to wait for hours, which is itself
a security hazard for those driving those convoys, that has to
change.
And so that's part of the deconfliction and coordination
process we're a part of.
Mr. Schneider. Great. Thank you. Do you have a sense of how
much of the aid that's actually gotten into Gaza across the
border has either been stolen by Hamas and taken down into the
tunnels or commandeered by the gangs and put on the black
market where civilians are having to pay for that aid?
Ms. Power. I mean, what I can say is that our partners in
order to receive USAID funding are all obliged to report
diversion and we are not seeing Hamas dictating where food is
provided.
I can assure you that if the government of Israel saw Hamas
doing that, just as they brought forward the UNRWA allegations,
we would be hearing about it.
So, you know, it's not a perfect distribution network and,
as I mentioned, the famine like conditions in the north and the
near famine like conditions in much of the South create a level
of desperation that has led to what is referred to as self
distribution.
But what that appears to have done is now pave the way
for--at least this is the hope--is that that will pave the way
for much more of the traditional humanitarian distributions
that we see in other war settings. It was having so little food
getting in for so long it created an almost Hobbesian dynamic
that went well beyond Hamas which, again, we have not seen that
systematic diversion or even the reports that our partners are
required to provide if----
Mr. Schneider. Thank you. And I'm out of time. I'll leave
the last question maybe for the record. But what can Congress
do? What are the most important things we can do to make sure
that that aid gets into Gaza that needed--the needs of the
Gazan people are addressed?
Ms. Power. Can I answer quickly? Pass the supplemental and
press our Israeli partners to actually follow through on the
commitments that they've made in recent days but follow through
with haste, recognizing that it's a famine that we're talking
about. This is not something that can wait.
Mr. Schneider. Happy to do it. Happy to do it.
With that, I yield back.
Mr. Self. I recognize the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Mast.
Mr. Mast. Thank you, Mr. Self. How are you doing today?
Good.
So I've heard a lot of different back and forth both from
your opening statement and response to questions. Did the Biden
administration cutoff aid to Gaza or not?
Ms. Power. Did the Biden administration cutoff aid to Gaza?
Mr. Mast. U.S. aid to Gaza.
Ms. Power. No.
Mr. Mast. No? Did the Biden administration cutoff U.S.
support to UNRWA?
Ms. Power. We suspended support to UNRWA when the
allegations came forward so put a pause on it, yes.
Mr. Mast. Is that support still suspended?
Ms. Power. Again, I don't administer UNRWA support. But
yes, we're now under--we have the provisions of the Fiscal Year
1924 bill, which I think prohibits UNRWA funding. Again, this
is run out of--the UNRWA funding questions, I think, should be
referred to the State Department.
Mr. Mast. So we did not suspend aid to Gaza. We did suspend
support to UNRWA?
Ms. Power. Correct, when the allegations came forward.
Mr. Mast. And it's still suspended today?
Ms. Power. To my knowledge, yes.
Mr. Mast. Okay. And why was it important that we suspended
aid to UNRWA?
Ms. Power. Because these were very serious allegations that
we and many of our democratic friends believe the U.N. had to
launch a credible and independent investigation into and those
investigations, again, two of them--one outside the U.N.
system, one within it within the Office of Investigations or
whatever--are currently underway.
Mr. Mast. And what do you know about the outcomes of those
allegations?
Ms. Power. I don't know about the outcomes of the
investigations.
Mr. Mast. Do you think it's important that we suspend aid
to UNRWA?
Ms. Power. I think it's important that the perpetrators of
crimes be held accountable. I think it's important that people
who would participate in a terrorist attack and who want to
eliminate the Jewish people and the State of Israel not work
for a humanitarian agency.
I think it's also important that there not be famine in
Gaza and the innocent civilians not pay the price for the
crimes of a few.
Mr. Mast. So you don't think that we should be suspending
aid to Gaza?
Ms. Power. I think we should be supporting a humanitarian
operation that has as its backbone UNRWA.
Mr. Mast. Do you think we should be giving U.S. aid to
Gaza?
Ms. Power. We are giving U.S. aid to Gaza and I think we
should, yes.
Mr. Mast. And you think that we should do that?
Ms. Power. Yes. I think it's not in our--consistent with
our values or interests to see people starve in Gaza.
Mr. Mast. But you think----
Ms. Power. And so I think we should be part of the solution
and not the problem, yes.
Mr. Mast. Plainly. You know, again, you just--to repeat it,
to not be convoluted here, you think that we should give U.S.
dollars, U.S. aid, U.S. support to Gaza?
Ms. Power. To the people of Gaza. USAID gives support to
World Food Programme, to UNICEF, to International Medical
Corps, to our trusted partners that we work with all over the
world.
Those are the individuals and the organizations to whom we
are giving resources and we are doing so because we believe
that they should, yes, be providing, for example, ready-to-use
therapeutic food to kids under five whose arms are about this
big at this point because of lack of access to food and
nutrition.
Yes, I think we should support trying to undo a situation
where kids are dying when there's food on the shelves in
supermarkets just a few kilometers away.
Mr. Mast. Are Palestinians our ally?
Ms. Power. We have an interest and we have a long history
of working with the Palestinian people and we should continue
to do so.
Mr. Mast. Is Israel our ally?
Ms. Power. Yes.
Mr. Mast. Are Palestinians our ally?
Ms. Power. The Palestinians are our partners and our
friends. As you know, ally is a term of art that is used----
Mr. Mast. Palestinians are our friends?
Ms. Power. Many Palestinians are our friends, absolutely.
Mr. Mast. Their government is our friend?
Ms. Power. We work with the people of--we work with
communities. We work with people who are holding the
Palestinian Authority to account--independent journalists,
civil society organizations, who are documenting many of the
things that I'm sure you are rightly publicizing.
So checks and balances are incredibly important but if we
think we can see a secure and democratic and thriving Israel
without looking out as well for the welfare of the Palestinians
and ensuring that they can live in dignity and security side by
side I think that's very short sighted.
Mr. Mast. Do you think Egypt should be taking in
Palestinians?
Ms. Power. I mean, it's--I think that--what is the context
in which you're asking that question? You mean----
Mr. Mast. Quite obviously, in front of you the ongoing war.
