WASHINGTON, D.C. – Recently, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) and 12 of his colleagues sent a bipartisan letter to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power requesting a briefing and answers for the agency’s months-long delays in delivering Congressionally-approved emergency aid to people in need immediately. This comes as tens of millions face starvation worldwide from Putin’s war on Ukraine, and Senator Tillis and his colleagues are demanding accountability from the Biden administration for their mismanaged, sluggish rollout of nearly $10 billion in humanitarian aid appropriated by Congress across two emergency aid packages. 

Recognizing the acute need for shelter, medicine, and food both in and beyond Ukraine, Congress approved nearly $10 billion in humanitarian and food aid through two separate emergency packages—one in March 2022 and another in May 2022—but USAID has failed to deliver aid quickly. USAID has not yet delivered or even committed all the funding from the first package, and has elected to hold more than half of the funding from the second package until the next fiscal year.

“Stopping Russia’s military campaign across Ukraine is a security necessity; preventing a large-scale humanitarian crisis prevents global unrest, mass migration, widespread starvation and preserves American safety and prosperity here at home,” the senators wrote. “Unless the United States translates well-meaning rhetoric and appropriated dollars into a swift humanitarian response, Russia’s crimes against humanity and weaponization of the global food supply will go unpunished.”

The senators continued, “The most significant proposal of humanitarian aid in modern U.S. history must be accompanied by an infrastructure that assumes more prudent risk and quickly delivers support.”

Read the full letter here.

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