WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio is facing bipartisan pressure to release $608 million in international family-planning funds that Congress already approved — and that the Trump administration has been sitting on.
Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) sent a letter Thursday demanding the administration unlock the aid. They also called for immediate distribution of $1.7 million in already-purchased family-planning supplies earmarked for women and children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an Ebola outbreak is straining an already fragile health system.
The funds are congressionally appropriated. The executive branch is holding them anyway.
Family planning services in crisis zones go well beyond contraception — they include maternal care, safe childbirth practices and reproductive health education, all of which become more critical when disease outbreaks increase the risks of transmission and complications during childbirth.
Shaheen and Murkowski said in their letter that women and infants in the DRC's eastern provinces face direct and worsening health risks because the funds remain frozen.
Rubio, as secretary of state, controls the release of these foreign aid dollars. The senators are demanding a response and a timeline. The State Department has not said when — or whether — it plans to act.
