Republicans struck a bipartisan, bicameral funding deal with Democrats to send roughly $50 billion overseas, defying DOGE-backed spending cuts and President Donald Trump's push to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, Foreign Policy reported.
Senate and House negotiators on Sunday released the long-overdue text of the fiscal 2026 foreign aid and diplomacy spending bill, revealing a package that largely rejects the deep reductions sought by the Trump administration.
Instead, the measure preserves funding for several foreign aid, media, and democracy-promotion programs that billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had targeted for elimination.
The $50 billion appropriations bill funds the State Department, foreign assistance accounts, and a range of international affairs programs.
Despite opposition from the White House, the legislation continues funding for the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia.
The bill allocates $643 million for USAGM — down from nearly $870 million budgeted for fiscal 2025 before Trump and Musk ordered the shutdown of taxpayer-funded international broadcasting operations last March.
The legislation also provides $315 million for the National Endowment for Democracy, a left-leaning organization long criticized by conservatives for promoting progressive causes abroad and attacking conservative governments and media outlets.
"I didn't know that, so you're breaking that to me," Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., told Newsmax on Monday. "That's absolutely absurd. There's no reason for us to be funding these organizations. This is exactly the kind of wasteful spending DOGE was created to eliminate."
In addition, more than $3 million is allocated to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, an unelected body conservatives have assailed as a taxpayer-funded promoter of globalist policies that undermines U.S. sovereignty and duplicates State Department functions.
House Republicans emphasized that the compromise bill cuts top-line foreign aid spending by $9.3 billion — about 16% — compared with fiscal 2025 levels. Senate Democrats countered that the measure still exceeds last summer's House GOP proposal by $3.8 billion and comes in $19 billion higher than what the White House requested.
The bill represents the first foreign aid package fully negotiated during Trump's second term and reflects some administration priorities.
Those include the creation of a new flexible spending account known as the America First Opportunity Fund, nearly $1 billion in operational funding for the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, and a directive for Secretary of State Marco Rubio to begin winding down the global HIV/AIDS initiative PEPFAR.
While the bill provides no new funding for USAID, it also stops short of formally shuttering the agency, leaving open the possibility of its revival under a future administration.
The legislation further includes $830 million for the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a sharp reduction from fiscal 2025 levels but still $606 million more than the White House requested.
It also provides $5.5 billion in humanitarian aid — more than the administration sought but less than what Congress approved last year.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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