Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA) said on CNN’s “OutFront” that Congress created the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), therefore President Donald Trump could not shut it down or make significant changes.
Host Erin Burnett said, “When the president says, you know, he was asked whether you needed an Act of Congress to shut down USAID, right? Whether Congress was being circumvented, right, a violation of the Constitution. His response was, I don’t think so. Not when it comes to fraud. When it comes to fraud, you don’t have to have an Act of Congress. Does he have any point there?”
Connolly said, “Congress created at the urging of president John F Kennedy in 1961, the Foreign Assistance Program, and we codified it in The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. That’s been amended myriad times over the last 64 years. If you create an agency by statute, as we did then to to transform it or to meld it into another agency or dismantle it, in my humble opinion, requires an Act of Congress, too. So, no, I think the president is dead wrong, and I think he’s bluffing when it comes to saying no if if there’s fraud involved.”
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