Lather, Rinse, and Repeat: House Republican Appropriators Again Approve Foreign Assistance Bill with Funding Cuts and Bad Policy Riders

Lather, Rinse, and Repeat: House Republican Appropriators Again Approve Foreign Assistance Bill with Funding Cuts and Bad Policy Riders

Another year, another attempted rollback. On April 28, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee passed its fiscal year (FY) 2027 National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs (NSRP) bill (H.R. 8595) on a party-line vote, proposing deep cuts to international family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) programs and layering on harmful policy restrictions. The bill is a predictable rerun of the past three years of GOP-led efforts targeting global sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), duplicating both language and approach. With one notable exception—the legislative codification of a dramatically expanded Global Gag Rule—the text and report are nearly identical to prior versions, amounting to a familiar exercise in lather, rinse, repeat.  

Overall, the bill provides $47.3 billion for State Department operations and foreign assistance programs, $2.7 billion (5%) below the FY 2026 enacted level, according to a bill summary issued by the committee’s majority. The U.S. Global Leadership Coalition calculates that the total amount proposed for international affairs programs is $48.1 billion when small amounts of foreign assistance funding appropriated in the agriculture and commerce, justice, and science bills are added to the NSRP bill, which is $13 billion (37%) higher than the Trump administration’s FY 2027 budget request. 

More relevant for those who care about reproductive health and rights, the Global Health Programs account in the bill, which encompasses the bulk of global health assistance, suffered a $532 million (6%) cut below the current FY 2026-enacted level but proposes an increase of $3.7 billion (73%) above the president’s paltry request. Most of the cuts are attributable to reductions to bilateral HIV/AIDS and FP/RH programs, with almost all other sectors remaining flat. Funding for global health security remains unspecified. On a positive note, the bill rejects the administration’s call in its “America First Global Health Strategy” to eliminate sector-specific accounts and retains the existing line-item budgets, except for FP/RH, in the accompanying report (H. Rept. 119-631).  

On policy, the GOP majority’s bill again injects the same litany of provisions as those included in last year’s bill, evidencing House Republicans’ ongoing fixation on fighting “culture wars” and expressing anti– “woke” grievances through the appropriations process, in this case, for export. That and appeasing Donald Trump’s id by newly banning the expenditure of funds to “create, procure, or display any map that inaccurately depicts the Gulf of America.” Together with drastic funding cuts to bilateral and multilateral FP/RH programs, these more recent “poison pills” are on top of the evergreen attacks by Republicans directed at contraception and abortion that have occurred in assembling foreign aid bills since the mid-1980s.

CHAIRMAN’S MARK

Funding for International FP/RH Slashed 

House Republicans have for the fourth year in a row proposed a statutory ceiling of “not more than” $461 million for international FP/RH funding—slashing $146.5 million (24%) from the current FY 2026 enacted level of $607.5 million—just months after that amount was enacted into law in February. The proposed cuts include a $114 million reduction to bilateral programs and a complete elimination of the U.S. voluntary contribution to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). 

Significantly, House Republican appropriators offer some guidance in the report language on how they believe the Trump State Department should spend the $607.5 million just appropriated for bilateral and multilateral FP/RH programs in FY 2026, as well as any remaining funds from prior fiscal years.

The section of the report titled “prioritization of funds” is worth quoting in its entirety as it proposes an answer to questions that have been looming—what would congressional appropriators do to try to ensure that FY 2026 funds appropriated for FP/RH programs are spent, and whether the funds would be spent on activities that at least somewhat resemble their original intended purpose.

The report states: “The Committee directs that funds made available in prior acts . . . for family planning and reproductive health, be prioritized for life-affirming maternal and child health activities such as the prevention of maternal, fetal, and neonatal deaths; training and emergency response to the 5 leading causes of maternal mortality; training and response for the leading causes of maternal late postpartum complications; training and emergency response to the leading causes of infant mortality; support for maternal nutrition; promotion of natural methods of fertility awareness; health care for the child throughout the first 1,000 days of life from conception to approximately 2 years of age; and upholding life-affirming care for both mother and child.”

The answer of Republican appropriators to the second question prioritizes funding for only certain maternal and child health interventions to the detriment of investments in FP/RH programs to increase access to modern contraception to prevent unintended and high-risk pregnancies, while at the same time promoting periodic abstinence (a.k.a. natural family planning). The report language tracks the text of a self-proclaimed “life-affirming” maternal and child health bill introduced in December by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the House’s leading abortion and family planning opponent. 