Do you think Egypt should be taking in Palestinians?
Ms. Power. Egypt is taking in medical evacuations of
Palestinians from Gaza and we're working with our partners on
the ground.
Mr. Mast. Do you think they should open the door and let
anybody come in that wants to?
Ms. Power. You know, I think fundamentally what you have
among Palestinians is a desire to live in their homes, homes
they've lived in for generations.
Mr. Mast. Not an answer. Do you think Egypt should open the
gates and say come on in?
Ms. Power. I think that it is important that Palestinians
who live in Gaza can remain in Gaza, which is where they want
to remain.
Mr. Mast. My time is expired.
Mr. Self. I recognize the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Castro.
Mr. Castro. Thank you.
Administrator Power, thank you for joining us today.
Of course, I'd normally ask you about locally led
development and some of your great work there at USAID but I
want to ask you, obviously, about the very urgent situation--
humanitarian situation--in Gaza.
In your testimony you said that the entire population of
Gaza is living under the threat of famine. News reports came
out recently that certain USAID officials sent a cable to the
National Security Council warning that famine is already likely
occurring in parts of the Gaza Strip.
According to the report, quote, ``famine conditions are
most severe and widespread in northern Gaza, which is under
Israeli control.'' Do you think that it's plausible or likely
that parts of Gaza and particularly northern Gaza are already
experiencing famine?
Ms. Power. Well, the methodology that the IPC used is one
that we had our experts scrub. It's one that's relied upon in
other settings and that is their assessments, and we believe
that assessment is credible.
Mr. Castro. So there's--a famine is already occurring
there?
Ms. Power. That is--yes.
Mr. Castro. Yes. Okay. More than half of the population of
Gaza is under the age of 18, as you know, and are seriously
affected by the lack of access to food and nutrition, and
various organizations including the United Nations have warned
that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children may die if
they don't get necessary food and nutrition assistance in just
the next two to 3 weeks.
Has USAID made such an assessment itself and do you have a
sense of how many such children might be at risk of dying if
they don't get access to food and nutrition that's currently
unavailable?
Ms. Power. I do not have those assessments on hand but I
will say that the--in northern Gaza the rate of malnutrition
prior to October 7th was almost zero and it is now one in
three--one in three kids.
But extrapolating out is hard, and I will say just with
some humility, because it is so hard to move around in Gaza,
because the access challenges that give rise in part to the
malnutrition are so severe, it is also, you know, hard to do
the kind of scaled assessments that we would wish to do.
But in terms of, you know, actual severe acute malnutrition
for under fives that rate was 16 percent in January and became
30 percent in February, and we're awaiting the March numbers
but we expect it to continue on----
Mr. Castro. So it got markedly worse?
Ms. Power. Yes, markedly worse. But extrapolating and
giving you the overall numbers I----
Mr. Castro. And just to be clear, I realize you're not part
of the DOD or, you know, the State Department working on these
issues diplomatically. But is it your understanding that
humanitarian assistance and food assistance is not supposed to
be denied even when countries are at war with each other?
Because there is this argument that, well, if Hamas would
release the hostages, if they would surrender, that this would
stop. But there's certain laws of war and certain conduct that
nations are supposed to follow and that includes allowing for
humanitarian assistance?
Ms. Power. Correct. I mean, I will say, of course, and we
all agree the hostages should be released.
Mr. Castro. Absolutely.
Ms. Power. It's an absolute outrage that they have been
kept this long and the horror and terror for the families of
those individuals. I can't even contemplate.
But yes, food must flow and not----
Mr. Castro. But kids can't be starved because you have two
groups that are at war with each other?
Ms. Power. Food must flow and food has not flowed in
sufficient quantities to avoid this imminent famine in the
south and these conditions that are giving rise already to
child deaths in the north.
Mr. Castro. And I'm down to 1 minute so part of this maybe
we'll ask for the record. But in response to questions from my
colleague Representative Wild of Pennsylvania you said that
there have been restrictions on U.S. humanitarian assistance.
You also referenced the National Security Memorandum 20 as
taking into account future restrictions and you said that that
was a process that Secretary Blinken was leading.
Given the USAID's expertise on these issues was USAID and
in particular the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance provided an
opportunity to weigh in to the State Department's determination
under NSM 20 that Israel's assurances that it's following U.S.
and international law are, quote, ``credible and reliable?''
Ms. Power. Absolutely.
Mr. Castro. Thank you. Thank you for your work, and I yield
back.
Mr. Self. I recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr.
McCormick.
Mr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
War is a horrible thing and dealing with humanitarian aid
during the fog of war and the stresses that go with that I
just--I admire your efforts in that regard. I know that's a
difficult thing, especially in a politically charged
environment to add to that.
With that said, some interesting things came up that I kind
of want to clarify with some statements you've made in the
past.
The Washington Post reported that in January of this year
while you were giving a speech on climate change a former
employee of USAID interrupted you regarding the current
conflict of Israel--in Israel saying, ``You wrote a book on
genocide. You were still working for the administration. You
should resign and speak out,'' end quote.
Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to insert this
Washington Post article entitled ``USAID's Samantha Power,
genocide scholars confronted by staff on Gaza'' to the record,
please.
Mr. Self. Without objection.
[The information referred to appears in the Appendix:]
Mr. McCormick. Thank you.
According to the same article you thanked her for her
comments and stated that more than 25,000 civilians have been
killed in the conflict. That number came from the Gaza Ministry
of Health, which Hamas controls.
Did you agree with the heckler's premise that the--Israel's
fight against Hamas constitutes genocide, yes or no?
Ms. Power. I think every country has a right to defend
itself and Israel certainly has a right to defend itself. Hamas
still seeks to eliminate Israelis. I've just visited kibbutz
Be'eri where a hundred people--more than a hundred people were
killed on October 7th.
So I think that right to pursue Hamas is clear. I also
think pursuing Hamas in a manner that looks out for civilians,
where they provide humanitarian access in sufficient amounts,
is imperative as well.
Mr. McCormick. So do you believe--I'm going to reState the
question just to make sure I understand--do you believe the way
that Israel is fighting against Hamas does that constitute
genocide, yes or no?
