Democratic senators sent a letter to the Trump administration on Wednesday criticizing what they called the paltry U.S. aid response to the earthquake in Myanmar, where China and Russia have sent rescue and relief teams.
The six senators said in the letter that the United States appeared to be failing the first test of its ability to respond to a humanitarian crisis in the wake of the Trump administration’s drastic cuts to foreign aid and dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development, the main aid agency.
“We are deeply concerned that the administration’s response is failing to meet both our moral and strategic objectives — sending a signal to countries around the world that our adversaries are more reliable and trustworthy than the United States,” the senators wrote.
The New York Times obtained a copy of the letter, which was organized by the offices of Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the ranking member on the Banking Committee, and Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, who is on the Foreign Relations Committee. The other senators who signed were Tim Kaine of Virginia, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Jeff Merkley of Oregon. The senators sent it to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Mr. Rubio and a political appointee at the State Department, Pete Marocco, oversaw the slashing of foreign aid, and Mr. Bessent’s agency oversees financial sanctions on Myanmar. The senators said in the letter that the U.S. government should grant sanctions waivers to any earthquake relief going into Myanmar.
The United States did not send any specialist aid teams to Myanmar after the earthquake hit on Friday. More than 2,700 people have died as buildings there and in neighboring Thailand collapsed, according to the ruling authoritarian military leaders of Myanmar. The junta asked other nations for help. China, Russia and India sent teams and supplies, as did Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.
As of this past weekend, the United States had not even managed to get a three-person assessment team into the country, The New York Times reported on Sunday.
The State Department spokesman said on Friday that crisis teams were on standby, but the severe cuts since late January have decimated the infrastructure for the U.S. government’s Disaster Assistance Response Teams. Many of the contractor specialists for those teams were fired in the U.S.A.I.D. cuts, and the agency’s offices in Washington that would help with transportation and payment logistics have been hobbled.
Two agency employees who had expected to be posted this winter to Myanmar and Thailand as humanitarian advisers were told by senior officials weeks ago to stay in Washington because the positions had been cut. On Friday, as those two employees and other colleagues were coordinating responses to the earthquake, they received agencywide emails telling them they would be laid off. The emails told everyone to go home that day.
The Trump administration has also cut contracts for transportation used to send firefighters and rescue workers in Virginia and Southern California to global disaster zones when requested by other countries.
The total U.S. government annual spending on foreign aid had been less than one percent of the federal budget.
The United States Embassy in Myanmar announced on Sunday that it would send up to $2 million in aid, much less than recent American administrations have sent for similar disasters.
The senate letter cited the Times story from Sunday that revealed the shortcomings of the Trump administration’s response.
“Even as the administration has wittingly undercut our ability to efficiently save lives and promote U.S. interests, we call on the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. to rapidly assess what the United States can still do for people in Burma, including with resources already in the region,” the senators said, using the U.S. government’s preferred name for Myanmar.
They added that the Treasury Department should authorize “all transactions related to earthquake relief efforts in Burma that would otherwise be prohibited by U.S. sanctions.”
On Monday, Tammy Bruce, the State Department spokeswoman, said the U.S. government’s assessment team was “in the process of being present right there,” and that disaster experts in Washington, Manila and Bangkok were trying to help.
