Congress debates DOGE cuts to foreign aid, and closing down USAID

While expert witnesses gave divided views on the shuttering of the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID), lawmakers sparred Wednesday during a House Oversight subcommittee hearing over the alleged corruption within the independent agency.

Democrats on the Subcommittee on Delivery on Government Efficiency argued that the closing of USAID’s operations by the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has politicized and jeopardized vital humanitarian work globally.

Republicans, on the other hand, insisted that politicization is already endemic within USAID and necessitates either drastic reforms or abolishing the agency entirely and placing foreign aid under the purview of the State Department.

USAID has come under fire for its funding of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, electric vehicles, contraception, LGBTQ+ activism, and armed terrorist groups around the world, The Center Square reported.

Ranking Member Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., argued that the Republican accusations of waste are a matter of perspective.

“You can’t just call something waste, fraud, and abuse, because you disagree with it,” she said.

But Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, said international aid “ought to be rooted in a rational conception of the way the world actually is, and not the way some leftist, secular bureaucrat at USAID believes the world should be.”

“I think that forcing transgenderism and novel sexual fetishes on more traditional cultures does not advance American interests. It alienates the United States on the world stage,” he added.

Witness Max Primorac, a former senior program vetting officer at USAID, agreed that the way America currently conducts its foreign aid programs actually endangers national interests, rather than operating as a powerful tool of diplomacy.

“USAID and the State Department used foreign aid as a global platform to push radical and even obscene ideas,” Primorac said. “Foreign aid should be a tool to advance our national security interests. In the past it did. Today it does not.”

Primorac referenced as an example the former Biden administration’s global green energy agenda, which drove impoverished African countries to turn to fossil fuel-friendly China for their energy needs rather than the U.S.

He said he had also witnessed activists and NGOs actively lobbying in D.C. against legislation that would increase transparency within USAID.

Gregg Roman, Executive Director of the Middle East Forum, affirmed Primorac’s observations, revealing that “USAID effectively self-funds its own external private lobby, that then goes back to Congress and asks for more money for USAID.”

This practice effectively tanked a bill in the 118th Congress, H.R. 160, that would have increased transparency in USAID’s funding of overseas organizations and ensured that funding does not go to terrorist groups, he said.

Roman also pointed to how USAID’s lack of real-time oversight, transparency, and clawback provisions led to 90% of all U.S. aid to Gaza ending up in Hamas-controlled areas.

“I think there’s a gap in vetting and enforcement, allowing funds to move both directly and indirectly to extremist-linked groups,” he said. “You have to have a pipeline, where all the money that’s coming out of U.S. government coffers is traceable exactly to which organization and subgrantee it goes to.”

But Democrats pointed out that federal spending on government aid makes up only 1% of the federal budget. The bigger problem than occasional fiscal mismanagement, they contended, is how the freeze has affected USAID’s humanitarian aid programs.

Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, said he’d spoken with people in charge of food warehouses in Sudan and Ethiopia who told him they could not distribute the food due to the pause on USAID’s operations.

Witness Noam Unger from the Center for Strategic and International Studies who also served in multiple roles at USAID, added that the president’s actions are the wrong move if he truly wants to root out waste.

“Hollowing out and strangling the system into extinction through executive actions is akin to unilaterally disarming at a time of mounting geopolitical competition for partnerships globally,” Unger said. “Throwing away our toolbox does not make us safer or well-positioned to influence the world.”