LATEST: White House backs off plan for multi-billion dollar cut to U.S. foreign assistance.
After weeks of behind the scenes negotiations and discussions, the White House on Thursday backed off a plan to cut billions of dollars from the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development budgets, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
"The president has been clear that there is waste and abuse in our foreign assistance, and we need to be wise about where U.S. money is going -- which is why he asked his administration to look into options to doing just that," a senior administration official told ABC News. The package of cuts included key foreign policy priorities, including women's development, aid for Venezuela, efforts to counter Russian disinformation and Chinese expansion, international religious freedom advocacy, and global health funding amid the deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Those critics also included the powerful chairs and ranking members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee -- two Republicans and two Democrats. In a bipartisan letter on Aug. 9, Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, wrote that these funds"were appropriated by Congress and signed into law" and are"essential" for U.S. leadership.
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