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Forbes
31-05-2025
- General
- Forbes
How Does Long Covid Manifest In Infants And Young Children?
Washington DC, USA- September 19: Protestors lay down outside the White House to call attention to ... More those suffering from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and âlong Covidâ on September 19th, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) Long Covid symptoms are completely different in infants and toddlers, a recent JAMA Pediatrics study found. While infants and toddlers between the ages of 0 to 2 years are more likely to experience a stuffy nose, cough, poor appetite, fussiness, and sleep problems, children between the ages of 3 to 5 years mainly complain of sleepiness, feeling tired during daytime, low energy and dry cough. The study included 472 infants and toddlers, out of which 278 tested positive for Covid-19 and another 539 preschool-aged children. In this age group, 399 had been infected with the coronavirus. 'Studying long Covid in early childhood presents unique challenges due to rapid developmental changes and limited verbal communication, requiring caregivers to observe, identify, and interpret symptoms,' the researchers wrote in the study. 'These challenges have limited the understanding of symptom profiles in young children. Most long Covid studies that involve young children, including controlled studies, either do not report age-specific subgroup analyses or young children are not well represented.' 'Other Covid-19 studies have focused on SARS-CoV-2 exposure during pregnancy and offspring outcomes, with mixed findings related to birth defects, prematurity, and delayed developmental milestones. However, incomplete knowledge of prolonged symptoms experienced after a young child's own SARS-CoV-2 infection hinders prevention and treatment of LC in infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children. This is a substantial gap, given that early childhood is a critical period in setting lifelong health trajectories,' they added. The researchers observed that 114 of the 278 infants/toddlers with a history of a Covid-19 infection and 49 of 194 infants or toddlers who did not get infected had at least one prolonged symptom. Whereas 45% of children who had Covid-19 and 37% who did not test positive reported at least one prolonged symptom. Among children, the most common symptom was dry cough (74%), followed by tiredness and daytime sleepiness (33%). "The findings that infants/toddlers and preschool-aged children have varied symptoms may be explained by the fact that symptoms in younger children are reported based on what caregivers can observe rather than what the children themselves are feeling and describing because most children in this age group do not yet have the language, social skills, or understanding of symptoms to share what they are experiencing," the researchers explained. "For example, fears and feelings of pain, brain fog, headache, tiredness, or changes in taste and smell may be hard to identify if the child cannot verbalize their internal feelings or sensations, whereas a symptom such as a cough is easily observed," they added. "A further complication is that the identified symptoms may occur commonly in young children because of their naive immune systems. Daytime sleepiness, trouble sleeping, cough, stuffy nose, and poor appetite can occur in many acute and chronic early childhood illnesses." A 2021 study published in Frontiers in Pediatrics compared the long Covid symptoms of children of all age groups including newborn infants to 18-year-olds, and observed that persistent post-viral symptoms were significantly more common after a Covid-19 infection. The most common symptoms were fatigue, irritability and mood changes, headaches, runny nose, cough, and loss of smell and taste.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
What the New 'MAHA' Report Says About Children's Health
Make America Healthy Again hats are given out at a news conference on removing synthetic dyes from America's food supply, at the Health and Human Services Headquarters in Washington, DC on April 22, 2025. Credit - Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images A new federal report issued by the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission portrays children's health as in alarming decline due to poor diet, chemical exposures, over-medicalization, a lack of physical activity, and much more. Certain industry groups, the American health care system, and parental choices are largely blamed—while socioeconomic factors that research has shown affects many of these issues are barely mentioned. President Donald Trump requested the report in a February executive order establishing the MAHA Commission, whose primary mission is to address childhood chronic diseases. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chairs the commission. The group's report presents four main drivers of chronic childhood illness, laying particular blame on the food children eat and their daily habits. It takes aim at ultra-processed foods, citing a 2021 study that found that nearly 70% of an American's child's calories come from this category, and argues that those foods drive weight gain. The report also says that children are over-exposed to chemicals, take too many medications, spend too little time doing physical activity, and are too focused on technology. While the report rests some responsibility on the food and pharmaceutical industries—which it says have undue influence on dietary guidelines and drug studies—it also criticizes certain parental decisions. The report says, for instance, that a rise in chronic childhood diseases is directly tied to children's diets, and that the reliance on ultraprocessed foods 'is a dramatic change since the 1960s when most food was cooked at home using whole ingredients'—a nod to demographic changes in which more women are in the workforce rather than staying at home with children. Read More: How Having a Baby Is Changing Under Trump It says that more than one third of parents leave electronic devices powered on in their children's bedrooms at night, disrupting their sleep. It adds that children are over-medicated, in part, because of 'well-intended physicians and parents attempting to help a child.' It also says that pregnant mothers eat too much ultraprocessed food; that pesticides, microplastics, and pollutants are commonly found in the blood and urine of children and of pregnant women; and that virtually every breast milk sample tested in America 'contains some level of persistent organic pollutants.' The authors of the report claim that teens in single-parent families tend to have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and ADHD than those in two-parent households, citing studies from 2017 and 2015. 'Gentle parenting,' a popular parenting style emphasizing empathy and respect, also attracts their critique; the authors cite one report finding that it and trauma-informed care 'potentially pathologize normal emotions, undermine resilience, and contribute to rising anxiety and depression rates among children and teenagers.' Some praised the report's wide-ranging nature and the fact that it calls attention to the many impediments families face in raising healthy children. 'Parents are being set up to fail,' says Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, a national nonprofit that focuses on food, farming, and the environment. 'There are simply too few good choices and too many bad choices.' Read More: When Fighting with Your Insurance Company Becomes a Full-Time Job The report exemplifies the Make America Healthy Again platform, which focuses on how food and chemicals are making people less healthy. The movement has supporters in Surgeon General nominee Dr. Casey Means and in a vocal contingent of moms across the country. Like many policies in the Trump Administration, it looks to return to a time decades ago when, the movement's leaders believe, things were better in America—a claim that is in a large part untrue when it comes to health. 'In this report, there are these ideas that we need to get back to some nostalgic, pre-existing state where children didn't have cellphones, slept more, and went camping,' says Peter Lurie, the president and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit focusing on food safety, nutrition and health. 'It doesn't seem to really live in the real world.' This is not the first time a presidential administration has looked into worsening child health in America and blamed lifestyle choices. The Biden Administration released a report about diet-related diseases, and the Obama Administration had a Task Force on Childhood Obesity that submitted a report to the president. However, the MAHA Commission's report differs in that it barely mentions the socioeconomic factors that worsen obesity and childhood disease, like a lack of access to healthy food or green space. People may know what is healthy but may not be able to easily access nutritious food because of a lack of grocery stores where they live; they may want their children to spend more time outside but are worried about crime or a lack of green space. 'One approach is to invest in these communities so that people have access to the resources they need,' says Nour Makarem, co-leader of the chronic disease unit at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The commission now has 80 days to come up with a strategy for improving the health of American children based on the report. But some critics point out that efforts to find solutions to some of the problems outlined by the report have been cut by the current Administration. The report comes amid drastic cuts to or eliminations of many government programs working to solve some of these issues. Layoffs decimated the chronic disease prevention center at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Trump Administration cut a program that brought food to schools from local farms. Shortly before the MAHA report was released, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would severely cut funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps low-income families buy food. Clinical trials and studies looking at chronic disease prevention and ways to help people access healthy foods have been cut in the Administration's slashing of grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and other sources, adds Makarem. 'I don't know that we've identified the most innovative approaches to knowing what's healthy and having people engage in healthy behaviors,' she says. 'None of that can be accomplished without research and clinical trials.' Contact us at letters@
