President Donald Trump began his second term promising greater accountability for U.S. foreign aid and a commitment to rid the system of waste, fraud, and abuse. More than 200 days into his second term, the president is falling far short of that promise. As Congress returns from its August recess, it has some critical decisions to make on how it will respond, particularly around U.S. foreign assistance.

Garnering little public attention to date, the administration took the legally dubious departure from longstanding practice and chose not to release detailed accounting for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 Department of State Congressional Budget Justification (CBJ), a critical set of documents of how the government intends to spend foreign assistance and how it already spent previous funds. This represents the latest example of the mismatch between the Trump administration’s rhetoric and reality and represents a major blow to foreign aid transparency and good governance. It also eliminates the only congressional and public source of country-by-country information on U.S. foreign assistance before it is appropriated, effectively asking that Congress commit billions in taxpayer dollars without any insight into how the executive branch intends to spend the funds.

Such a subjugation of oversight not only undermines key foreign policy safeguards but also belies the administration’s promise of promoting transparency and accountability over U.S. foreign aid.

Two days after President Trump issued his executive order to freeze all foreign assistance (except for military aid to Israel and Egypt), Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized that “Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?” A few days after Rubio’s speech, the State Department provided further information on the president’s foreign aid plan, indicating that “the United States is no longer going to blindly dole out money with no return for the American people.”

But the elimination of the CBJ documents is effectively asking Congress to “blindly dole out money” without the administration justifying how the funds will be spent, depriving lawmakers of critical information on where and why the administration intends to spend billions of taxpayer-funded programming. The abrupt reduction in public reporting stands in stark contrast to the administration’s attack on and eventual destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) over its lack of transparency and accountability. In other words, after shuttering an entire agency in the name of ending fraud, waste, and abuse, the administration is now proposing multibillion-dollar foreign aid funds that seem poised to increase the likelihood of corruption and abuse, disincentivize higher standards of practice, and enable shortsighted policy choices.

Past CBJs dedicated entire sections detailing where the administration intended to invest U.S. foreign assistance for the next fiscal year by individual country, budget authority, objective, and program area. The “Account Tables,” as required by law, also included figures for past expenditures, creating a de facto public reporting mechanism that has been critical for oversight and accountability. Indeed, these tables provided one of the only sources for country-by-country data on U.S. foreign assistance. In addition, previous CBJs included more detailed rationales and goals for U.S. assistance, with country-specific explanations and descriptions. All of this information helped Congress understand how the administration intended to spend U.S. taxpayer dollars and allowed them to build their appropriations bill in response to this request.

By comparison, the FY2026 CBJ contains no systematic country-specific data or justification for foreign aid, instead asking for billions in accounts such as Global Health Programs and Foreign Military Financing (FMF) with minimal indications on where funds will be provided. The only countries the administration specifically identifies and commits to provide assistance to are Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Taiwan through the FMF account. Even more confounding, beyond the financial aggregation of individual aid accounts, the administration is also requesting the establishment of a new account – the America First Opportunity Fund (A1OF).

 

As described in the CBJ, this $2.9 billion fund would resource a “range of policy and development needs for the Administration’s America First foreign policy.” This account would give the State Department a multi-billion-dollar slush fund to spend on nearly anything it wants and with virtually no oversight or accountability. Using this fund, the administration could provide billions more in military aid to Israel or other partners. And it could use the aid to pay for arms deals or direct cash transfers into foreign government coffers in order to secure corrupt back-room deals. The overall lack of information provided by the State Department is asking Congress to cede its authority to direct how U.S. funds are spent and to trust the administration with billions of taxpayer dollars.

Such an opaque process, however, has long been a source of bipartisan rancor. In 2023, Republican Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) expressed frustration with a lack of accountability for the Biden administration’s military aid to Ukraine, saying, “Most of our voters are really, really skeptical about additional aid to Ukraine, and they should be… We still don’t have any independent oversight of the spending, no independent accounting of where it’s going, how it’s being spent. I just think that’s outrageous.” In support of the Trump administration’s aid freeze this year, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Brian Mast, chastised the State Department and USAID for its lack of transparency, claiming that “Democrats and unaccountable bureaucrats don’t want Americans to know how their hard-earned tax dollars are being wasted abroad.” Meanwhile, during his first term, Trump tried to leverage military aid to Ukraine in return for political favors and, earlier this year, Trump suggested that if Jordan and Egypt opposed his plan in Gaza, he would “conceivably withhold aid.”

While this loss of information creates broad risks to U.S. national interests, the loss of information on U.S. security assistance programming is especially troubling. Security assistance – one of the few sectors left largely untouched by the administration’s aid cuts – presents unique risks. The provision of aid to foreign military and police forces has inherent implications for U.S. national security, human rights, and civilian protection and remains one of the principal means by which the United States finds itself involved or implicated in armed conflict around the world. In previous years, Congress and the public would know in great detail where the administration would be providing billions of dollars in military and security equipment and training and why it thought it would advance U.S. interests. Instead, this year’s request for $6.15 billion in security assistance for foreign security forces provides vague justifications. For example, the FY26 CBJ requests $215 million to provide Antiterrorism Assistance anywhere in the world to “bolster partner nations’ civilian law enforcement, criminal justice sector, and border/aviation security officials to counter terrorist threats against the U.S. homeland, Americans, and U.S. interests abroad.”

Despite the dangers, the elimination of security assistance details from the CBJ represents just the latest in a prolonged decline in U.S. defense trade transparency. Over the past decade, shifts in reporting practices and persistent delays in congressionally mandated disclosures have steadily weakened public oversight and understanding of the security cooperation enterprise. Further degradation of transparency would only heighten the inherent risks associated with U.S. arms transfers. While this trend should raise serious concerns in Congress, concurrent efforts by Republican lawmakers to overhaul oversight mechanisms—as outlined in recent executive orders—could create a perfect storm for public accountability in U.S. arms transfers.

The State Department has suggested that the omission of these sub-sections reflected the administration’s desire to remain flexible in responding to U.S. national security interests. However, this detailed foreign aid information, including security assistance, is required by law under the Foreign Assistance Act, which partly explains why previous administrations have dedicated so much time to producing them every year. In addition, while the CBJ represents an expression of government priorities and intent, outside specific statutory requirements spelled out in congressional appropriations, the executive branch already has significant leeway in adjusting funding levels to reflect changing circumstances. Not to mention that the provision of assistance, especially security assistance, often necessitates a multi-year process from letter of request to delivery of equipment or services.

The Trump administration cannot claim that it is ending the practices of a wasteful, unaccountable “deep state” while simultaneously drawing the curtain around critical aspects of public policy development. But troublingly, it did just this with its $8 billion rescission request in FY25 foreign aid funds that Congress approved, refusing to provide details for how the administration intended to spend the remaining money, a concern raised by both Republicans and Democrats.

In response, Congress should reject the administration’s request for the A1OF slush fund and produce a foreign aid bill that places strict requirements on where U.S. taxpayer funds can be spent, as it did during the first Trump administration. And while the arms trade is uniquely susceptible to corruption and has inherently coercive dimensions that present unique moral and national security risks, declining transparency is a challenge to all aspects of governance. Indeed, beyond foreign aid, lawmakers from across the aisle have expressed frustration with a broad lack of transparency over federal spending and budgets, ranging from defense to education.

Far from confronting bureaucratic waste and influence, reductions in congressional reporting undermine public confidence and invite the very risks the administration claims it is looking to stem.

 

Photo: The White House/Flickr