First Do No Harm – Counting the Cost of Governmental Negligence
- Tom Faletti
- Dec 7
- 6 min read
How long would it take to name all the people whose lives have been devastated by USAID cuts? The abrupt termination of assistance ignored the first rule of reform: Don’t make things worse. Join me in trying to count the names....
When the Trump Administration abruptly canceled contracts and programs that provide humanitarian assistance to impoverished people around the world, the president’s “DOGE” office said that they were eliminating waste. Leading voices in the Administration insinuated that Catholic aid organizations are in it for the money and not to benefit needy people. Under the cover of this false claim, they gutted life-saving assistance and caused untold suffering and loss of life.
The truth is that the US government has cut funding to Catholic Relief Services (CRS) with one hand, but continues to provide new funding to CRS for critical disaster response efforts, such as Hurricane Melissa recovery in Haiti.
This shows that they don’t think CRS is filled with waste; they see it as a highly competent agency with exactly the kind of expertise needed to address a variety of problems around the world.
The first rule of reform: Don’t make things worse
The USAID cuts were not motivated by accountability concerns. But even if they had been, there would have been a right way and a wrong way to address the problem:
The right way to make reforms is to fix the problems without hurting the people who are currently being served.
The wrong way is to start swinging a machete with no regard for who will be hurt.
This Administration failed to follow the first rule of reform: Don’t make things worse; also known as: First do no harm.
The Bible says that if you could have avoided harm, you are guilty of negligence
In the Old Testament, the Law prohibits a variety of actions that fall in the category that we would call negligence. For example:
If an owner digs a cistern and fails to cover it, and another person’s ox or donkey falls into it, the owner of the cistern is responsible and must provide full reimbursement for the loss (Ex. 21:33-34). The principle is clear: You are responsible for your negligence.
If an owner knows his ox has a habit of goring other people’s oxen and does not take precautions to prevent goring, he must make full restitution for any losses (Ex. 21:35-36). Again, the principle is clear: You are responsible for avoiding harm that could reasonably be anticipated.
If someone allows his cattle to graze in another person’s field, eating up the other person’s crop, he must make full restitution (Ex. 22:4). If someone starts a fire and it consumes another person’s field or grain, full restitution is required (Ex. 22:5). The principle could not be any clearer: You are responsible for the harm that happens because of your actions.
If you can avoid harm to another and you don’t take steps to prevent it, you are guilty of negligence.
Based on these biblical principles, this Administration has been negligent and is responsible for the devastation, suffering, and loss of life caused by its precipitous termination of USAID contracts.
How do you count the devastation of USAID cuts? It occurs one life at a time
The magnitude of the cuts caused by this Administration is so large that it is hard to imagine the devastation that has been wrought.
CRS recently made a presentation at my parish, and here is what I learned.
In 2024, CRS served nearly 200 million people around the world. CRS estimates that its work will only reach around 140 million people this year, due to the funding cutbacks.
The difference is around 60 million people not served.
But what does 60 million people mean? The number is so large it is hard for us to comprehend. Let me make it real by talking about it one person at a time.
It’s hard to put names to all those people, because we can’t know the names of the people we don’t serve. So I will insert placeholder names here to help us understand what has happened.
The McGovern-Dole Food for Education school feeding program has had broad, bipartisan support on Capitol Hill since it was created in 2000, when I was there. Named after a Democrat and a Republican who joined forces in their retirement to provide a ray of hope for the most vulnerable children in the world, this program provides meals to children at school, delivering a two-for-one benefit: parents are more likely to send their children to school when they know the children will be fed there, and the children gain an education.
In May, the Trump Administration terminated several of CRS’s McGovern-Dole feeding programs. Almost 800,000 school-age children lost access to the school meals provide through these programs, which were often their only meal of the day. Here is what we are talking about (you can insert any names you want here):
[Samir] no longer has access to food during the day. [Mariam’s] parents stopped sending her to school because if she couldn’t get a meal there, she was more valuable at home working on the farm.
In Burkina Faso, the US government terminated a program that CRS was running to provide emergency shelter and sanitation kits to families fleeing armed conflict.
That means there is not even a tent for [Yasmine] to sleep in, and little [Solomon] is much more likely to die of dysentery because his family has no access to clean water.
Does anyone want a new war to erupt in Iraq? The Shared Future program was developed to help members of religious and ethnic minorities return to the homes they had fled when ISIS took over their towns. CRS was helping returnees develop small businesses to support themselves and their families, combined with programs to help rebuild trust among the people so that they could build a new future together. The US government terminated the program abruptly, while the process was still going on, without any attempt to solidify the progress that had been made.
These are just a few of the destructive results of the Administration’s determination to cut out USAID by the roots rather than pursuing whatever reforms may have been appropriate.
Terminating Samir and Mariam’s programs left them vulnerable to hunger. They may be malnourished or dead by now. How many children were affected? 800,000. Count them. Name them by name: Samir, Mariam, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8….
Count all their classmates: Jabari, Imani, 26, 27, 28, .... Count all the children in the other classrooms in their district: Kofi, Nala, 592, 593, 594…. In their country: Sarah, Moses, 5,667, 5,668, 5,669…. In other countries: Santiago, Mia, 337,224, 337,225, 337,226....
And this is just the start – just one program. In the emergency shelter program, there is Yasmine, Solomon, 1,145,891, 1,145,892, 1,145,893....
And on it goes, through the program in Iraq and the many other CRS programs that were cut.
Catholic Relief Services is serving 60,000,000 fewer people this year than last year, because of this Administration’s callous disregard for humanity.
How long would it take to name them all?
If you spoke the full name of every person who is no longer being served, it might take you two seconds per name. At that pace, it would take you 23 days just to name the first 1 million people. Another 23 days for the second million. Another 23 days for the next million.
If you could keep up that relentless pace, 24 hours a day, with no bathroom breaks, no sleep, no eating, just naming their names, it would take you almost 4 years to name the names of all of the people created in God image who were cut off from assistance because of the Administration’s termination of USAID programs run by CRS.
But still you would not be done. CRS is only one of the expert groups whose programs were terminated by the Administration. There is also Save the Children, and World Vision, and Mercy Corps, and other organizations.
So after 4 years of naming the names of the people harmed by the Administration’s catastrophic meat-cleaver approach to CRS’s humanitarian aid programs, you would still be years away from finishing the count.
That’s what this Administration has done.
The effects are far worse than the worst hurricane, cyclone, tidal wave, earthquake, and volcanic eruption – combined.
Christians in large numbers voted for this president, and Christians need to press him to stop doing harm, to reverse this deadly approach to the world’s poor, and to restore the fundamental principle of reform: First do no harm.
