The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Felicia Knight recently retired as president of The Knight Canney Group and lives in Scarborough. From 1999 to 2003, she served as communications director for Sen. Susan Collins.
By any measure, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — PEPFAR — is one of the most successful and transformative foreign aid initiatives in U.S. history. Launched in 2003 under President George W. Bush, this bipartisan program has saved more than 25 million lives, prevented countless new HIV infections, and helped stabilize entire nations devastated in year’s past by the AIDS epidemic.
It has also served as a shining example of what American moral leadership, soft power, and humanitarian values can be.
And yet, in recent years, PEPFAR has come under attack, not from hostile foreign actors, but from political winds within our own country wanting to eliminate the program entirely, and efforts to undercut its funding and mission gained traction in Congress. In a time when isolationist rhetoric and partisan division threaten to erode decades of international goodwill, PEPFAR’s future was anything but assured.
With determination, diplomacy, and bipartisanship, Appropriations Committee Chair Sen. Susan Collins helped rescue PEPFAR from the political chopping block. Her leadership preserved this vital program’s funding, ensuring that America’s legacy of compassion and global health leadership endures.
PEPFAR is not just a line item in a federal budget. It is a lifeline for millions of people across the globe. Since its inception, the program has provided antiretroviral treatment to millions of people living with HIV, supported care for millions of orphans and vulnerable children, and strengthened healthcare infrastructure in more than 50 countries. Its success has been so dramatic that it helped change the trajectory of the global AIDS crisis, transforming what once seemed like a death sentence into a manageable condition for many.
This is foreign aid at its best — strategic, targeted, effective; and it benefits the United States as much as it does the nations it serves.
By investing in global health, we build trust, forge partnerships and enhance stability in regions critical to our national interest. We show the world that American leadership means more than military might or economic clout. It also means compassion. That’s soft power in action, and it needs to continue.
Foreign aid is too often politicized and dismissed as wasteful. I’m thankful Sen. Collins stood firm. She understands that gutting PEPFAR would not only abandon millions to illness and despair — it also would squander one of the few truly bipartisan success stories in recent history.
Supporting foreign aid programs is rarely a headline-winning position, especially in today’s polarized environment, but Collins’s commitment to results-driven policy and her respect for global partnerships led her to act.
Collins stated she would not support rescissions to global health programs, specifically PEPFAR, emphasizing its record of saving millions of lives and its importance for global health. She was outspoken in Senate hearings and direct discussions with White House officials, her opposition was clear to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, which led to the administration revising its proposal and sparing PEPFAR from cuts.
Senate leaders openly attributed the preservation of PEPFAR’s funding to Collins’s leadership and her “very vocal” stance against the cuts, noting that other members joined her in bipartisan concern.
PEPFAR’s survival should serve as a reminder of what can be accomplished if Congress focuses on shared American values of service and compassion. America can achieve extraordinary things for the benefit of many. Launched by a Republican president, expanded under Democratic administrations, and now saved by leaders like Collins, PEPFAR represents the best of who we are as a country.
Full disclosure, I once worked for Collins in her Washington, D.C. office. Her work to save PEPFAR is typical of the diligence and tenacity I saw, and while not surprising, it was crucial to saving this global initiative.
Let this victory for public health and global solidarity be a model for future policymaking. Let it remind us that compassion is not a partisan issue and that America’s strength lies not only in our wealth or weaponry, but in our willingness to lead with heart.
