Foreign aid protects New Hampshire too!
Foreign assistance can sound remote from everyday life in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, though, we’re never just spectators to a problem happening elsewhere. The reality is that foreign assistance is already a part of the Granite State’s economy and infrastructure.
In Milford, Inclusive Development Partners built a small New Hampshire-based organization around disability-inclusive education and development work funded largely through USAID. When federal programs were abruptly terminated, the organization was pushed into a financial crisis and said it was owed hundreds of thousands of dollars for work already completed. That is not an abstract overseas issue, but a direct threat to the survival of a New Hampshire organization whose work spans Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean.
New Hampshire is connected in other ways, too, as agricultural producers have supplied commodities for humanitarian food aid, while decades of USAID-backed agricultural research at American universities generated an estimated $8.52 in economic benefit for every dollar invested.
Foreign assistance should absolutely face scrutiny. Congress should demand transparent spending, monitoring recipients’ progress and independent oversight. But oversight is not the same as dismantling capacity faster than our state and federal governments can assess what is being lost.
New Hampshire benefits when crises are contained before becoming wars, migration shocks or disruptions to trade.