UNFPA Funding Prohibited 

Following the same routine as the last three years, the committee-approved bill contains a statutory prohibition on funding for UNFPA from any account. As a result, the funding prohibition applies not just to the voluntary contribution provided through the International Organizations and Programs (IO&P) account but to funding provided to UNFPA through other accounts. UNFPA is not alone, as the bill also prohibits all U.S. funding for the World Health Organization (WHO). The Republican majority’s bill demonstrates a strong animus toward multilateralism in general and guts U.S.-assessed and voluntary contributions to the UN and other international organizations. In the case of the UN, funding for the UN’s regular budget and voluntary contributions to UN agencies through the IO&P account are eliminated in their entirety. 

For the fourth year in a row, House Republicans have included report language attacking UN agencies for recognizing abortion as part of comprehensive reproductive health care—again citing abortion as a justification for cutting financial support to multilateral organizations. As report language, these recycled, inflammatory claims carry no binding legal weight unless adopted in final spending legislation. Yet, they persist as a political tool to signal hostility toward addressing SRHR in international fora. Once again, Republicans are using the specter of abortion to justify hostility toward SRHR under the guise of fiscal restraint. 

Longstanding Abortion-Related Restrictions Reiterated 

House Republicans have once again included longstanding statutory restrictions on abortion in their appropriations bill—such as the Helms amendment, Kemp-Kasten amendment, and the Siljander amendment—while also reiterating report language from last year calling for increased oversight in response to a so-called Helms violation under the Biden administration. 

The violation of the Helms amendment, described in the report as “despicable?” A self-reported incident in Mozambique where four nurses— in one small province out of 2,751 nurses—performed 21 safe abortions in a country where abortion is legal. It should also be noted that one of those four nurses performed 16 of the 21 abortions, further reinforcing the highly localized nature of this incident and the Republican willingness to overlook a 99.85% compliance rate. The nurses were funded through a Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-administered HIV/AIDS program, and the CDC took immediate remedial action, including retraining and reimbursement for the $4,100 spent. The CDC alone spent $189 million in President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) funds in Mozambique at the time. 

But congressional Republicans cannot seem to let go of this one incident where existing oversight mechanisms worked quickly and effectively, almost as though this isn’t actually about compliance concerns. As evidenced by repeating last year’s House report language that directs the Secretary of State “to conduct stringent oversight to ensure full adherence to requirements in law” and “expects that guidance and training associated with such requirements will ensure full awareness and compliance by implementing partners.” 

Expanded Global Gag Rule Codified 

The Republican bill codifies the expanded GGR’s three new rules into the general provisions title and prohibits the use of funds appropriated in the bill “in contravention” of the three rules on providing or promoting abortion, “gender ideology,” or “discriminatory equity ideology.” As a reminder, the dramatic expansion of the GGR restrictions applies to new activities, new recipients, and new funding. The abortion rule stands alone in its own subsection, with the “gender ideology” and the “discriminatory equality ideology” rules being combined in a separate subsection. 

 The FY 2027 NSRP bill does not align with the appropriations language changes proposed in the Trump administration’s FY 2027 budget appendix, which would have prohibited the provision of a “grant award to a nongovernmental organization or international organization if the Secretary of State determines such award is not in compliance with the rule[s].” 

Given the wide scope of the new GGR rules, such authority had the potential to be disastrous. Allowing the Secretary to determine whether an organization is “in compliance” without clear, narrow statutory criteria opens the door to subjective or politically motivated decisions, making an already unpredictable foreign assistance system even harder to navigate. Perhaps this is a sign that even House Republicans are not ready to hand over such broad discretion to the Secretary and further reduce congressional prerogatives on the use of appropriated funds.  

“Culture War” Including Anti-SRHR Policies Exported 

Again this year, the Republican majority inserts statutory provisions seeking to export America’s “culture wars,” including bans on funding for counseling, promotion, or providing surgery or hormone therapies for gender-affirming care and for flying Pride flags and prohibitions on the use of funding to implement diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives to increase diversity in the diplomatic and development workforce or to advance “critical race theory.”  New bugaboos confronted in this year’s bill—in addition to the aforementioned “Gulf of America” map mandate —include bans on enforcement of COVID-19 mask or vaccine mandates on overseas travelers and discrimination against persons with a “sincerely held religious belief, or moral conviction, that marriage is, or should be recognized as, a union of one man and one woman.” Which begs the question, is discrimination against polygamists allowed? (Apparently, funding for “drag queen workshops, performances, or documentaries” is no longer a concern, as that prohibition was dropped.) 

