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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended sweeping changes to American foreign assistance programs, telling a Senate subcommittee that aid must serve the country’s national interest rather than operate as “a standalone strategy of its own.”
Appearing before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs to present the administration’s FY2027 budget request, Rubio said Washington had already signed compacts with 32 countries aimed at strengthening their domestic health systems and self-reliance.
He asserted that US goal has been to “align foreign assistance generally with the strategic lever, with the strategic interest of the United States.”
“The best foreign assistance programs are the ones that end,” Rubio said. “They end because the country that you’re helping no longer needs it.”
The secretary cited South Korea as a model, noting the country was once a major aid recipient but is now the world’s ninth-largest economy and itself a donor state.
Rubio said the administration had realigned assistance flows toward Asia and the Western Hemisphere, and struck new agreements with multilateral bodies including the Global Fund and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to more effectively channel U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Highlighting the fact whether it’s realigning or aid, he said, “More of our assistance is going into Asia and the Western Hemisphere than it has historically in the past; whether it’s entering into compacts with individual countries, 32 of them now, that we can strengthen their domestic capacities and their national health systems; whether it’s our ability to arrange new agreements with, like, the Global Fund and others OCHA to be able to more effectively deliver the donations, the taxpayer dollars of the United States, to these entities.”
The Food for Peace program, he added, was being transferred to the Agriculture Department on the grounds that it had stronger ties to America’s agricultural sector. Rubio also pushed back against past aid delivery models, saying many foreign governments had expressed frustration that U.S. assistance was often channeled through NGOs without coordination with their administrations.
“We were just doing what we thought they needed, not what they were asking for,” he said.
Rubio, who served 16 years in the Senate before becoming secretary of state, acknowledged that Congress plays a central role in appropriations and said he did not expect lawmakers to adopt the White House budget proposal unchanged.
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