The Biden-Harris Administration’s Request is a reflection of the critical importance of development and humanitarian assistance in advancing US interests around the world. This Budget will advance USAID efforts to Combat Climate Change, Advance Democratic Values, Address the Root Causes of Irregular Migration, Strengthen Global Health Leadership, Bolster Humanitarian Assistance, Expand Inclusive Economic Growth, Improve Resilience and Security, Invest in Our People, and Restore Support for Key National Security Partners and Advance Peace in accordance with the Interim National Security Strategy Guidance.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS OF THE PRESIDENT’S DISCRETIONARY FUNDING REQUEST

COMBATS CLIMATE CHANGE

• Increases USAID Bilateral Climate Change Programming to more than $600 million, to dramatically expand the scale and geographic reach of USAID’s programs to combat climate change, including through investments in adaptation and resilience, renewable energy, and sustainable landscapes.
• Builds on USAID’s comparative advantage when implementing climate change programming by leveraging relationships at the local level and supporting partner countries’ ability to achieve their Nationally Determined Contributions and implement National Adaptation Plans and priorities.
• Generates creative solutions to encourage policy innovation and strengthen partner country capacity to accelerate breakthroughs in technologies and practices that promote climate resilience, carbon capture and storage, advanced energy systems, and maximize resource efficiency.
• Expands climate change adaptation programming and policy leadership for USAID globally, including access to weather and climate information, science, and analysis for improved decision-making.

ADVANCES DEMOCRACY AND COUNTERS AUTHORITARIANISM

• Reinvigorates democracy, human rights, and governance to address democratic backsliding; expands programming to address corruption and corrosive capital; expands support for independent media; and broadens support for human rights and rule of law, while increasing engagement with multilateral partners. The request includes $2.8 billion in foreign assistance funding across USAID and State for democracy, human rights, and governance programming.
• Escalates our fight against corruption by expanding independence, oversight, and sanctioning, while elevating and integrating anti-corruption activities across USAID programming.
• Advances our fight against digital repression and disinformation used by authoritarians to censor speech and stoke public anger against democratically-elected officials and civil society.
• Bolsters our “rapid response” capability when there is an unexpected political opening, attempt to roll back democratic progress, or local anti-corruption campaign.
• Counters Foreign Malign Authoritarian Influence through programming countering disinformation and weaponized corruption, and supporting partner countries’ efforts to counter disinformation and narratives promoting authoritarian values and undermining democratic systems and values.

ADDRESSES THE ROOT CAUSES OF IRREGULAR MIGRATION FROM CENTRAL AMERICA

• Includes $861 million for the region as a first step toward a four-year $4 billion commitment to foster economic growth, combat corruption, improve security, help countries adapt to the effects of climate change, promote human rights, and strengthen government accountability. This includes $405 million in Development Assistance and USAID Global Health Program funding to create the enabling conditions for broad economic growth and address the root causes of irregular migration across Central America.
• Strengthens accountability by expanding programs focused on anti-corruption and human rights, underscoring our unwavering commitment to supporting civil society in its efforts to hold governments accountable to their citizens.
• Expands economic growth programming, including support for micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises; programs that foster entrepreneurship; agriculture interventions that enable farmers to increase yields and bring their goods to market; and workforce development focused on training at-risk youth in critical job skills and connecting them with employers. USAID is engaging the U.S. and local private sector to amplify these efforts.
• Tackles the long-term structural challenges and societal conditions by increasing programs to counter violence, including gender-based violence; provides a strong regional response to climate change, and builds resilience to natural disasters.
• Assists in the recovery of lost livelihoods as the region grapple with the impacts of Hurricanes Eta and Iota and the COVID-19 pandemic.

STRENGTHENS GLOBAL HEALTH LEADERSHIP

• Strengthens USAID’s Global Health Leadership and requests $3.9 billion to prevent child and maternal deaths; prevent, detect, respond to, and combat infectious disease threats; and control the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
• Restores America’s leading role in combating infectious disease threats by strengthening the international COVID-19 pandemic response effort and advancing the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) to build capacity and resilience for future epidemics and pandemics. Includes $745 million for these efforts, which will be guided by and accelerate the implementation of the U.S. Global Health Security Strategy and National Biodefense Strategy. This includes $300 million as a contribution to multilateral organizations leading the global COVID-19 response through the ACT-Accelerator platform.
• Prevents child and maternal deaths and expands family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) programming to better address the health and rights of women and girls and improve and expand access to high-quality, reproductive health care, including voluntary family planning services and information. The Budget includes $550 million in USAID global health funds to bolster FP/RH programming, and $880 million in maternal and child health funding to save an additional five million children’s lives each year and decrease the number of women who annually die from complications during pregnancy by 75 percent.
• Includes more than $1.3 billion to maintain essential Global Health programming in areas including malaria, nutrition, tuberculosis, and neglected tropical diseases.

BOLSTERS HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE

• Provides critical humanitarian assistance to respond to unprecedented levels of need worldwide, which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The request provides over $10 billion in humanitarian assistance funding at State and USAID, including $6.3 billion in USAID administered humanitarian assistance to respond to rising numbers of climate-induced natural disasters and complex emergencies.
• Strengthens U.S. humanitarian leadership and maintains our ability to respond to an average of 75 disasters annually in more than 70 countries, including protracted crises such as Syria, Yemen, and the Venezuela regional crisis, new and emerging crises such as in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, and unexpected natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons, hurricanes, and floods.

