USAID’s Long Track Record of Wasteful, Left-Wing Spending Made It an Obvious First Target for Musk : David Zimmerman
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has come under scrutiny after tech billionaire Elon Musk chose the agency as the first target in his campaign to reduce ballooning government costs and root out progressive ideology from within the executive branch.
Musk’s decision to first declare war on USAID in his role as head of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency should come as no surprise, given the agency’s long history of wasteful, ideologically driven spending.
Established in 1961 under the Kennedy administration, USAID is meant to oversee humanitarian, development, and security programs, doing so in over 100 foreign countries. As originally conceived, the agency was meant to distribute aid in a way that advances U.S. interests, ideally without antagonizing the local population.
But, for decades now, the agency has apparently strayed from that mission.
In 1994, whistleblower Paul Neifert revealed that the agency was distributing U.S. aid based on race in violation of federal law.
“As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Musk is quite correct in calling USAID a criminal organization,” Neifert told National Review. “Their misconduct goes back years in my case and is not surprising to those familiar with USAID methods. This apple is indeed rotten.”
Stationed in South Africa three decades ago, Neifert accused senior USAID officials of violating procurement laws and the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act that authorized U.S. assistance to the country following the end of apartheid in 1990. On top of being illegal, it was also a self-defeating policy, Neifert explained.
“In bizarre fashion, it was in conflict with the non-racial ideals of pre- and post-Mandela South Africa, which held that abolishment of the raced-based system of apartheid was for the benefit of all members of its ‘rainbow’ coalition,” he said.
“USAID instituted its twisted version of a race-based, spoils system, which required its staff to circumvent U.S. procurement laws by providing USAID funding on a racialized basis to USAID’s favored recipients both in the U.S. and South Africa.”
Neifert went to the press and Congress with his allegations while fighting against the agency in court. He ultimately settled for monetary compensation and agreed to leave USAID after twelve years. The whistleblower left in “disgust,” he said.
More recently, USAID continued its track record of working against U.S. interests by awarding the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance millions of dollars in grants, which ended up helping to fund risky bat coronavirus research at a lab in Wuhan, China — research that is now widely believed to be responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.
The agency planned to renew EcoHealth’s funding even after the pandemic until it was forced to cut off all funding under immense political pressure last year.
Senator Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) pushed to suspend the flow of American taxpayer dollars to EcoHealth.
“From funneling tax dollars for batty studies with the Wuhan Institute in China, to sending Ukrainians to Paris Fashion Week, USAID has been one of the worst offenders of waste in Washington,” Ernst told NR.
“The agency charges roughly 50–60 percent for ‘negotiated indirect cost rate agreements,’ which is Washington speak for shady contractors lining their pockets through overhead costs and charging taxpayers for fancy dinners. It is long past time to put the American people first and stop the wasteful and dangerous spending by USAID.”
In fiscal year 2023, USAID managed about $43.4 billion on foreign assistance programs primarily related to sectors such as governance, humanitarian, and health, per an updated January report from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. The third largest sector, health services, received $7 billion in funding.
Because USAID receives foreign policy guidance from the State Department, the agency will reportedly fold into State if the administration gets its way.
“There are probably some arguments to be made about what could be important work that falls under USAID, but the fact of the matter is, it has been overshadowed by these bad actors,” Ernst said on an X Spaces livestream that Musk hosted. “If there are truly good pro-American programs, then let’s move them to the State Department. Let’s make sure we have proper oversight.”
Another controversial funding area involved $230 million that USAID sent to support the Palestinian people, contributing to the $2.1 billion total in humanitarian aid provided since October 7, 2023. At least some of that funding was expected to fall into the hands of Hamas terrorists, according to an October 2023 letter from the House Oversight Committee to then-USAID administrator Samantha Power. The letter pointed out that Palestinian aid had been cut under the Trump administration because it couldn’t be safely accounted for, only for the Biden administration to open the tap on it once again.
In addition to those big-ticket items, like Palestinian aid, USAID spends relatively small amounts of money on bizarre cultural projects that appear to have no purpose other than to promote niche left-wing ideologies around race and gender.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt cited a few such programs in a recent statement to reporters: $1.5 million to “advance DEI in Serbia’s workplaces,” $70,000 for an Irish DEI-centric musical, $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia, and $32,000 on a “transgender comic book” in Peru.
“As an American taxpayer, I don’t want my dollars going toward this crap, and I know the American people don’t either,” Leavitt told reporters. “And that’s exactly what Elon Musk has been tasked by President Trump to do — to get the fraud, waste, and abuse out of our federal government.”
While Republicans are on board with shutting down or otherwise merging USAID with the State Department, Democrats are pushing back.
Hours after the agency’s doors were closed for the day, Senator Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) placed a blanket hold on Trump’s State Department nominees to protest what congressional Democrats called an illegal shutdown of USAID.
“Dismantling USAID is illegal and makes us less safe,” Schatz said before explaining that Congress needs to pass a law to eliminate or fundamentally change the agency. “This is self-inflicted chaos of epic proportions that will have dangerous consequences all around the world.”
Meanwhile, Trump is pushing the narrative that because USAID is run by “radical lunatics,” executive action needs to be taken. When asked if Congress is the only one that can “do away” with USAID, Trump suggested that may not be the case if USAID is found to have engaged in fraud.
“I don’t know, I don’t think so. Not when it comes to fraud,” the president told reporters. “These people are lunatics, and if it comes to fraud, you wouldn’t have an act of Congress. I’m not sure that you would anyway, but we just want to do the right thing. It’s something that should have been done a long time ago.”
While Musk called USAID a “criminal organization” that needs to “die,” the agency is a creation of Congress and it’s unclear just how far Musk can go in dismantling it without congressional approval.
“Elon Musk, you didn’t create USAID. The United States Congress did for the American people,” Representative Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said during a press conference outside the agency’s closed headquarters. “And just like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn’t have the power to destroy it. And who’s going to stop him? We are!”
If USAID does survive in some form, along with some of its existing workforce, Secretary of State Marco Rubio could have a hard time bringing the agency to heel, as Mark Moyar knows from experience.
Moyar was a senior political appointee at USAID during Trump’s first term. That is until he reported widespread waste, fraud, and abuse within the agency, after which he got the ax.
Moyar’s efforts to clean up the agency “caused subversive bureaucrats to orchestrate my termination on bogus charges of divulging classified information,” he told National Review. “Those same bureaucrats helped maintain employment for the people who perpetrated the waste, fraud, and abuse. Fortunately, these individuals have just been put on leave for their most recent efforts to obstruct the Trump White House.”
Moyar chronicles his experience working for USAID and provides a blueprint for how a presidential administration could “drain the swamp” in his 2024 book, Masters of Corruption: How the Federal Bureaucracy Sabotaged the Trump Administration. He currently teaches military history at Hillsdale College.
Rubio is working to “move, reorganize, and integrate” certain USAID programs into the department he leads while leaving room for abolishing other aspects of the agency’s work, Rubio wrote in a letter to top lawmakers from both parties.
Rubio’s temporary role as USAID acting administrator, Moyar said, is a “clear sign” that the agency will formally join the State Department in some capacity. “It’s possible that some parts will be shifted to other agencies,” the professor added. “The worst parts can be expected to disappear.”
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