Ms. Power. Again, I'm not going to answer yes or no
questions like that. I'm going to do my job, which is focusing
on getting humanitarian assistance to people who need it.
Mr. McCormick. Okay. Fair enough. Obviously, the person who
confronted you is not the only USAID employee who thinks this
way.
In November hundreds of your employees signed a letter
calling for a cease-fire, and I was in Afghanistan--I realize
the USMC, which governs military action, is a little bit
different than everybody else.
But, for example, I couldn't do--as a military
noncombatant, an ER physician in Afghanistan, it would probably
be inappropriate for me to write a letter to the President
saying I think we should have a cease-fire in Afghanistan, to
say the least.
Do you think it's appropriate for USAID workers to do the
same kind of thing where they basically sign letters stating an
opinion rather than doing their job, basically saying--taking a
political stance?
Ms. Power. I mean, I have no evidence that they're not
doing their jobs. As you noted we have evidence that 75----
Mr. McCormick. So it is appropriate?
Ms. Power. Whether it's--we have a Dissent channel. We have
a direct channel for a reason. I benefit from hearing from
staff. I get criticized all the time.
Sometimes I think the criticisms are valid and sometimes I
learn something about how what I'm doing is perceived or how
what the Biden administration is doing is perceived.
And I would note that, again, we have had internal traffic
maybe not of that magnitude but also on Afghanistan.
Mr. McCormick. Okay. I got to move quickly because I only
have a minute and a half left. So I appreciate your candor on
that.
There was an article last month titled ``Top Biden advisor
reveals she confronted Netanyahu,'' and then quoted you at
their health care summit, where you said that you asked Prime
Minister Netanyahu to improve compliance with international
humanitarian law.
Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to insert this
Washington Post article titled, ``Top Biden advisor reveals she
confronted Netanyahu'' into the record.
Mr. Self. Without objection.
[The information referred to appears in the Appendix:]
Mr. McCormick. Okay. Could you please give us specific
instances of violations of international humanitarian law on
Israel's part?
Ms. Power. First of all, I did not say that I confronted
but I had on my trip really important extensive discussions
about the need to improve deconfliction----
Mr. McCormick. Do you have any violation of international
humanitarian law by Israel?
Ms. Power. Can I just--again, just finish the one quick
point which is----
Mr. McCormick. Very quick. I got 32--38 seconds.
Ms. Power. I understand, but you've asked a question.
Civilians and humanitarians are dying in very, very large
numbers including most recently the World Central Kitchen
strike.
Mr. McCormick. So is Israel violating international law?
Ms. Power. To improve the ability to keep civilians safe
and to allow humanitarians to do their job as the World Central
Kitchen strike----
Mr. McCormick. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and--I got to
finish up because I'm running out of time here real quickly.
The White House National Security Communication Adviser
John Kirby said that the State Department had not found any
incidences where Israel has violated international humanitarian
law.
Who's wrong and who's right here? I just--there's
conflicting articles based on two officials of the Biden
administration who seem to think that either Israel is
conducting an unjust war or they're not in violation.
I'm just kind of confused and I think maybe if we're going
to make political statements, whether it be by your employees
or yourself, it starts to compound the problem of getting your
job done.
And I think your job is very important. Don't get me wrong.
I think what you're doing is incredibly important and we need
to take care of innocent noncombatants that are being starved,
if you will, or not getting the service they need to.
But I just want to make sure we have a unified process
going forward rather than contradictory statements by political
people that don't seem to have their act together when it comes
to a unifying response.
Thank you. With that, I have to yield.
Mr. Self. I recognize the gentlelady from North Carolina,
Ms. Manning.
Ms. Manning. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
Administrator Power, for all your service to this country over
many, many years. I'm over here.
Thank you for all your service for many, many years and
your patience during this hearing. There is no question we need
to make sure that there is more humanitarian aid getting into
the innocent Palestinians in Gaza.
I have a very dear friend in my district whose husband's
family is in Gaza and I get regular reports about how they are
suffering and how they would do anything to get rid of Hamas
because they believe that it would relieve their suffering.
So I'd like to know from you does Hamas make it more
difficult to deliver humanitarian assistance to those who need
help in Gaza?
Ms. Power. All I can tell you because I'm not there is the
reports from our partners is that right now is not the
impediment. That is not the barrier to getting food to people.
I, like you, would expect it would be given what Hamas does
otherwise, targeting innocent civilians, using innocent
civilians as human shields.
But, again, trusted partners like World Food Programme,
UNICEF, and others have not reported that Hamas is getting in
the way of distributing humanitarian assistance and I will say
nor are we getting those reports from the IDF who are present
on the ground in Gaza.
Ms. Manning. I have been getting reports, in fact, that
Hamas is targeting, punishing, or hindering Palestinians who
are working with the international community to provide
humanitarian assistance.
You have not seen any evidence of that?
Ms. Power. I would be very interested in those reports but
that is not what our partners are reporting back to us.
Ms. Manning. So do you believe that Hamas is benefiting
from the aid that we are providing to Gaza?
Ms. Power. I mean, it's--I don't even know how to think
about that question in this moment when Hamas is on the run and
being pursued across Gaza.
So, you know, I don't think they are in a position because
of what the IDF is doing to benefit per se. Would family
members of Hamas potentially be getting access at a food
distribution? You know, that's possible. It's going to
civilians largely----
Ms. Manning. Do you have any knowledge of how Hamas
fighters are getting their food?
Ms. Power. I don't.
Ms. Manning. So it is a difficult balance to strike when we
desperately want to make sure that innocent Palestinians don't
suffer and don't starve but we don't want to do anything to
embolden Hamas.
And I have spent today much of my time this morning meeting
with hostage families and I met with a woman whose husband is
from North Carolina, the State that I represent, and she was
held hostage for 51 days and her situation was so appalling
that she said during her captivity she wished that she had been
killed, and now she's been waiting for her husband Keith for
186 days.
And one of the things that we are concerned about is how do
we make sure that innocent Palestinians don't starve but how do
we avoid emboldening Hamas so that they will not--so that they
will release those 136 hostages including at least five
Americans?
