Young highlights need to reform U.S. development assistance with new bipartisan report

U.S. Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) highlighted in a recent keynote address and new bipartisan congressional task force report that reforming U.S. development assistance for the first time since 1961 is in the best interest of national security.

Young, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) undertook a review of U.S. development aid as co-chairs of the Bipartisan Congressional Task Force on Reforming and Reorganizing U.S. Foreign Assistance. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) convened the task force in response to the Trump administration’s executive order requesting suggestions on reforming U.S. foreign assistance by September.

The task force’s review culminated in a report that recommends ways to improve the effectiveness and accountability of U.S. development assistance programs.

“Given the diverse and growing array of threats and challenges we confront, we need to ensure all available tools are optimized and employed as effectively as possible,” Young said in remarks at a CSIS event announcing the findings of the report. “I recognize that our nation’s development enterprise is in dire need of reform and improvement.”

“I also recognize that development investments are sometimes long-term investments that take years or decades to come to fruition,” he added.

Over time, Young continued, investments in development assistance can promote national security and economic opportunities for Americans and address humanitarian crises that undermine security and prosperity. Examples include the Marshall Plan that helped U.S. allies rebuild after World War II and 11 of the United States’ top 15 trade partners being former recipients of U.S. development assistance.

However, there has not been a major revamp of U.S. development assistance since the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, Young added. The report found more than 20 federal agencies engage in development assistance, resulting in a “disjointed and inefficient system ripe for improvement.”

The report recommends maintaining the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as an independent agency overseeing all U.S. foreign assistance efforts, addressing duplicative efforts to help achieve budget savings and modernizing personnel systems to make procurement more efficient.

“This report presents a strong bipartisan agenda for assistance reform, reflecting the realities and challenges in developing countries,” Young said. “It argues for greater cohesion among agencies and presents thoughtful and actionable recommendations that, if implemented, would lead to improved efficiency, effectiveness and accountability.”

Having an understanding of how the developing world has changed is necessary, he said. “As we undertake reform and reorganization, we need to design our institutions and programs to reflect the realities of the developing world today and tomorrow — not the way it was decades ago.”