The State Department isn’t ready to handle vital disease-prevention efforts worldwide.
Dissolving USAID or merging it into the State Department without the authorization of Congress would be unconstitutional. Article I of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the legislative prerogative to create and abolish agencies. And that authority has been affirmed by the judiciary in the years since: “To Congress under its legislative power is given the establishment of offices, the determination of their functions and jurisdiction…” wrote the Supreme Court in Meyers v. United States (1926).
Because Congress established USAID by statute, the executive branch lacks the unilateral authority to abolish it or subsume it without a corresponding act of Congress. This is not a small or a limited issue: The separation of powers doctrine is central to U.S. constitutional government, and allowing the executive to reshape or eliminate an agency that Congress created and continues to fund would deeply weaken the legislature’s independence. MORE