Forbes
30-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Congress Takes Huge Step To Repeal 6 Student Loan Repayment Plans And Force Many Borrowers To Pay More
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 29: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks at a press conference ... More with other members of House Republican leadership, following a meeting of the House Republican Conference, in Washington, DC on April 29, 2025. A key GOP House committee passed legislation that would fundamentally reshape federal student loan repayment and loan forgiveness. (Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images) A key House committee passed the Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan on Tuesday, a Republican bill that is part of the party's broader effort to enact President Donald Trump's legislative agenda of extending massive tax cuts paid for by slashing government spending. If the bill is ultimately enacted through the budget reconciliation process, it would fundamentally remake the entire federal student loan repayment system by cutting off or pushing out loan forgiveness and forcing millions of borrowers into more expensive repayment plans. 'Today, the Education and Workforce Committee passed the Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan—a vital portion of Trump's big, beautiful bill to provide tax relief for American families and small businesses, rein in wasteful spending, and reduce the federal budget deficit,' said the committee in a statement on Tuesday. 'Our current student loan system is broken and has left students holding over $1.6 trillion in federal student loan debt, with taxpayers estimated to lose hundreds of billions of dollars on loans disbursed over the next decade,' said Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) following the commitee's passage of the bill. 'The bill passed by Committee Republicans today not only would save taxpayers over $350 billion but also bring much-needed reform in three key areas: simplified loan repayment, streamlined student loan options, and accountability for students and taxpayers. I'm proud of the Committee's work today to finally stand up and end the status quo of endless borrowing.' But the proposed changes to student loan repayment programs would have profound impacts for millions of borrowers, potentially leading to higher payments and cutting off loan forgiveness eligibility. Here's a breakdown. A core element of the Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan bill is a complete overhaul of the federal student loan repayment system. And the changes won't just impact new borrowers; many existing borrowers currently in repayment on their student loans would be affected, too. Currently, there are about a dozen federal student loan repayment plans, broken into two broad groups. There is a collection of repayment plan options with fixed monthly payments over a traditional amortization schedule, without regard to a borrower's income or their ability to pay. This includes a 10-year Standard plan, a 25-year Extended plan, a Graduated repayment option where payments start off relatively low and increase over time, and consolidation Standard plans with terms of up to 30 years, depending on the initial balance. Then, there are income-driven repayment plans. IDR is an umbrella term that encompasses a collections of repayment plans tied to a borrower's income and family size, with borrowers entitled to student loan forgiveness for any remaining balance by the end of the repayment term, typically 20 or 25 years. Under the IDR umbrella, there are three 'income-contingent' repayment plans including Income-Contingent Repayment, Pay As You Earn, and the new SAVE plan which was designed to be the most affordable IDR option. Separately, there are two 'income-based' repayment plans; an older version of IBR that is the most accessible IDR program, and a newer version of IBR that is about 33% less expensive than it's older counterpart with a 25-year student loan forgiveness term instead of 20. This 'new' IBR plan is only available for borrowers who first took out federal student loans on or after July 1, 2014. The Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan would upend this federal student loan repayment plan system by narrowing down the number