Ms. Power. Well, all I can say is that Israel is
aggressively pursuing Hamas and is seeking to dismantle Hamas
and Hamas fighters are on the run.
But whatever that balance is to be struck it's hard to say
that that balance with also the welfare of civilians has yet
been achieved if you have famine in the north and potentially
imminent famine in the south.
So you're absolutely right that it's weighing the costs and
the benefits and this is just the exchange that I had, again,
not long ago in Israel with COGAT, with the IDF, or with
Israeli officials.
Nobody is saying that this is easy. But a lot of the
decisions that the government of Israel made in the early
phases of the war they later went on to reverse--in other
words, the decision not to open Kerem Shalom, then they opened
Kerem Shalom.
The decision not to allow fuel in because it was dual use.
In the end, they recognized you can't do humanitarian delivery
without doing fuel.
What we have been saying consistently is just do all of
that sooner so that fewer people are harmed.
Ms. Manning. And I appreciate the work you do. I truly do.
But I know that there is a hostage deal on the table, a cease-
fire deal on the table right now, and Hamas is the party that
is refusing to accept the deal.
And I am deeply worried that there are things that we are
doing that are preventing Hamas from taking the deal and
releasing those hostages including American citizens, and it
keeps me up at night.
So my time has expired. Thank you again for all your
service and I yield back.
Mr. Self. Thank you. I recognize myself for 5 minutes.
One of the advantages of being so far down the chain is
much of the ground has been plowed. I want to focus on what I
think is a dangerous part of this Israeli situation, Lebanon.
We know about UNRWA. That ground has been plowed. UNIFIL is
the organization--the U.N. organization in Lebanon. There is an
agreement that Hezbollah is not supposed to operate below the
Litani River. There is a demilitarized zone there.
I believe that USAID supplies, like $70 million--is that
correct? To Lebanon? Is that on the order?
Ms. Power. That sounds if it's combining--I don't know if
you mean the bilateral programming or the humanitarian. It's
more substantial if it includes the humanitarian. But go ahead.
Mr. Self. Okay. Very good. But these are the dollars that
are given to the government of Lebanon, which is heavily
influenced by Hezbollah, as you know.
Have you considered the danger of Lebanon exploding?
Because there have been displacements. You mentioned the
Lebanese displacements. There have also been thousands--tens of
thousands of Israeli displacements in the north as well. It's
not just the Lebanese that are being displaced.
Have you considered the impact of those dollars that we are
giving to the Lebanese government which--and can you--have you
considered it? And, second, do you have any indication that
Hezbollah is diverting those dollars as Hamas did for their
wartime preparation?
Ms. Power. Thank you. First, let me just stipulate that I
didn't mention Israeli displaced not out of neglect or a lack
of awareness but only because USAID doesn't work in advanced
economies where a democracy like Israel looks out for its own
displaced. So it's just we work in Lebanon, have a mission
doing work to support the Lebanese people.
Look, I want to look at your--what you're looking at but we
are certainly not giving $70 million to the Lebanese
government--USAID. Our work in health, in agriculture, in other
domains, by and large, I mean, in most countries is not
government to government assistance.
My team will correct me if somehow I missed that on my trip
to Lebanon not long ago. So, again, our work is to make sure
that the government is held accountable. Our work is to support
independent media that hold them accountable, for example,
after the port blast and the like.
Our work is to try to strengthen the economy and support
SMEs or American University of Beirut so that people have
scholarships so they don't turn to Hezbollah later. So, again,
you may be referring to something specific that I'm not aware
of and I apologize.
Mr. Self. I'm just taking the administration reports of $67
million.
Ms. Power. I think when we say to Lebanon, though, it's to
this range of other parties. I, again, would be very surprised
if that was government to government support.
Mr. Self. Okay. I would ask you to look at the UNIFIL. They
are not doing their job because Israel has been striking areas
south of--in the area of the Wadi Saluki and this is in the
demilitarized zone.
We need to be using all of our soft power so that we don't
have to use hard power later to make sure that Hezbollah--
because this is--if Hamas is the B team Hezbollah is the A team
in the area. They have thousands of rockets, more than Hamas.
This could be very dangerous.
I want to move to Qatar. Qatar plays both sides of the
fence. They play both sides of the fence in Afghanistan. They
play both sides of the fence with Israel and Hamas.
Why in the world are we continuing to use Qatar in their
playing both sides of the fence in both of the situations that
they are intimately involved in?
Ms. Power. Well, on both UNIFIL and Qatar your questions
are probably better steered to Secretary Blinken, who I know is
appearing here. I hope he'll forgive me for saying that.
But, you know, look, what I would just say is that anybody
who has leverage when hostages are in peril we are going to
seek to use that leverage, and the flip side of it is as you
describe but we need Qatar and all countries that have an ounce
of leverage over Hamas to use that leverage to insist that
these innocent people be returned to their families.
And so, you know, I think I think that's something you
would do if in a position to use that leverage and something we
wish to do. We want to see Qatar as well doing more in terms of
humanitarian assistance, doing more development work.
The United States benefits when more countries are willing
to engage in development and help countries become more stable
where it isn't and this is something, again, that I think
there's bipartisan consensus. It's always in our interests to
share the burden of the kind of work that we have been
describing.
Mr. Self. I'm not as sanguine as you are because listening
to the organizations that are still getting interpreters out of
Afghanistan, they are not at all sanguine about Qatar's
leverage, to use your word. So I think we need to not only hold
the governments that you're discussing accountable but Qatar as
well.
And with that, I yield back and I recognize the gentleman
from California, Mr. Costa.
Mr. Costa. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, of this
committee.
Madam Ambassador, your tireless and passionate service to
our country is to be commended and thank you for extending your
time this afternoon.
It's a hard job that you have. I want to quickly touch upon
three areas in ways that I don't think other--because time is
limited others have questioned about Armenia, about Ukraine,
and about Gaza.
Armenia is something that you have a lot of experience. In
the agreements this last week that took place with the EU
initiative and our own commitments--I think it's an additional
$65 million, if I remember correctly--what role will USAID play
in the region, moving forward, and this does this include, in
your view, increasing humanitarian and development assistance
for Armenia? And what can Congress do to help support you in
that effort?
