Schatz: US State Department illegally withholding global health funding

Hawaiʻi US Sen. Brian Schatz took to the Senate floor this week to accuse the US State Department of illegally withholding congressionally approved global health funding, saying the delays are costing lives around the world.

Schatz, ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, said the department has failed to release money for organizations including Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, despite bipartisan legislation requiring the funds be spent.

“It shouldn’t be this difficult to get the State Department to follow the law,” Schatz said, adding that Congress made clear earlier this year, when it passed the State and Foreign Operations appropriations bill on a bipartisan basis, that the spending requirements were mandatory, not optional.

According to Schatz, the administration has withheld $600 million intended to help vaccinate children against diseases including Ebola, cholera and mpox through Gavi. The funding remains stalled despite assurances from the secretary of state that it would be released, and he attributed the holdup to officials at the US Department of Health and Human Services, which he said has no jurisdiction over State Department appropriations.

Schatz also pointed to the Global Fund, saying the administration last week released a $661 million contribution after months of delay but is still withholding close to $2 billion in additional funding for the organization, which supports treatment and prevention programs for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

The senator said the funding delays follow last year’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, which he said Congress and the Senate had ratified. He credited bipartisan negotiations, including with the late Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, with restoring support for foreign aid programs now largely administered through the State Department.

Schatz argued the holdups are not simply bureaucratic delays. Every day that funding contributions worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars are delayed, people go hungry, get sick and die, he said.

At the same time, Schatz criticized the administration for directing money toward what he characterized as ideologically driven projects. He cited millions of dollars in funding for nonprofit groups in the United Kingdom examining free speech issues, and a $200 million State Department fund for private investment in and around Armenia that he said is led by a donor with business ties to the region.

Schatz does not view the issue as strictly partisan, noting that some Democratic strategists had urged the party to avoid the fight because foreign aid programs do not poll well. That consideration should not factor into decisions involving life-saving assistance, he said.

The senator said the funding in question is not discretionary. Congress has already directed how the money for programs including PEPFAR, Gavi and the Global Fund must be spent under federal law, and that the State Department is obligated to carry out those directives, he said.