Notification of U.S. Government-Purchased Commodity Destruction Required 

On a more positive and serious note, the committee-passed bill includes the statutory notification requirement added in the FY 2026 omnibus spending package that the Secretary of State “promptly inform” the Appropriations Committees of the diversion or destruction of U.S. government assistance commodities, including the type and amount of assistance, the circumstances of the occurrence, and the Department of State’s response. Accompanying report language, while not legally binding, is an important expression of congressional intent, further specifies that the Secretary of State shall make the notification not later than 10 days prior to the planned destruction of U.S. government-purchased commodities that are in the possession of the State Department or an implementing partner, “including a description and the cost of the commodities to be destroyed, a justification for the destruction, and a description of efforts made by the agency or implementing partner to find alternative uses for such commodities.” The term “promptly inform” is defined to require the Secretary of State to notify the appropriate committees within five days of receiving information on the pending destruction. This mirrors the language in the joint explanatory statement for the FY 2026 omnibus. 

The inclusion of this notification requirement was precipitated by the State Department’s confirmation in late July 2025 that the decision had been made to incinerate $9.7 million worth of U.S. government-purchased contraceptive commodities—such as condoms, IUDs, oral contraceptive pills, injectables, and implants—that have been sitting in a warehouse in Belgium since January of last year, when a foreign aid freeze was instituted. Despite offers from multiple entities to purchase, repackage, and distribute these supplies, the administration responded to public outcry not by burning them but by quietly waiting for them to expire. This was in addition to press reports of U.S. food aid rotting on docks, ready-to-use therapeutic food biscuits expiring and being used as animal feed, and 500 metric tons of emergency food aid being incinerated. 

These real examples of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” in contrast to the manufactured ones that Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Trump lackeys successfully used as a pretext to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), prompted the Democratic leadership of the foreign aid authorizing and appropriations committees to introduce the Saving Lives and Taxpayer Dollars Act in both the Senate (S.2252) and the House (H.R. 4516). The bill aims to prevent the destruction of foreign assistance commodities, including food and medical supplies, unless every effort is made to sell, donate, or transfer the commodities before their expiration. The freestanding bill is unlikely to be enacted into law, certainly not before the contraceptive commodities in Belgium are incinerated or expire and become unusable. But the notification requirement included in the FY 2026 omnibus, and hopefully attached to final FY 2027 legislation, should ensure that the State Department is not able to surreptitiously destroy U.S. government-purchased commodities, today and in the future, before there is at least the possibility of congressional intervention, albeit within a very short time window, to block or further delay the destruction. 

Full Committee Markup Action 

The summary of the bill circulated by the Republican majority before the markup touts “maintaining all long-standing pro-life protections,” prohibiting funding for UNFPA, legislatively codifying the dramatically expanded GGR, and “removing vague references to ‘gender’” as key selling points for the chairman’s mark, as each “protects life, supports American values, and enhances our standing in the world.” 

During the House full-committee markup of the subcommittee bill on April 28th, Democratic SRHR champions voiced strong opposition to the Republican majority’s draft subcommittee bill. Several Democrats devoted some of their opening statements to decrying the bill’s attack on women’s health and rights, including full committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), subcommittee Ranking Member Lois Frankel (D-FL), Reproductive Freedom Caucus’s International Women’s Task Force Chair Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY), and Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA).  

Across the dais, full committee Chair Tom Cole (R-OK) and subcommittee Chair Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) reassured House Republicans that no accommodations would be given to SRHR programs and their supporters, with Chair Diaz-Balart saying as he concluded his opening remarks, “Finally, the bill maintains all long-standing pro-life provisions, prohibits funds to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), and prohibits funds being spent in contravention of the President’s policy on Protecting Life in Foreign Assistance.  These measures, alongside enhanced oversight and transparency, ensure American taxpayer dollars do not fund abortions, a policy that Americans overwhelmingly support.” 

