Barry Moore, Gary Palmer only two Alabama U.S. Reps to back 2024 measure to strip embattled USAID of funding

February 10, 2025

When Alabama's House Republican delegation had the chance to cut funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) during the last federal legislative session, the majority voted with Democrats to keep the agency afloat.

Two proposed amendments to the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2024 would have removed a significant chuck of USAID's budget. One proposed by U.S. Rep. Elijah Crane (R-Ariz.) would have reduced the agency's funding by 50%, and the other amendment proposed by then-U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) would have cut $4.5 billion. Crane's measure failed by a vote of 102-326 and Gaetz's by a vote of 115-312.

U.S. Reps. Barry Moore (R-Enterprise) and Gary Palmer (R-Hoover) voted in support of both amendments, while U.S. Reps. Robert Aderholt (R-Haleyville), Dale Strong (R-Monrovia), Mike Rogers (R-Saks), and Jerry Carl (R-Mobile) voted against them, joining the majority of Democrats and many other Republicans in keeping the funding in place.

While many Americans are only now learning of USAIDS's wasteful and potentially fraudulent spending habits on projects like DEI scholarships in Burma and a Sesame Street show in Iraq, lawmakers were aware of these issues before voting on the amendments.

"Unfortunately, current budget allocations at USAID indicate a shift toward a social and cultural agenda that caters to the radical priorities of woke global elites," Crane said before Congress in September 2023. "USAID has become a front for unelected bureaucrats to impose woke nonsense and harmful agendas across the globe, all on the U.S. taxpayers' dime. We shouldn't continue to fund this organization that aims to undercut American values and objectives."

Gaetz argued the money could be better spent at home in the U.S. on far less wasteful programs.

"USAID is a vehicle through which the American taxpayer pays for economic development in other countries. I think instead we should spend more money on economic development of our own country, and actually, if we spent less money overall, we probably would see less inflation, more prosperity, and the type of economic growth that we saw during President Trump's time in office," he said in 2023. "USAID may have started with laudable goals, but today, they are promoting abortion globally with American tax dollars. They are pushing President Biden's national gender strategy. I never thought we needed a national gender strategy, but if we need a national gender strategy, can we at least not spend so much money promoting it abroad? It is silly."

President Donald Trump's efforts to gut USAID were recently put on hold by a federal judge, who stopped over 2,200 employees from being placed on leave and reinstated 500 who had been let go, ABC News reported.