Ms. Power. Well, Congressman, as we discussed recently
Armenia is at an absolutely pivotal inflection point and----
Mr. Costa. Are they associated with us and they want to be
a Western country and they're in a tough neighborhood.
Ms. Power. Very, very tough neighborhood.
And I did have the chance to meet with the prime minister
on Friday along with European Commissioner von der Leyen and
Secretary Blinken and it was a really historic event, actually,
to see that embrace of Prime Minister Pashinyan and the reform
efforts his government is making.
I think what you'll see is stepped up work across a range
of sectors. Their economy is very dependent on their former
Soviet partners including their food security.
So USAID is looking at investments in the agricultural
sector so that they can produce more in the way of wheat,
especially at home.
Mr. Costa. We should talk about partnerships there in the--
California, especially in the San Joaquin Valley, a lot of
Armenian expats that have been very excellent in agriculture
and there may be some synergy that we could develop.
Ms. Power. Indeed, and I'd love to followup with you on
that. That is something we are trying to do more systematically
at USAID particularly with diaspora communities that are as
dynamic as the Armenian community.
But, you know, they need support for the people of Nagorno-
Karabakh. More than 100,000 people no longer have their homes.
One of the things I talked to the prime minister about is
housing--permanent housing for these people.
At the same time we press Azerbaijan to allow these people
to have----
Mr. Costa. Because of time, if you could provide me maybe a
little descriptive with your staff. I would appreciate how we
could work and followup on that.
On Ukraine--and we're all passionate and I just pray to God
that we're going to get this package passed next week for the
Ukrainian people--but besides the tanks and bullets the
additional assistance necessary to help Ukraine economically
and on a humanitarian standpoint, and you talked about how
they've exceeded agricultural production in some instances and
it was the breadbasket.
But what do you think in terms of the longer term efforts?
Ms. Power. Let me just quote the head of the IMF, who
described Ukraine's economic growth rate this past year, which
I think was over 5 percent, as breathtaking. I mean, what--a
lot of attention is rightly paid to----
Mr. Costa. Given the fact they're in the middle of a war.
Ms. Power [continuing]. To the bravery of the citizen. Now,
you could say when 30 percent of your GDP gets, you know, taken
out by an aggressor, you know, you can only go up.
But that's not even the case. I mean, they have to do the
kind of energy repairs that they do on the fly when Putin
targets their energy infrastructure. The farmers are planting
fields from which they have to demine or sometimes wear
protective equipment in order to go out and actually do the
harvesting.
So the fact that Ukraine has reverted to its preinvasion
agricultural numbers virtually is just extraordinary.
Mr. Costa. I want to add that to your long term descriptive
because I wanted to get to Gaza. I mean----
Ms. Power. Well, I would just say in the--they are on a
trajectory where if bombs weren't falling and you could unleash
the tech capabilities--their tech sector grew by 5 percent the
first year after the war, their young people--the education
that they have, I mean, they are on a pathway to Europe, not
only because they have the----
Mr. Costa. All the more reason we need to pass this next--
--
Ms. Power. It's absolutely indispensable.
And if I could just say there are three buckets, right.
There's the direct budget support, which we have had a back and
forth on with Congressman Kean which humanitarian assistance
for the world of which Ukraine is a part.
But there's the development assistance, the support for
agriculture, for energy, for anti-corruption. That is the
investment in Ukraine's future and that is in the Senate
package as well, and I worry it's not talked about even by the
friends of Ukraine.
But that is USAID's bilateral resistance----
Mr. Costa. I am glad you got a chance to reiterate that
just now.
Ms. Power. I tried to.
Mr. Costa. One moment. This is a comment, Mr. Chairman, if
you'll allow me the discretion.
Obviously, averting a famine in Gaza has to be our first
priority. We can't in any other way think about that. We have
got to prevent a famine from taking place there.
But in your descriptive, again, when reconstruction begins
to take place and what that looks like when this war ends in
Gaza what our role is and how we partner with our moderate Arab
countries on reconstruction is something I'm very interested
in.
Ms. Power. Well, I think American companies are already
engaging and will be incredibly important players. But that is
why the investments in anti-corruption, in independent media,
in open procurement--all of these investments now also put us
in a position to see a more optimal form of reconstruction that
occurred, say, in Afghanistan.
Mr. Costa. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your
time, Madam Ambassador.
Ms. Power. Thank you, Congressman.
Mr. Self. I recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr.
Lawler.
Mr. Lawler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Administrator, following January reports that 12 UNRWA
employees were involved in the October 7th terrorist attack the
administration halted new money toward UNRWA.
In the appropriations package Congress passed recently we
added an additional year-long funding pause. There is no
question here UNRWA must be defunded and disbanded. There are
institutional problems at UNRWA that were present long before
October.
In fact, there was an amendment to defund UNRWA in the
State and Foreign Operations appropriations bill that was voted
on in September of last year.
I voted yes on that amendment along with 212 of my
colleagues. It wasn't enough for the amendment to pass but it
demonstrates that there was already serious concern with the
operations of UNRWA prior to the administration's decision to
cut funding.
Further, this past November I led floor debate to pass the
Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act, which
discussed the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel curricula taught to
children in Gaza and the West Bank, curricula taught by UNRWA
employees.
So while, yes, we appreciate the prohibition on new funding
in January this is long overdue as there were clear and present
issues at UNRWA that looks like were ignored by the
administration.
Did you have concerns about UNRWA prior to October 7th?
Ms. Power. You know, we have been here for a few hours and
I've been engaging all the UNRWA questions.
I just do want to make clear that USAID doesn't fund UNRWA.
I don't have any oversight over UNRWA or any engagement with
UNRWA, and probably detailed questions notwithstanding the fact
that I've been trying to answer them are better extended
elsewhere.
Part of the challenge here about the idea of disbanding is
that while the, again, inexcusable if the allegations are
proven true nature of----
Mr. Lawler. Would you have reason to believe the
allegations are untrue?
Ms. Power. Yes. I'm not--the investigation is underway. I
think we would not have suspended funding if we didn't deem the
allegations credible.
