Americans are a generous people. Every year, Washington sends some $70 billion in taxpayer dollars to countries around the world in the form of foreign aid. Foreign aid, the argument goes, is the physical manifestation of America’s humanitarian benevolence and a cornerstone of America’s soft power.

But with a national debt exceeding $36 trillion, and a myriad of pressing domestic concerns, Americans deserve to have their elected representatives take a closer look at this $70 billion in annual charity. Who exactly receives U.S. foreign aid? Does aid generate a greater affinity for the United States? Does it prompt countries to emulate U.S. values?

When it comes to the proliferation of one of the most fundamental American values, that of religious freedom, foreign aid is an unequivocal failure. Consider that some 96 countries maintain anti-blasphemy laws on the books. The idea that insulting religion should be a criminal offense is anathema to Americans. It may come as a shock then to learn that Washington provided these countries with over $23 billion in 2023, and many of these countries receive billions of American tax dollars in aid every year.

Punishment for committing blasphemy in these countries ranges from monetary fines to lengthy prison sentences, and in the most extreme cases, death. Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Mauritania, Brunei, and Saudi Arabia all uphold the death penalty for acts of blasphemy. Yet, the United States provides all these countries, bar Iran and Brunei, with significant foreign aid. Nigeria, Somalia, and Afghanistan all received over a billion dollars in U.S. foreign aid in 2023. Pakistan, a country which last year sentenced a 22 year old to death and a 17 year old to life imprisonment for sharing photos and videos which contained derogatory words about the Prophet Muhammad, received $280 million. Pakistan’s human rights record is particularly egregious. Between 1987 and 2023, at least 2,449 persons were accused of committing blasphemy, 291 (12%) of which were against Christians. Just this last week Pakistan sentenced another four people to death by hanging, allegedly because they posted sacrilegious material on social media.

The charge of apostacy — the act of leaving a religion — isn’t much better. While only 22 countries around the world maintain laws pertaining to apostacy, some ten countries — Saudi Arabia, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Iran, Afghanistan, Mauritania, Maldives, Brunei, and Malaysia — maintain apostacy as an offense punishable by death.

What about the freedom to marry someone of a different religion? The right for men and women of full age to marry, without any limitation due to race, nationality, or religion, is a universal human right agreed upon by the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet, some 29 countries, many of which again receive sizeable amounts of U.S. aid, maintain laws prohibiting marriage between people of two different religions.

It is morally reprehensible that Americans are funding regimes that imprison and murder their own citizens for daring to think differently. Despite profuse rhetoric about America’s mission to defend human rights abroad, the Washington foreign policy establishment continues business as usual and sends billions of dollars to regimes that carry out such barbaric violations of the most basic of human rights. It is the prerogative of other nations to orient their societies and systems of governance in a way that they deem appropriate. However, Congress should not ask the American people to reward those governments who carry out such severe religious oppression abroad to the tune of billions of dollars.

To right this wrong, I proudly introduced the Stop Funding Religiously Oppressive Regimes Act, a bill that will prohibit any U.S. foreign assistance from being sent to countries that impose the death sentence or life imprisonment on the basis of anti-blasphemy, anti-apostacy, and anti-interfaith marriage laws.

America’s founders had the wisdom and foresight to enshrine freedom of religion as a fundamental right in our Constitution. We must be vigilant to ensure that it remains a cornerstone of our democracy, and we should no longer tolerate the status quo that turns a blind eye and funnels aid to regimes that actively violate this sacred tenant of a free society.