WASHINGTON (OSV News) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said March 10 that just 18 percent of programs of the now-shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development will remain intact, and those will now fall under his purview at the State Department.
Cuts to funding for the government’s now-shuttered humanitarian aid agency in countries all over the globe include funding for efforts by Catholic and other faith-based humanitarian groups.
“After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83 percent of the programs at USAID,” Rubio, a Catholic, said in a post on the X social media platform. “The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.”
Rubio added, “In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18 percent of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department.”
The estimates Rubio provided on the programs he said are canceled and those retained appeared to include a slight rounding error, as they added up to 101 percent.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, known to be the world’s richest billionaire, targeted USAID for closure as part of his Department of Government Efficiency, an unofficial task force with the stated intent of curbing federal spending. The New York Times reported that tensions between Musk and Rubio, who had been named acting administrator of USAID, were apparent in a recent cabinet meeting, with Musk suggesting Rubio had not shed enough staff at his agency.
But in his March 10 post, Rubio said, “Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform.”
The work of Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services, the overseas charitable arm of the Catholic Church in the U.S., and also other faith-based entities around the globe that have partnered with USAID in its work abroad, have been greatly affected by the cuts.
CRS is bracing for massive program cuts as high as 50 percent. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Rubio’s announcement.
Carolyn Woo, CRS’s former president and CEO (and a member of the board of directors of OSV, the parent company of OSV News), previously told OSV News that cutting off USAID funding to CRS could be a life-or-death matter for many of the millions of people served by the Catholic agency’s relief projects all over the world.
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