I am a northeast Ohio native. As the son of a father who worked in the steel industry and mother employed by the auto parts industry, I can appreciate the angst felt by many Americans who experienced the sudden loss of livelihoods across the Rust Belt many years ago.

It was a trauma that spanned multiple generations and still can be felt today, where former bustling towns are now shells of their former selves. Unemployment and underemployment became a fact of life in the region. The jobs that eventually supplanted this loss — information technology, health care, and small-scale manufacturing — have been a boon to those who were able to keep ahead of the curve and smarten up their skill set, though often on terms of “right to work” contracts, lower pay and loss of former benefits that provided security for the family’s well-being. People find their health care costs spiraling, retirement a risky endeavor, education costs for their children untenable, and overall feel powerless to bring about any substantive change to these conditions.

For many in the region, populist politicians like Jim Traficant (I think earnest in efforts to bring jobs to the region) and the more recent rise of Donald Trump have engendered wide appeal by offering simplistic nationalistic answers to political, economic, and social problems — a turn inward forgoing the normal cooperative diplomatic relations with long standing historic allies; immigrants are the source of your problems; decimating federal institutions to rid of a perceived “deep state”; retrench foreign assistance under a lens of weeding out wasteful spending. It is more the latter I would like to speak to.

When I graduated from college 30 years ago, I decided to join the Peace Corps as a volunteer. I served as a Community Development volunteer in the small kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa. For two years I lived in a small mud hut in the mountains of Lesotho with no electricity or tap water. A big part of my role there was to assist communities to mobilize self-help initiatives and/or link up with government ministries to provide services due to the populace — e.g. clean tap water, education facility support, agricultural technical support, etc. I was very proud to serve my country and be a part of the great experiment — Peace Corps — established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 “to promote world peace and friendship through service abroad” under the American banner.

Sixteen years later I joined another institution established by President Kennedy in 1961, The United States Agency for International Development (USAID). For the past 13-and-a-half years I have worked under USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, providing life-saving assistance to vulnerable populations affected by natural disasters and conflict.

One memorable response I remember well was the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Many of my colleagues were trapped in Kyiv at the time where missiles were raining down while we mobilized our agency’s response posted near the Ukrainian border in Poland. Working with our US military counterparts, the UN, and relief organizations. Our team worked day and night to provide assistance to the mothers and children arriving by train to Poland to escape war and send food and other emergency supplies into Ukraine via train. Our government was very quick to respond to this tragic event and our efforts were greatly appreciated by the Ukrainian people and the European community, who were also providing substantial assistance.

I could reference many other examples of our agency’s relief efforts that I have been proud to be a small part of — Libya, Yemen, Turkiye, Myanmar, Sudan, Egypt, Syria — whereby American generosity reached out in great times of need to provide life-saving assistance under the American banner. These actions are never forgotten and have such a lasting positive impact on our nation-to-nation relationship building, all bought for less than 1% of the federal budget.

This agency isn’t some faceless government spending spree as the DOGE team and President Trump have been touting. It’s American leadership at its best. USAID has been the face of American goodness for over 60 years, responding to crises in countries completely destabilized and unable to respond sufficiently or even at all. Every dollar invested in humanitarian aid saves us 10 in military intervention. More than that, USAID contracts with American farmers, American businesses, and American workers — people right here in Ohio who depend on these programs to put food on their own tables. USAID costs less than 1% of the federal budget, yet saves billions of dollars to taxpayers by addressing systemic issues at their root source — e.g. conflict, migration, and global pandemics.

The idea that cutting USAID saves money is a lie. All it does is weaken America, cost Ohio jobs, and let countries like China and Russia displace American presence at a dubious transactional cost. I call on U.S. Michael Rulli, U.S. Sen. Jon Husted and U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno to reject this reckless move and urge you to co-sponsor HR 1196 to prohibit the use of federal funds to eliminate USAID.

USAID stands as a beacon of what the American experiment can be at its best. Generosity and goodwill are some of the most valuable exports we have.

Robert S. Mergenthaler is the Former Regional Advisor of the USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance in the Budapest, Hungary Regional Office.