of plans to just two. One 'Standard' plan option would have fixed payments on a term of between 10 and 25 years, depending on the borrower's balance. And a new income-driven option called the 'Repayment Assistance Plan' (or RAP for short) would have monthly payments comparable to the PAYE plan and new IBR, but with a 30-year student loan forgiveness term instead of 20 or 25 – effectively forcing borrowers to repay their loans for far longer. It would be one thing if, under the bill's terms, current student loan borrowers would be able to continue repaying their student loans under existing plans. That would be largely true for borrowers currently in repayment under Standard and Graduated plans. But for current borrowers in one of the four existing IDR plans, things get very complicated. A prior version of the Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan (called the College Cost Reduction Act) would have grandfathered in current borrowers into the existing IDR system. But the legislation passed by Republicans in the House Education and Workforce Committee on Tuesday would not do that. The bill would repeal all income-contingent repayment plans including the ICR, PAYE, and SAVE plans. It also would eliminate the 'new' IBR plan. That effectively would leave only the older, more expensive version of IBR, and the new RAP plan created by the bill. If enacted, this will have profound impacts for millions of federal student loan borrowers. The more than eight million borrowers who have been in the SAVE plan will be forced under the bill's terms into the older version of IBR, which could double or even triple their monthly payments. They could opt into the RAP plan instead to have somewhat more affordable payments, but that would extend their repayment term by five to 10 years or more (SAVE allowed for student loan forgiveness on varying timelines between 10 and 25 years). Meanwhile, borrowers currently in PAYE and 'new' IBR would also be forced into the older version of IBR under the terms of the legislation. This will result in most of these borrowers experiencing roughly a 33% increase in their monthly payments, as the older version of IBR uses a 15% discretionary income formula rather than 10% for PAYE and new IBR. As with SAVE plan borrowers, those who are in PAYE and new IBR could opt to switch into the new RAP plan instead, which would have comparable payments for most middle-income borrowers (although lower-income borrowers would have higher payments under RAP). But the tradeoff is an additional five to 10 years in repayment due to RAP's 30-year student loan forgiveness term. Borrowers would also be locked into RAP if they opt in – they would not be able to change their minds later and switch to IBR. The situation would be particularly complicated for Parent PLUS borrowers. Parent PLUS borrowers are generally ineligible for income-driven plans, but if they consolidate their Parent PLUS loans into a Direct consolidation loan, that Direct consolidation loan can be repaid under the ICR plan. For older Parent PLUS borrowers on a fixed income, ICR can be a lifeline when no other fixed repayment plans are affordable. But the Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan eliminates the ICR plan. Under the bill, Parent PLUS borrowers who have already consolidated their loans and are enrolled in ICR as of the bill's enactment would be automatically moved into the older version of IBR – which may actually lower their monthly payments, since IBR is generally a more affordable plan than ICR. But all other Parent PLUS borrowers would be permanently locked out of any income-driven repayment option, since they cannot enroll in RAP and would be barred from enrolling in IBR after the bill's passage. This would also effectively prevent Parent PLUS borrowers not already enrolled in income-driven repayment from pursuing student loan forgiveness, as well. If these borrowers cannot enroll in IDR, they cannot get their loans forgiven under IDR. They also would not be able to benefit from Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which typically requires that borrowers enroll in an IDR plan. For the time being, none of these changes to student loan repayment plans have become law yet. The Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan must now go to the House Budget Committee before it can be sent to the full House for a floor vote. The Senate must also pass its own reconciliation bills. Then, leaders from key House and Senate committees must hammer out any differences between the two versions of the bills before they can finalize the legislation, pass it through both chambers of Congress, and send it to President Trump for his signature. There could be changes to the legislation at nearly any step during this process. If the bill in its current form ultimately becomes law, borrowers could see changes to their student loan repayment plan, their monthly payments, and their student loan forgiveness eligibility by the end of this year.