Mr. Lawler. Right.
Ms. Power. But, you know, the rest of the world----
Mr. Lawler. Administrator, with respect, in your prior role
did you have concern about UNRWA?
Ms. Power. I'm not going to--there's so much going on in
the world now. My prior role ended on January 20th, 2017.
Mr. Lawler. Right. And at any point did you have concerns?
Ms. Power. I absolutely--I also had no funding control over
UNRWA. In that role I would note----
Mr. Lawler. I didn't ask about funding control. I asked
about concern.
Ms. Power. Here's the challenge, which is often----
Mr. Lawler. Adminstrator, I asked you a specific question.
Did you have concern?
Ms. Power. Yes, I did engage. I did engage and I did, of
course, the textbook concerns--members of the administration.
The challenge is, and it was not a Democratic
administration that pushed for elections in Gaza but those
elections did give rise to the election of Hamas. Hamas was the
State before now, the Israeli war, to dismantle the State and
the State in every nation has a lot of say over textbooks. And
that was true for a U.N. agency that worked, as it were, at the
pleasure of the State.
We may not like the fact that those elections that the
United States pushed for produced the outcome of Hamas as the
leadership. I certainly don't like that. You don't like it.
Putting people who want to eliminate another people in power is
not anything that anybody would have wished.
But the effect is that the governing institution had a fair
amount of--had, you know, significant leverage over the U.N.
agency that was carrying out education programming----
Mr. Lawler. Right. It's a terrorist State that has had
control over this agency, which is in part why we have pushed
to defund it. Would you support future year appropriations
defunding UNRWA?
Ms. Power. I don't know if you've had a chance to talk to
the King of Jordan, for example.
Mr. Lawler. Yes, I have. I've had dinner with him in
Jordan.
Ms. Power. And about what it is going to mean for the
Jordanian people to have 2 million young people not, you know,
basically looking for where their schools are going to get
support for.
Now, it may be that the Europeans and others come in and
address this issue and it doesn't fall to him----
Mr. Lawler. Well, defunding UNRWA does not mean that we
don't deal with humanitarian issues. It doesn't mean that we
don't deal with education.
Ms. Power. No, no, but it just is the school system.
Mr. Lawler. Right. Doesn't mean that we don't deal with
it----
Ms. Power. It is the school system for 2.5 Palestinian
people of Palestinian----
Mr. Lawler. It means we find a different vehicle by which
to do this. But UNRWA itself has proven to be corrupt.
Ms. Power. But there--but as--you've been here for much of
the exchange.
Mr. Lawler. And it's proven to be corrupt.
Ms. Power. There's no NGO--there's no U.N. agency that
creates school systems. That's not--you don't--there's no like,
U-Haul where there's a school system that you just deploy in
Jordan to educate 2.6 million Jordanian kids. It doesn't--it
just doesn't work that way.
So what I'm saying is that that be taken into----
Mr. Lawler. Yes. Respectfully being, you know, snide about
it not actually solving the issue here. The reality is UNRWA is
not the vehicle by which we should be sending American taxpayer
dollars at this point. It's just not.
Ms. Power. And we will follow the law.
Mr. Lawler. And we should--right? My question to you was do
you support moving forward suspending it?
Ms. Power. I'm describing the benefits of educating young
people across the region and providing health services and I'm
not seeing a viable alternative. So I would suggest----
Mr. Lawler. So you believe we should continue to fund
UNRWA?
Ms. Power. I think, first of all, we don't know what Gaza
is going to look like after this war ends. Hopefully, Hamas
will be dismantled and new institutions will be in place
whereby they will take care of educating their own young people
and you won't need a U.N. agency to do it.
But it is extremely important that we look out for young
people in Gaza. It is going to do nobody any favors for them
not to have access to an education.
Mr. Lawler. No. In fact, the fact is on October 7 part of
the reason that you had that type of terrorist attack is
because of the level of hatred and anti-Semitism that is taught
in schools in Gaza.
That is part of the problem here, and UNRWA helped in terms
of allowing for that to occur under the guise of a U.N. agency.
It is disgusting. It is shameful, and the fact that we as the
United States have helped support that organization, helped
fund it, is an embarrassment and that's why we fought to defund
it.
Mr. Self. The gentleman's time has expired.
I recognize the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Keating.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to draw our
attention to European issues and particularly Ukraine, Central
Europe, and Georgia.
There's been a lot of comment and critique of the
administration today, you know, on issues, the Ukraine in
particular, and I must say that the most important issue at
this moment, a pivotal moment in this war, is the supplemental
aid to Ukraine--the bipartisan Senate package that's been
sitting there.
Without that Ukraine could lose this war and we'd be
fighting a new front under Article 5 with American troops on
the ground, and the name--there's one person holding this up
and he's not the administration.
His name is Speaker Johnson. One person is holding this up,
holding it up from, I think, support maybe upwards of 300
Members of Congress to support this.
So when we're talking about critiques and trying to be
critical let's start with the obvious. We're sitting here today
at this moment in history and one person is holding it up. Not
a very democratic action when 300 members, I believe, of
Congress want to vote for that.
With Ukraine I'd like to--I'll give you--I'll go through
all three, Administrator, and see--to give you enough time. But
it's important to know some of the funding that's there from
the United States and how important some of our loans are and
how it affected financial standing of Ukraine, the ability to
do the kind of things you talked about economically and
survive, you know, financial standing with the IMF and the
World Bank without those loans and how important that is.
Second, with Central Europe I want to just commend you on
the work for the very small amount of money that's there. This
is a hybrid war with Russia. They are trying to not just have a
war of aggression in Ukraine; they're trying to deal with the
conflict all through Europe using disinformation and other
activities.
And I just want to say that the work that's being done, the
pro-democracy work that's being done there to counter this is
so critical, dealing with backsliding countries, particularly
when we have countries like Hungary, you know, with some of
their actions--Slovakia, with the support of some of their--
lack of support there toward Ukraine and the rest of Europe in
that regard.
And let me, finally, deal with Georgia, where the Georgian
Dream Leaders have announced legislation which mirrors Russia's
restrictive and repressive foreign agent law and announced
legislation that would crack down on freedom of expression
similar to the Russian foreign agent law that's crippling
journalism and a free press.
