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Rubio supported USAID as a senator. As secretary of state, he backs gutting it

WUFT | By Claire Cranford, Louis Jacobson and Amy Sherman | PolitiFact
Published February 18, 2025 at 7:00 AM EST
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks after a tour of a migrant return center and a demonstration of a dog trained to sniff out narcotics, at La Aurora International Airport in Guatemala City, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025.
Mark Schiefelbein
/
AP
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks at La Aurora International Airport in Guatemala City, Guatemala, on Feb. 5, 2025.

WLRN has partnered with PolitiFact to fact-check Florida politicians. The Pulitzer Prize-winning team seeks to present the true facts, unaffected by agenda or biases.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was once a longtime supporter of the recently gutted U.S. Agency for International Development. You wouldn’t know that from his early days as USAID’s acting director under President Donald Trump.

The agency that then-Sen. Rubio hailed for its "critical" and "important" programs? Rubio now says it suffers from disorganization and "rank insubordination" that hinders Trump’s foreign policy.

Trump and Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk are pushing for major upheaval at USAID, including the reported shedding of all but 300 of its roughly 10,000 employees, or roughly 97% of its workforce. Rubio has helped carry out Trump’s agenda, although those reductions are being challenged in court.

"U.S. AID systems and processes are not well synthesized, integrated, or coordinated, and often result in discord in the foreign policy and foreign relations of the United States," Rubio wrote in a Feb. 3 letter to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. "This undermines the president’s ability to carry out foreign relations."

In a Feb. 5 Fox News interview, Rubio said USAID may be consolidated directly into the State Department. "The goal was to reform it, but now we have rank insubordination," he said.

On occasion, PolitiFact uses its Flip-O-Meter to measure a politician’s consistency on particular issues. The rating does not make a value judgment about a politician who changes positions, but rather documents changes over time.

Rubio’s recent remarks about the agency show a marked departure from his prior stance as a defender of at least some USAID programs as vital for improving American national security and world health.

The State Department did not respond to an inquiry from PolitiFact.

Rubio regularly touted USAID’s work as a senator

During his 14 years as a Republican senator from Florida, Rubio repeatedly praised USAID for its work across a broad range of issues, from ensuring free and fair elections in Burma to supporting humanitarian efforts in Venezuela to providing hurricane relief in the Bahamas.

At the same time, he also called for increased transparency within the agency, saying USAID’s funds must be spent effectively.

"In every region of the world, we should always search for ways to use U.S. aid and humanitarian assistance to strengthen our influence, the effectiveness of our leadership, and the service of our interests and ideals," Rubio said during a 2012 speech at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "Foreign aid is a very cost-effective way, not only to export our values and our example, but to advance our security and our economic interests."

In 2013 and 2015, Rubio sponsored bills to create clear goals, define performance metrics and establish plans for monitoring and evaluating U.S. foreign assistance programs. A version of this bill, not sponsored by Rubio, passed the Senate in 2016 and became law.

From 2016 to 2023, under presidents of both parties, Rubio praised the agency on social media for providing hurricane relief in multiple Latin American countries; combating polio, Ebola, and tuberculosis (aid he called "critical"); providing humanitarian assistance to Venezuelan refugees after the reelection of President Nicolás Maduro (aid he called "important"); and providing Ukraine with humanitarian aid at the Russia-Ukraine war’s outset.

Rubio co-sponsored a 2018 bill with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., that allocated USAID funding for violence prevention in certain countries and granted money to support USAID’s Global Initiative to Reduce Fragility and Violence.

He co-sponsored other bills that propose work for USAID, including a 2021 bill to advance global women’s rights, a 2022 bill to protect victims of international human trafficking, a 2017 bill authorizing $50 million for USAID involvement to combat substance abuse in the Philippines, and a 2021 bill for expanding access to education. He also wrote a 2021 letter to President Joe Biden urging USAID humanitarian relief in Colombia.

In a 2018 letter to then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Rubio, Kaine, and then-Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., wrote, "We believe it is critical that USAID continue to play an active role in providing technical assistance, education and training to support countries’ efforts to strengthen electoral systems. USAID’s democracy and governance programs are vital for capacity building."

Assessing USAID’s financial cost, political influence

In the past, Rubio has framed USAID as a relatively inexpensive investment in the nation’s security.

Many Americans overestimate how much the government spends on foreign aid, and Rubio repeatedly emphasized how small a portion of the federal budget foreign aid comprises. All foreign aid accounts for $68 billion, or about 1% of the total spent by the government in recent years; USAID itself is responsible for $43.4 billion of that $68 billion, or about 0.7% of all spending.

"Foreign aid as a part of our overall budget is less than 1% of the total amount the U.S. government spends," Rubio said in a 2017 Senate speech. "I think it is important for those of us who believe in global engagement and believe in the function of foreign aid to justify it, to never take it for granted, and to constantly examine it to make sure the money is being spent well and that it is worth spending at all."

In 2019, Rubio argued against cutting foreign aid as a way to meaningfully lower the federal debt.

"Anybody who tells you that we can slash foreign aid and that will bring us to balance is lying to you," he said in the speech to the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches.

Rubio saw aid as a foreign policy tool to deter Chinese influence.

In a 2022 letter to Biden, Rubio said USAID must receive funding "to send a clear message that the United States has a comprehensive strategy to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) expanding global influence and the increasing threat it poses to U.S. security interests and those of our allies and partners."

In the Feb. 3 Fox News interview, Rubio said USAID funding had little to do with combating the Chinese Communist Party’s influence — and that aid from the Chinese government would not fill the foreign aid vacuum.

In his new role, Rubio acknowledged some of his past commentary. According to a partial transcript obtained by The New York Times, Rubio said at a private embassy event that "foreign aid is the least popular thing government spends money on. And I spent a lot of time in my career defending it and explaining it. But it’s harder and harder to do across the board. It really is."

Rubio said foreign policy leaders understand foreign aid "is essential," but "it has to be programs that we can defend. It has to be programs that we can explain. It has to be programs that we can justify. Otherwise, we do endanger foreign aid."

This may sound as if Rubio favors a cautious, deliberate effort to discern which programs should be continued and which ones should be ended. But that clashes with his recent actions, which have precipitated a cut of 97% of the agency’s staff.

Our ruling

On at least two dozen occasions over more than a decade — including in speeches, social media posts, and bill introductions — Rubio praised USAID’s work, from hurricane relief to battling infectious diseases to aiding refugees. He spoke broadly of the agency’s importance for American interests and countering China.

That yearslong record of praise contrasts sharply with his 2025 letter to Congress that said the agency’s failure "undermines the president’s ability to carry out foreign relations," and the sudden, nearly across-the-board cuts he is executing.

Rubio’s change of message — from repeatedly praising USAID’s value to the U.S. and the world from 2012 to 2023, to saying it’s a danger to U.S. foreign policy in 2025 and abolishing most of its employees and work — rates as a Full Flop.
Politifact Florida
Claire Cranford, Louis Jacobson and Amy Sherman | PolitiFact
See stories by Claire Cranford, Louis Jacobson and Amy Sherman | PolitiFact