Forbes
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
After Arkansas: The Future Of FEMA And Disaster Relief In America
WASHINGTON DC, UNITED STATES - OCTOBER 09: Signage for the Federal Emergency Management Agency ... More (FEMA) is seen outside of the agency's headquarters in Washington, DC on October 9, 2024. (Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images) Once seen as a backstop for the nation's worst days, FEMA is now at the center of a pitched political and operational debate. That reality came into full view earlier this month when the current administration denied federal disaster relief to Arkansas, appealed for by Republican governor Sanders, following a series of deadly tornadoes that left more than 40 people dead. Just a few weeks earlier, North Carolina's governor Josh Stein was forced to appeal the federal government's refusal to continue funding 100% of the state's debris removal costs in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. In both cases, the message was clear: states must now prepare to shoulder more of the burden, no matter the party at the top of the food chain, and FEMA's position and reputation, long a rollercoaster ride from Katrina-era failures to pandemic-scale deployments, is again on the line, this time not due to its actions alone, but also due to its very existence. Established in 1979 by President Carter in response to the bureaucratic chaos exposed by Hurricane Agnes and the Three Mile Island nuclear incident, FEMA consolidated over 100 programs under a single mission: to enable coherent, coordinated and more effective disaster relief. To say that the mission has evolved over time is an understatement of equal proportions to the task given to FEMA. After being absorbed into the newly formed Department of Homeland Security in 2003, FEMA became the main arm of national emergency preparedness. It would not take long for its ability to fulfill that role to be tested. In the long reckoning that followed Hurricane Katrina, FEMA's management of the response was widely regarded as 'woefully mishandled" by the organization, leading to a national crisis of confidence in the agency. The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 refined, revised and reformed the agency's mission, with another set of reform acts following after the 2012 Hurricane Sandy and 2017 hurricane season. By 2020, FEMA saw its mandate stretched to meet an entirely new kind of disaster: a global pandemic. Under President Trump, it was charged with organizing parts of the COVID-19 response, ultimately disbursing nearly $90 billion in relief. But even during what now in hindsight seems like the agency's peak of relevance, a sense of unease and mounting scrutiny remained. That unease has now grown into an outright dismissal of the agency's right to existence by the current administration, leading to what promises to be an entirely new chapter for disaster relief in America. Over the past year, Donald Trump and conservative allies have tightened the noose around FEMA, proposing to drastically revise its role or to eliminate it entirely. Recent executive orders and the remarks surrounding them have seen the administration reframe FEMA as a failure and a burden taxpayers can no longer afford. President Trump has repeatedly questioned the need for FEMA in its entirety, and during a January 2025 visit to wildfire damage in California, he remarked, 'I say you don't need FEMA, you need a good state government… FEMA is very expensive, in my opinion, [a] mostly failed situation.' These remarks reflect what has long since been in the making, and they are nothing less than a culmination of a deeper ideological realignment on the value and role of centralized federal relief agencies. What was once a crisis-response tool is now a political flashpoint. Which leaves a difficult question: what happens next? Although it might not seem so on the surface, the crisis of confidence FEMA finds itself is as much philosophical as it is political. At its core lies a question as old as development itself: who should lead in a crisis? The nation, or the neighborhood? For decades, development theorists and practitioners have debated the merits of centralized vs. decentralized response systems. Centralized systems, such as FEMA, offer scale, coordination, and the ability to marshal resources quickly. They can pool risk across geographies, gather expertise, and influence broader policy through research and oversight. For major catastrophes, they are often the only entity capable of organizing a response in any timeframe that matters when the objective is to save lives. But centralization has long since found its critics. Scholars like William Easterly have long argued that top-down aid systems tend toward bureaucracy and bloat, often misallocating funds or reacting slowly to dynamic local conditions. Projects get delayed. Expertise becomes disconnected from reality on the ground, and agendas often drift from the core mission, sometimes so far the original task is no longer at the center of it all. Over time, the pendulum has swung increasingly toward local empowerment with other academic heavyweights like Amartya Sen and Jeffrey Sachs pointing to the value of local knowledge, community buy-in, and cultural sensitivity in development and disaster recovery. They have done so with good reason, given how decentralization can foster innovation, reduce waste, and build resilience at the