Congress Approved $1.35 Billion for Global Health. In Four Days, It Expires Unspent.
Congress appropriated $1.35 billion for global health programs fighting tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV. Four days before it expires unspent, 120 Christian leaders are asking the White House why. The answer touches countries this publication already covers.
Congress appropriated $1.35 billion for tuberculosis, malaria, HIV, and maternal and child health programs administered by USAID. The fiscal year ends September 30. On that date, unless the Office of Management and Budget releases the money, it disappears, not spent on the mosquito nets or antiretrovirals it was written for, but absorbed into the paperwork of shutting USAID down.
That is not a metaphor. The Office of Management and Budget has told congressional staff it intends to use roughly two billion dollars in already appropriated global health funding to cover the costs of closing USAID: office leases, severance, the machinery of an agency being dismantled. Six hundred fifty million was carved out for the Ebola response underway in the Democratic Republic of Congo. What remains, $1.35 billion, sits earmarked for programs that keep people alive, and the administration has given no public account of why it has not moved.
On September 18, more than 120 Christian leaders signed a letter to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and OMB Director Russell Vought asking a narrow, specific question: spend the money Congress already approved, before the deadline erases the choice entirely. The signatories are not a predictable bloc. Rick Warren signed it. So did Russell Moore. So did Samuel Rodriguez, who has advised Trump directly, and Shane Claiborne, who has not.
