Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

9. Agency for International Development · Notable

Reprogram already appropriated resources to fund new priorities

Partially done

272 9. Agency for International Development

“BRM’s highest priorities should be to prepare the report required by Section 653(a) according to the Administrator’s guidance, institute a fast-track process for the submission of Congressional Notifications, and identify already appropriated resources to reprogram immediately to fund the new Administration’s priorities.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    P.L. 119-75 §7071 created the America First Opportunity Fund: up to $850 million of funds already appropriated under "National Security Investment Programs", "International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement", "Peacekeeping Operations" and the "Foreign Military Financing Program" may be made available, with transfer authority, "to furnish assistance that makes America safer, stronger, and more prosperous by responding to crises, engaging proactively with strategic partners, and countering threats from adversaries". That is the Quote's mechanism, delivered by Congress at the Department of State rather than identified by USAID's Bureau for Budget Resources and Management, which no longer exists.

  2. Partially done

    The Rescissions Act of 2025 canceled about $8.6 billion of unobligated foreign-assistance budget authority. Already appropriated resources were indeed prised loose, but they were rescinded rather than reprogrammed: the money went back rather than to the new Administration's priorities.

  3. Attempted

    Executive Order 14169 paused new obligations and disbursements of foreign development assistance for a 90-day review and required a decision on each program to continue, modify or cease — the mechanism by which already appropriated resources would be freed for redirection. Nothing had yet been reprogrammed.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Partial, not done: what the record shows is a rescission of most of the freed money and one $850 million transfer-funded account eighteen months later, not the immediate redirection the Quote asks for, and not by the office it names.

  • The other two limbs of the same sentence are separate Recommendations: #712 (the §653(a) report — required within 45 days of enactment by P.L. 119-75) and #713 (fast-tracking Congressional Notifications). This item is leveled only on the reprogramming limb.

  • Negative search: “America First Opportunity Fund” returns 0 Federal Register documents in the window — the Fund exists only in the appropriation, so a Federal Register search for it is a false negative waiting to happen.

Action
transfer
Object
Already appropriated USAID resources
ID
734