level where crises are felt most acutely. The current administration's disaster policy proposals are firmly planted in this decentralist tradition, but they make strange bedfellows. Rather than a gradual strengthening of local capacity as a way of reimagining how the global development industry operates, the administration's proposals do not go much beyond an effort to simply withdraw federal support. There's little scaffolding, bridging and virtually no space given to the centralized agencies, which most development academicians would agree still has its place. That brings us to the heart of the matter: are states ready to go it alone? On paper, the architecture exists. Under the current model, emergency management begins locally, then scales upward as needed. This fact is at the heart of the current administration's refusal of Arkansas' request, which it deems within the capacities of the state arguing that 'supplemental federal assistance is not necessary.' But the capabilities vary drastically across states. Large, disaster-prone states like Florida and California have mature agencies with seasoned teams and contingency funding, although in both the system is showing signs of cracking under the weight. Others, especially smaller or less disaster-experienced states, operate on what compares more to a shoestring than the kind of battle chest one needs to effectively operationalize disaster relief. Take North Carolina for example. After Hurricane Helene, almost $100 million was directed by FEMA towards housing and other assistance to 75,000 households, not counting other forms of relief the state has received from the agency. Earlier this month FEMA decided to discontinue its 100% matching of the state's debris removal efforts, leading to a forceful response and appeal for extending the much needed support from Governor Josh Stein. Whatever the reality, clearly the state does not feel ready to take on the task FEMA has played until now. Replicating that support structure at the state level would require massive investment in infrastructure, staffing, and funding pipelines. States would need to dip into rainy day funds, raise taxes, or take on debt to compensate. Most importantly, they would need to begin the lengthy political process that prepares the state for the financial and logistical lifts necessary to carry the weight. While these challenges are concrete, the debate also runs deep into ideology. Is disaster relief a federal obligation, a collective insurance policy for the nation? Or should responsibility fall to the states, with the federal government acting as backstop, not first responder? Proponents of the current administration's actions argue for the latter. Although arguments vary, they are often a mixture of notions that generous federal aid creates moral hazard, discouraging local investment in preparedness, to more libertarian views of fairness and the need to carry one's burdens. Against this ideological backdrop, raising the bar for federal aid, phasing out FEMA programs, and reassigning risk to where it originates is the solution. Others, like the Cato Institute go one step further, suggesting FEMA be abolished entirely, replaced by market solutions and state compacts. In their view, the federal government's involvement has distorted risk and created perverse incentives, with no role for a national solution to what is seen as a local problem. On the other side, institutions like Brookings and the Urban Institute advocate for reform over retreat, and elevation instead of eradication. They concede that FEMA's flaws are real, but solvable, and they argue for a mixed bag of streamlining aid processes, improving transparency, and investing in long-term resilience among many other suggestions. At the heart of this viewpoint is the admission that cutting aid won't build local capacity overnight; it will just shift the burden to those least able to bear it in their current state. Amidst all ideological tug-of-war we find some agreement as well. Both sides of the spectrum camps acknowledge the need for stronger local preparedness. But while one side sees federal withdrawal as the lever to make that happen, the other warns that such moves risk creating a two-tier disaster system, one for the wealthy, one for the vulnerable. Whatever one's views on the matter, FEMA's withdrawal from the scene will have concrete impacts. In many ways the above debate has already moved from theory to reality. In April 2025, the administration denied federal disaster relief to Arkansas, despite deadly tornadoes and a request from the state's Republican governor. The signal was clear: FEMA no longer functions as it once did, and states should prepare for a new reality. This policy pivot carries real consequences. States will need to scale up capacity rapidly, placing pressure on public budgets. Insurance markets may tighten. In places like Florida, where home insurance premiums are already skyrocketing due to hurricane risk, the absence of federal relief could make properties uninsurable. California has seen similar dynamics around wildfire risk, and there are few, if any, private-sector solutions that the market could sustain. In economic terms, this is a reallocation of risk across the system. A reallocation many would relish seeing come to reality. But we must not lose sight of the fundamental issue: disaster response is not just an economic transaction. It is a part of the social contract. Sudden drawdowns of humanitarian support, like we saw in the Afghanistan withdrawal, often yield unintended consequences that go well beyond what any expert can prepare for. Moving toward local self-reliance is a laudable goal. But it is a long-term transformation, not a switch. Without proper transition planning, we risk a gap between the old system's exit and the new system's readiness. And given what we are working with, that gap won't be measured in days or dollars, but in lives affected when the next disaster hits.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