Meng Amendment 

In a strong but ultimately unsuccessful effort to defend international FP/RH programs formerly run by USAID before its dismantling, Rep. Meng offered an amendment to strike harmful anti-SRHR language from the Republican majority’s draft bill and replace it with language restoring bilateral family planning funding to at least $575 million, the current enacted level, allowing a U.S. contribution to UNFPA with longstanding safeguards, and blocking the expanded GGR language by prohibiting the use of appropriated funds to “implement, administer, or enforce the rule . . . entitled ‘Protecting Life in Foreign Assistance,’” the abortion-focused rule. 

Joining Rep. Meng in speaking in strong support of the amendment to remove the anti-SRHR section inserted by the Republican majority and to restore provisions in current law were subcommittee Ranking Member Frankel and full committee Ranking Member DeLauro, who spoke passionately about UNFPA’s work in combating obstetric fistula. As its sponsor, Rep. Meng stated:  

“My amendment is simple. It would restore bilateral family planning funding to the enacted level Congress agreed to only a few months ago. It would replace Section 7057’s radical attacks on women’s health with the language enacted in law, including repealing the ban on UNFPA funding. Lastly, it would also prohibit any funding from being used to implement, administer, or enforce one of the new rules that comprises the new expanded global gag rule policy, which violates the First Amendment rights of American organizations, applies to all foreign aid, not just family planning assistance, and will export this administration’s extreme right-wing social ideology worldwide.” 

The only member speaking in opposition was subcommittee Chair Diaz-Balart. 

The Meng amendment was rejected on a straight party-line vote of 24 to 31, with all Democrats present supporting and all Republicans opposing. Eight committee members did not vote—four Republicans, Reps. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), Ashley Hinson (R-IA), Julia Letlow (R-LA), and Michael Cloud (R-TX), and four Democrats, Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Frank Mrvan (D-IN), and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA). 

Dean Amendment 

A second pro-SRHR amendment offered by Rep. Dean sought to strike the entire section in the general provisions of draft subcommittee bill (Sec. 7067) instituting the “culture war” funding bans described above—flying Pride flags, combating racism and sexism, promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), gender-affirming care, COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates, and most importantly, banning the use of appropriated funds “in contravention” of the two Trump rules expanding the GGR restrictions to providing or promoting  LGBTQI+ rights or DEI. After striking the existing section, the Dean amendment would have replaced with language prohibiting the use of appropriated funds to “implement, administer or enforce the rule[s] . . . entitled ‘Combating Gender Ideology in Foreign Assistance’ . . . and ‘Combating Discriminatory Equity Ideology in Foreign Assistance.’” 

Despite the markup having been underway for seven hours, subcommittee Ranking Member Frankel spoke energetically and passionately in favor of the amendment with a heavy focus on the harms of expanding the GGR beyond abortion, which Rep. Dean noted was to “comply with this administration’s extremist agenda against diversity and inclusion and LGBTQ+ issues.” Ranking Member Diaz-Balart was, once again, the only speaker in opposition.  

The Dean amendment failed on a straight party-line vote of 25 to 34, with unanimous Democratic support and solid Republican opposition. Four members did not vote—three Democrats, Reps. Cuellar, Mrvan, and Gluesenkamp Perez, and one Republican, Rep. Hinson. 

What’s Next 

House Appropriations Committee Chair Cole has set an ambitious, expedited schedule for his committee, aiming to mark up all 12 subcommittee bills by the end of June, opening the possibility of floor action in July. Whether or not the NSRP bill will see floor action remains to be seen. (The FY 2025 version did make it to the House floor and passed on a straight party-line vote at the end of June 2024.) 

As per usual, the appropriations process in the Senate is moving much more slowly, and the chamber will be preoccupied for the remainder of May with consideration of a massive $72 billion reconciliation bill, primarily to fund ICE and the Border Patrol, but also including $1 billion for Trump’s controversial ballroom project. It remains to be seen whether the Senate Appropriations Committee will be able to mark up and approve a State Department and foreign operations bill this year, after subcommittee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) did not even introduce a draft subcommittee bill last year. 

With the mid-term elections looming, the conventional wisdom is that passage of a continuing resolution will be necessary before the end of the fiscal year on September 30 to keep the federal government running until sometime after the November election, the outcome of which may change the dynamics of the negotiation between the House and the Senate on a final FY 2027 spending agreement. 

At the end of the process, advocates hope to see a continuation of the status quo on international FP/RH issues—level funding and no new policy “riders,” either positive or negative—for the 17th year in a row. Lather, rinse, and repeat.