EXPANDS ECONOMIC GROWTH

• Increases Inclusive Economic Growth Programming to $4.9 billion globally, and across sectors, to open markets, including for U.S. products, and reduce the likelihood of instability, violence, and mass migration
• Establishes a new anti-corruption initiative to improve transparency and accountability and provide a “rapid response” capacity to quickly seize on opportunities throughout the world.
• Mitigates the medium- and long-term secondary impacts of COVID-19 and its devastating impact on economies around the globe.
• Advances Economic Growth in Africa by providing $80 million for Prosper Africa that will further connect U.S. businesses or companies across the continent.
• Supports access to all types of digital platforms to allow crowdsourcing of trade via e-commerce and support remote learning, telemedicine, and a new robust approach to fighting corruption.
• Advances gender equity and equality globally, including promoting women’s economic empowerment, preventing and responding to gender-based violence, and supporting underserved and marginalized populations with the inclusion of $200 million for the Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund (GEEA).

IMPROVES RESILIENCE AND FOOD SECURITY

• Supports USAID’s leadership of the Feed the Future initiative and strategically aligns $1 billion in global resources with the Global Food Security Strategy to sustainably reduce poverty, hunger and malnutrition.
• Provides an estimated $294 million for resilience efforts that reduce communities’ chronic vulnerability to shocks and stresses, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the accelerating impacts of climate change.

SUPPORTS THE NATION’S PARTNERS AND ADVANCES PEACE

• Demonstrates commitment to the Palestinian people with $185 million to meet the President’s goals in the West Bank and Gaza; advances the Administration’s commitment to a two-state solution and restores economic and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians.
• Provides sustained support for Sudan’s civilian-led democratic transition that is vital to regional peace and stability, homeland security, and the achievement of democracy and good governance goals in Africa.
• Supports stabilization efforts and programming in Syria to advance the United States’ long-standing policy objectives, including the enduring defeat of ISIS.

INVESTS IN OUR PEOPLE

• Allows for an expansion of USAID’s domestic and overseas workforce with funding at $1.9 billion to support an increase of approximately 70 U.S. direct-hire positions in support of Global Health Security programs to the permanent workforce of 1,850 Foreign Service and 1,600 Civil Service.
• Invests in information technology modernization and facility upgrades to support USAID’s new seat on the National Security Council Principals Committee as well as remote work capabilities.
• Commits to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce both in Washington, D.C. and around the world by expanding diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives through implementation of USAID’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategic Plan, and strengthening support for USAID employees throughout the Agency.

Ephraim Garcia, 62, was charged in an indictment filed in December 2018 in the District of Columbia with one count of offering a bribe, one count of receiving illegal gratuities, and one count of offering kickbacks.  The indictment further charges Gandhi Raj, 39, with paying illegal gratuities to Garcia.

As alleged in the indictment, Garcia worked in the U.S. Army’s Directorate of Public Works and was involved in the solicitation, award and management of various government contracts related to projects at Camp Arifjan.  In or around September 2015, Garcia allegedly approached an employee of a prime contractor and offered to pay him in exchange for his assistance in steering contracts to a particular subcontractor owned by Raj, Gulf Link Venture Company.  Garcia allegedly told the prime contractor employee that Gulf Link would artificially inflate the cost of certain of its bid proposals, and Garcia, Gulf Link and the prime contractor employee would split the proceeds.  Additionally, over a period of about five years, Garcia and/or members of his immediate family allegedly received over $170,000 in wire transfers from Raj and other individuals associated with Gulf Link and another subcontractor that was bidding on work under the prime contract.

Garcia, who retired from the Air Force in 2000 as a master sergeant, admitted to brokering the meeting, where prosecutors say he and the CEO of the firm Gulf Link Venture Co., Gandhiraj Sankaralingam, offered to pay the employee of Colorado-based Vectrus Systems Corp. to steer some of the company’s government contract business to Gulf Link.

In 2011, Vectrus was awarded the Kuwait base operations security and service support contract, for which the Army had paid out more than $2.7 billion as of 2016, the Pentagon’s Inspector General said in a report four years ago.

Sankaralingam and Garcia, who was a mechanical engineer for the Army’s department of public works on Camp Arifjan, offered to split proceeds from the inflated costs of heating and air conditioning work under that contract — possibly up to $756,000 — with the Vectrus employee if it was awarded to Gulf Link, court records state. Instead, the employee reported the illegal offer to the government.

Officials with the Pentagon IG, Defense Criminal Investigative Service and Army Criminal Investigative Command were involved in the investigation.

Garcia, who also retired after 16 years as an Army civilian in 2016, was arrested in 2019 and indicted the following year. Sankaralingam was also charged in the indictment with conspiring to offer a kickback and paying illegal gratuities to Garcia, but he remains a fugitive.

Under a plea agreement last summer, the government dropped a charge that Garcia had received some $170,000 in illegal gratuities from Sankaralingam and others at Gulf Link and another firm, which they said was sent to Garcia’s adult daughters’ bank accounts from 2010 to 2015.

“Mr. Garcia emphatically denies that this money was derived illegally,” his attorneys said pleading for the judge’s leniency in sentencing, citing their client’s age, declining health and the difficulties his family has suffered since he was arrested.

Prosecutors had sought a sentence of eight to 10 years and a fine of $165,000, citing Garcia’s net worth of more than $1 million.

But in a letter to the judge, Garcia sought probation and home confinement, citing his impoverished upbringing in the Philippines, his honorable military service, his wife’s worsening health over stress from his arrest, and his daughter’s acid reflux.

In response, prosecutors said his involvement in the kickback conspiracy was not a “one-time ‘lapse in judgment,” and suggested to D.C. District Judge Amit P. Mehta that if he were inclined toward leniency he does not sentence Garcia to less than five years in prison.

Garcia was sentenced to two years, a $200 fine, and three years of probation. The court document giving Mehta’s reasons for the sentence remains sealed.