I Came to Congress to Gut Foreign Aid. I Was Wrong
Protestors gather outside of the U.S. Capitol for a rally in support of USAID in Washington, DC on February 5, 2025. Credit - Nathan Posner—Anadolu/Getty Images You don't often hear politicians concede their mistakes, but that's the pill I'll swallow today, February 13, as a witness before the same foreign affairs congressional panel under which I was previously a subcommittee chair from 2017-2019. I first came to Congress more than a decade ago to shock the system—a mandate to find and eliminate every possible cent of government excess that failed to deliver value to the economic and national security of the United States. At the very top of my list was foreign aid, which I considered a reckless extravagance that blew precious American tax dollars on vanity projects. I was wrong. It was only after my first foreign congressional delegation trips to Africa and Latin America that I understood that foreign assistance, when structured and deployed correctly, is a uniquely powerful soft diplomacy tool to strengthen the nation's economy and national security. In fact, America's interests are undermined when aid is poorly contrived and not rigorously evaluated. Through my oversight of international assistance on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and as the Co-Chair of the Aid Effectiveness Caucus, I eventually came to understand that thoughtfully designed and carefully supervised foreign aid advances U.S. interests by projecting American leadership in a sometimes fractured world, broadening and deepening political alliances and bilateral trade, and countering the influence of our adversaries and other malign actors who mean to do us harm. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that all future international assistance must make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous. Most Americans would agree with that commonsense instinct. But as the Trump administration undertakes its foreign aid assessment under its wing, only two questions really matter: Does a program align with U.S. economic, national security, and foreign policy priorities? And can it demonstrate efficient values for American tax dollars? In cases where either answer is no, it's important to identify more effective stewardship that makes America stronger and safer. Read More: How Trump's Foreign-Aid Freeze Is 'Shaking the Whole System' Amid the rancor and hysteria that so often grips Washington, we must come together on a bipartisan basis to support assistance that meets these criteria and to oppose programs that do not. We cannot afford to invest in programs that are not effective and strategic. While in Congress, I repeatedly championed legislation to mandate bilateral and multilateral aid reviews, and I urge colleagues on both sides of the aisle to prioritize these reforms once again. By clearly codifying into law the objectives and authorities of our international assistance programs in a bipartisan fashion, Congress would ensure that foreign assistance will not deviate from its core purpose nor fail to deliver value for Americans. As our government endeavors to reduce our crippling national debt, we must acknowledge that we cannot afford to do everything, everywhere, all at once. Spreading ourselves too thin dilutes the humanitarian and strategic impact of our foreign assistance spending—that's why the alignment with U.S. foreign policy priorities and programmatic efficiency tests are so important. Speculation that the U.S. might eliminate its foreign aid program has been met with cheers from Beijing, to Moscow and Tehran. The band of developing countries that sit on vast natural resources and critical mineral deposits key to high-tech products are being told by our adversaries that America is no longer a trusted global partner. The economy our children inherit will suffer enormous harm if we are not vigilant and consistent in our efforts to counter China's influence in the developing world. That means reactivating funding for programs that advance our interests. Successive Democratic and Republican Administrations have tried to narrow USAID's aperture and graduate countries off assistance, but none have succeeded meaningfully. This conversation is an opportunity to put aid beneficiaries on a journey to self-reliance and concentrate our assistance on geographies and economic sectors where we can have the most significant impact at home and abroad. USAID, the federal agency tasked with implementation and oversight of the country's aid budget and auxiliary programs, needed a hard reboot. But as we reboot, we can't afford to retreat. I'm hopeful that President Donald Trump and Congress can come to appreciate, as I did years ago, the enormous and measurable value of effective foreign assistance. After all, there's good company in occasionally being wrong. Contact us at letters@
