In the past week or so, the focus has intensified on the cuts to USAID. If you haven't looked it up, I encourage you to go on over to usa.gov and look up the USAID page. Right at the top, it states the mission of the agency saying, "The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is the principal U.S. Agency to extend assistance to countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms." It has a yearly budget of $40B and previously employed about 10,000 people. Here are some of the more egregious things the USAID has funded with our tax dollars:
- $30M since 2018 sent to South Africa to study the transmission of HIV among sex workers and transgender people. (source)
- $1.5M sent to a Serbia group called 'Grupa Izadji' to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business communities by promoting economic empowerment of and opportunity for LGBTQI+ people in Serbia
- $2.5M to Vietnam for electric vehicles. To date, there has been one battery station built, saving 260 gallons of gas
- $25,000 for an opera in Colombia in order to 'increase transgender representation in the arts'
- $32,000 to Peru for a transgender comic book program
- $45M to Burma for DEI Scholarships (source)
- $1.2B in awards to "undisclosed recipients"
- $20M for a new Sesame Street show in Iraq called "Ahlan Simsim"
This list continues on and on, but these were the things I could find with just a simple Google search. If you want to see more, go here: https://datarepublican.com/award_search/?keywords=USAID
What President Trump/DOGE are not cutting (contrary to what the shrieks on the Left are saying):
- Welfare programs
- Head Start programs
- Medicare/Medicaid programs
- Or really any program that directly benefits individuals in the United States. Karoline Leavitt expressed this directly, multiple times, during her press conference on January 29th (full transcript). To directly quote, "if you are receiving individual assistance from the federal government, you will still continue to receive that."
What is DOGE?
I've already shared what it stands for - the Executive Order that created it can be found here, it's not long. At it's core, it's a repurposing of a government agency that already existed called USDS (United States Digital Service). Originally this was an agency created (under Obama) to make government software better. The establishment of DOGE is also temporary - 18 months to be exact. Their clearly stated mission is no different that the USDS mission was - to modernize software and IT systems within the govt. However - it stands to reason that in the process of modernizing software and IT systems, a lot of waste and fraud will be exposed...which is obviously then shared with the Commander in Chief (or his Cabinet).
The Backlash
There have been so many articles about how people are going to die as a result of either the cuts, or to the 90-day pause on USAID funds. What's weird to me, in just a cursory overview of those articles, is how the budget of the USAID agency suddenly seems to me much larger than $40B. One article claims, "all of a sudden, more than $60B of program for the world's most vulnerable people just stopped." Huh? How? And how are some of these programs, like the ones listed above, helping? It's a truly absurd piece of faux-journalism, you have to read it to believe someone could make these claims. But anyway - back to the claims that people are going to die...how can any of these media outlets make that claim when they don't really know what USAID funds are being used for? Furthermore, this is an audit and 90-day pause on these funds...not necessarily indefinite. This seems to fall under the category of 'reasonable' when it comes to a new President understanding how US Taxpayer dollars are being spent. USAID is just the first place where spending will be under the microscope...we, as taxpaying US Citizen, deserve to know, in some transparent way, how our tax dollars are being spent. I don't expect to agree with all of the ways that money is being spent, but it's not 'out of bounds' to want to know, or to want that information to be public. Even if you disagree with Trump and Musk on what should be cut -- shouldn't they at least be able to share what taxpayer dollars are being spent on?
On the talking-heads side of things, you've got Chuck Schumer standing in front of the Senate lecturing people on how someone like Musk doesn't understand how Medicaid works, how Veterans programs work, etc (neither of which are affected by the way), and making generally absurd, and factually untrue claims about what's being cut. He tweets about how Trump is "doing the work of Russia and China" by shutting down USAID, essentially evoking the boogeyman...again, a baseless and purely emotional claim.
Congressman Maxwell Frost and Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett had the audacity to stand in front of the US Treasury building, demanding access so that he could "provide oversight" of DOGE...who was providing oversight for all of the waste and fraud that has been perpetrated in the halls of Government for decades now? They also make a specious claim that Elon Musk and his team are "going after their information". Name a single example where anyone's personal information has been shared.
Here's the most absurd one - Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries just announced legislation that has three main goals: 1) to deny treasury department payment systems access to special govt employees, 2) to deny treasury department payment systems access to anyone with conflicts of interest to who lack appropriate clearance, 3) include personal tax information into existing privacy protections. That last one is particularly rich considering how Schumer and his fellow Democrats publicly fought to release President Trump's tax returns against his will.
Question of Motives
The real question here is "why would anyone be against a government-wide audit on spending?" I don't see many Republicans voicing opposition to it. The people I know personally, who I ask about it, are all in favor of it. The only opposition I see is from certain members of the Democrat party...and they are quite vocal indeed. Why would anyone be against government transparency and a public airing of what our tax dollars are being spent on?
Sure, it could simply be that it doesn't really matter what President Trump does, someone like Chuck Schumer is against it. That could be the case. Or, it could be that there is something he is afraid of being found out. That could be the case.
To me - the question of motives is the important one here. There are plenty of reasonable motives for wanting to root out government waste and fraud. Our Federal government has become a wholly mammoth...there hasn't been a good-faith attempt at a government audit in over 40 years. Our national debt stands at ~$36T at the moment and deficits grow that amount yearly. Interest payments on the national debt are enormous. This year alone, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that interest payments alone, on the national debt, will be nearly $1T, and $1.8T/yr by 2035. The Federal government has had a spending problem for a long time now; with seemingly no one to stand in the way of further spending. Do I think President Trump is some kind of savior? Absolutely not - and in fact, his planned tax cuts and further spending are likely to far-negate any savings DOGE makes...BUT, to stand there and shriek about any kind of spending reform, as Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries (and manyy other Democrats) have done in recent days, is preposterous. It is so preposterous, in fact, that we must question WHY anyone, regardless of their political leanings, would be against this. This is what the majority of people want.
"The one who yells the loudest is usually the most guilty."
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