WASHINGTON—Max Primorac, a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, released the following statement today praising the draft FY 2025 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPS) Appropriations Act recently approved by the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations:
“The FY25 SFOPS appropriations bill is one of the most conservative foreign aid packages in years. It makes deep cuts to a bloated aid industry, ends support to United Nations agencies, blocks funding for climate alarmism, provides strong pro-Life protections, prohibits funding to radical global NGOs, and rewards our allies in Israel and Taiwan.
“Major conservative victories in the package align with long-held positions of Heritage and our Project 2025 partners to end foreign aid as an international entitlement program for the far Left. Conservatives should not fold once again to the Left-wing, billion-dollar aid industrial complex. It is past time to stop taxpayer money from financing these self-serving global elites.”
Primorac, a former acting chief operating officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and senior advisor in the Office of the Secretary of State, hailed the bill after State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee Chairman Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) worked to slash 11% from America’s wasteful foreign aid budget.
As a result, taxpayers will save $7.6 billion while defunding radical programs that erode American sovereignty, promote transgenderism and abortion, and finance a climate agenda that enriches and empowers the Chinese Communist Party.
The full U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on the legislation this week. Heritage Action, the grassroots advocacy group affiliated with The Heritage Foundation, will encourage lawmakers to vote yes.
If the bill passes the House, it will move to the U.S. Senate, where Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is the top Republican on the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Subcommittee. This subcommittee will be responsible for maintaining the bill’s integrity, which will impact Heritage’s continued support.
BACKGROUND:
Heritage has long called on Congress to take meaningful steps to restore balance and nonpartisanship to the U.S. State Department and America’s foreign aid apparatus, which has been largely overtaken by the political Left.
Federal Elections Commission data show that, during the 2019-2020 election cycle, 93% of all political contributions from State Department employees and 96% of all political contributions from USAID employees went to Democratic Party candidates or political action committees.
The political disparity within our foreign policy institutions is cause for alarm. A bureaucracy captured by one political party undermines democracy. Public institutions ought to be in the service of an administration elected by the people, irrespective of their employees’ political affiliation. Yet there is strong evidence that a sharply partisan federal workforce is actively working to advance a Democratic Party agenda regardless of who occupies the White House.
Though restoring true political balance within our foreign policy apparatus would take a generation, Congress can take steps now to restore nonpartisanship.
- The Heritage Foundation: America’s State Department Was Seized by One Political Party. Here’s How To Stop Them
- The Heritage Foundation: Stop Financing South Africa’s Rogue Foreign Policy
- The Heritage Foundation: Foreign Aid Isn’t Charity
