What can a junior congressman do to defend USAID, seniors, and the middle class?

US Representative Gabe Amo has only been in office for 15 months, and being in the minority party doesn’t give many newer members of Congress many opportunities to be a significant part of the news cycle.

But Amo has a busy morning on Capitol Hill with a high-profile hearing on USAID on the Foreign Affairs Committee at 8:30 a.m. and then the House Budget Committee is set to begin marking up the House’s new budget resolution around 10 a.m.

Start with USAID: The Republican-led Foreign Affairs Committee is calling today’s hearing “The USAID Betrayal,” a title Amo obviously disagrees with. He’s now the vice ranking member of the committee, and you can expect him to make the argument that it’s actually President Trump who betrayed the suddenly polarizing agency that has been a cornerstone for America’s “soft power” foreign policy strategy.

Trump and Elon Musk have taken a hatchet to the agency, arguing that it has wasted billions of dollars and using it as a test for the president’s promise to slash spending across the federal government.

Amo is expected to deliver a passionate speech criticizing the cuts at USAID while making the case that they are damaging both across the globe and here in Rhode Island (for institutions like URI and nonprofits like EdesiaNutrition).

Budget battle: Amo and the Democrats aren’t going to have much of a say over the budget resolution because Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the presidency, but he’ll have a front-row seat to see if the majority party can pull it together as some of the more conservative members threaten to derail the debate.

Politico reports that the two Republicans to watch in committee are Representatives Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina because if either vote against the budget, it will fail.

Amo plans to make the argument that Republicans are “betraying” senior citizens, families, and the middle class.