And also in Georgia how we continue to work in Georgia to
support Georgia's European Union accession progress. Yet, this
concern, again, with legislation that's being proposed that we
crack down on freedom of expression with regards to the LGBTQ+
individuals in Georgia.
And I gave you a lot to go through but these are very
important issues so, if you could, take the rest of the time to
address those issues.
Ms. Power. Thank you.
Well, thank you for mentioning all of them. You know, on
Ukraine I've said this before in the context of humanitarian
assistance but I really want to stress that the word
supplemental is a misnomer because we moved our base assistance
to Ukraine into supplementals, rightly or wrongly--you all make
the rules up here and write the bills--it was incredibly
generous infusion of support deserved, of course, by these
incredibly courageous and resilient people and we have put that
money to unbelievably effective use.
And, again, you know, to talk about the rate at which their
economy is growing, to talk about the change--believe it or
not, the changed business operating environment, that the anti-
corruption indicators, you know--go ahead.
Mr. Keating. I just wanted to give you a chance on the
other topics.
But humanitarian aid is like a misnomer. I mean, we're
talking about funding----
Ms. Power. Well, they are two different buckets.
Mr. Keating [continuing]. First responders. We're talking
about dealing with preserving the energy grid. The country
would collapse and Putin would win if we aren't doing those
things. So it's beyond humanitarian. But if I could on central
Europe and Georgia----
Ms. Power. Completely. Completely. No, but, I mean, we do
humanitarian assistance, right. That is about giving vouchers
to displaced people who wouldn't otherwise have access to food
or, you know, free medical care or psychosocial support.
But these investments in the economy are what are going to
put Ukraine in a position--I use the example of the Republic of
Korea at the beginning of my opening statement of going from
being a recipient of assistance to now $5 billion a year as a
development partner.
That's what Ukraine is going to be. They've already set up
the shell of their new develop--their new USAID, Ukraine aid,
that is going to be our partner working in other countries
exporting technology.
I just want to mention one of the central European
countries, Moldova, which also is on a brave democratic path
that has brought it nothing but risk and a lot of
misinformation interference from Russia.
But they are working to render their economy--to turn their
economy to the West to fight corruption, to enhance tech and
other skills in their young people so more people stay in
Moldova. That's a success story.
And on Georgia just a very sad turn of events in terms of
some of these anti-democratic moves, particularly sad in light
of the strides that Georgia has made combating corruption
because a lot of those who will be most chilled if this foreign
agents law passes are those that hold the government
accountable and that had been absolutely vital in rooting out
corruption over many decades.
Georgia had been a real exemplar in terms of enhancing
transparency, open procurement, and the like. So I think in all
of these areas, again, there's more work to be done. But it
comes back to we want to be catalytic with any resources we are
given.
I want to turn one dollar into two dollars, three dollars,
four dollars, including by crowding in the private sector
working with the DFC and others.
But we do need these foundational resources and our Ukraine
bilateral assistance that supports energy, agriculture, the
economy, the tech sector, and the anti-corruption efforts live
within the development assistance bucket that is in the
supplemental. So without that supplemental that work will not
be able to continue as it has.
Mr. Keating. Thank you. I yield.
Mr. Self. The gentleman's time has expired. I recognize the
gentlelady from Pennsylvania, Ms. Dean.
Ms. Dean. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Administrator Power, I am mindful of your time. We are
well beyond your hard stop. Do you have time for five more
minutes?
Ms. Power. For you, of course. You've waited all this time.
Ms. Dean. No. No. And I could do it privately with you, if
you wish.
Ms. Power. No, of course. Thank you. Please.
Ms. Dean. You've been incredibly patient. Thank you for
your work, for the work of your whole team around the world
and, of course, a lot of our focus today is in Gaza, is in the
plight between Israel and Hamas war and what is going on in
Gaza.
We have an expression here I associate myself with, the
good gentleman's remarks. I want to be really clear. I do not
associate myself with some of the remarks that I've heard this
afternoon regarding UNRWA.
To me, it shows a real misunderstanding of the work that
they do. I was there in February. I was there also in November
so twice since this war began. We met with UNRWA officials.
At that time in February they had lost 147 members of their
team killed in this conflict. The number is now over 200, as I
understand it, and so that horror was brought so vividly to
life following Israel's killing of seven World Central Kitchen
workers in those three vehicles. Horrifying, absolutely
horrifying.
But to call for the defunding of UNRWA, they are angels on
the ground. I am hypercritical of the alleged 12 or 15 who may
have been infiltrating as Hamas, who may have participated in
the October 7th horrendous barbaric attack.
But you don't throw everybody and all the good work out
because I want to ask you if we continue this pause, if the
world said we will not help you, UNRWA, your, however,
thousands of workers who are on the ground who keep coming to
work even when their families--whole families are killed what
will happen with famine in Gaza if we just shut it down--no
more UNRWA.
By the way, they're not educating. We know that. They can't
even do that now. They have incredibly important vaccines and
medical aid to be a part of but the essentialness of food and
water what happens if we continue this disinformation campaign
of defund UNRWA?
Ms. Power. Well, first, thank you for bringing some facts
into the conversation that I probably should have raised before
including just the horrific loss of life for those who work for
UNRWA and, in general, you know, more than 220 aid workers
killed by IDF or in IDF military operations to this point
including most recently, of course, the World Central Kitchen
colleagues, devastatingly.
And thank you also for reminding us all but UNRWA is an
organization in Gaza alone of 13,000 people and the vast
majority of those people have, you know, not been propagating
hate but have been actually trying to educate young people.
The literacy rate in Gaza, I think, is something like 99
percent.
Ms. Dean. Astounding.
Ms. Power. It's one of the most--I should say, Gaza/West
Bank--it's one of the most effective literacy efforts, you
know, in any of the places that USAID works.
In terms of what would happen if the whole thing shut down,
right now it looks like other countries are stepping up to
avert that scenario. But, you know, I just cannot overState how
chaotic and how horrific the conditions in Gaza are. You've
spoken to them. The visuals speak to the level of destruction.
There's no workaround for the infrastructure that they provide
now.
You know, after the war when there's a new administration
of Gaza if that comes about, obviously, that's itself extremely
complicated. You know, the question of who is providing
education as they try to rebuild virtually everything from
scratch in the education and the health sector, you know, some
of these questions will be addressed.
But right now there is no way to avert large-scale famine
without relying on the humanitarian backbone that has been
UNRWA for decades and that remains UNRWA today.
That doesn't mean, again, that--I mean, we are going to
follow the law. We are going to work through other partners.
But even as--I started to say this earlier--even the government
of Israel, which had banned UNRWA participation in convoys
because of the food crisis and U.S. engagement, I hope, has now
decided that UNRWA can, in fact, be part of convoys going to
the north because they recognize there's just no other way.
Ms. Dean. Right. And I want to commend to anybody to please
meet with the director of UNRWA who is stationed in Rafah, a
20-plus year U.S. military veteran. I don't know how people
stay at this kind of work with the risks that they are taking
but they are there.
He was very clear about that, which is their challenge is
on the ground and I want to go back to where you began, which
is it is incumbent upon us--it is malpractice that we have not
passed the national security supplemental, urgent on it for
Ukraine, of course, of course, for your continued work with
USAID but humanitarian aid both for Israel and for Palestine,
for Gazans, for the West Bank. I thank you for your work.
Ms. Power. Thank you.
Mr. Self. I recognize the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr.
Hill.
Mr. Hill. Hello, Ambassador. Welcome. We're glad to have
you back before us today. Thanks for all the time you're
devoting to the mission around the world and spending time here
with the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
I want to thank you really for your magnificent leadership
and the time you've been in office. As it relates to helping
Ukraine you and I have talked about this extensively and I want
to talk to you about the good work of this committee on the
REPO Act, which Mike McCaul introduced and I worked with him to
amend rather significantly.
But we got a very strong vote here--I think 40 to 2--and
over in the Senate in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
something similar, 20 to 2, something of that nature. Do you
support Russian assets that are currently frozen being seized
and put in a U.N. or international fund for the benefit of
Ukraine current budget needs or reconstruction?
Ms. Power. Absolutely welcome the chairman's leadership,
your leadership, that of Senator Whitehouse, Senator Risch, and
others. I mean, this is extremely important.
It would be important anyway as a signal to Russia that you
have to pay for what you did--that there is not the kind of
impunity that Putin has become used to or seems to have become
used to.
But it's also important because we need all the resources
that we can get. The Ukrainians need all the resources that
they can get to rebuild. We know that they use their resources
extremely effectively.
We know that in using those resources they are making
sacrifices and taking strides on behalf of freedom for all of
the rest of us and I think this is an incredibly important
tool.
Of course, we're trying to coordinate with the G-7 to make
sure that we are acting collectively given where the vast
majority of those assets are stored.
Mr. Hill. Right, and I've seen Foreign Secretary Cameron
and Prime Minister Sunak have certainly been supportive. The
Council on Europe will vote on April 16th to do this. So I
think we really need to be a leader. I think the United States
needs to lead and that will help Europe make the best
decisions.
It's true we only have $5 billion to $6 billion of those
Russian Federation sovereign assets here and it's certainly
closer to almost $300 billion in Europe. But I think our
leadership here is important. Thank you for that.
I know that you've led in humanitarian efforts in Ukraine
and one of those is in agriculture and restarting agriculture.
I haven't heard much discussion about that today.
Thanks to American lethal aid and that from France and from
Great Britain--I won't leave anybody out, I'll say allied
nations--the Black Sea is now open for business. Is that right?
Ms. Power. Yes, it is and----
Mr. Hill. And that means we contribute less resources to
the government in Kyiv if in fact Ukraine is exporting
foodstuffs, fertilizer, others?
Ms. Power. Yes. I mean, Putin's stepped up bombardment
isn't helping their ledger, right, so they've increased exports
almost--I mean, have had even months where the agricultural
exports exceed their preinvasion levels, which is just
breathtaking, and is attributed to them and is a testament to
the good that our support, I think, is doing.
At the same time, you know, the attacks on the energy
infrastructure are of a ferocity and intensity that--we thought
you couldn't set new lows for brutality but each week Putin
seems to be setting them. So----
Mr. Hill. Well, I think that's certain. He's trying to
rival his predecessor Stalin in how many people he can kill
around the world in Russia, in Ukraine, in Syria, in other
places through his proxy support.
Let me turn to that other country if I could, which is
Syria. USAID is supportive of aid in northwest Syria. Is that
correct?
Ms. Power. Depends on the form of aid but yes.
Mr. Hill. The HART Organization that runs much of the aid
in northwest Syria out of Turkey and Iraq receives USAID
support?
Ms. Power. I think so. The details I am not familiar with.
Mr. Hill. Since the earthquake has it been hard to get aid
into northwest Syria?
Ms. Power. Yes, as you know from your travels, but I think
the teams are doing their best to find workarounds.
Mr. Hill. I just--that stabilization funding there that's
something that the U.S. has supported. The Bahar Organization
is just one organization that's doing it. Is that--that's still
a priority for us to work with neighboring countries to try to
provide aid to northwest Syria, is it not?
Ms. Power. It is. Again, part of what is happening across
the board is the very substantial cuts are requiring cuts
everywhere. So I think every region that is experiencing those
cuts thinks that they are being singled out because of some
policy shift.
But in fact when your budget shrinks by 40 percent and
global needs go up in the humanitarian space and global needs
go up by 35, 40 percent, you know, that's what we're facing.
So that's probably what is at work here. But I'm happy to
dig into any specific----
Mr. Hill. I look forward to following up with you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back and I want to thank the
Ambassador--the director for her hard work on behalf of
America's interests around the world.
Yield back.
Ms. Power. Thank you, Congressman.
Mr. Self. I thank the administrator for her valuable
testimony and for the members for their questions. The members
may have more questions and I ask that you respond to those in
writing.
Pursuant to committee rules, all members may have 5 days to
submit statements, questions, and extraneous materials for the
record subject to length limitations.
Without objection, the committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:37 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
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