USAID Waste and Abuse Runs Deep

A nation in debt cannot allow waste.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled plans to restructure and potentially abolish the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Monday.

In a release late in the day, the White House documented why. For decades the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been unaccountable to taxpayers while it has funneled massive sums of money to often ridiculous – and in many cases, malicious – pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats with next-to-no oversight.

Here are a few examples of the waste and abuse:

• $1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities”

• $70,000 for production of a “DEI musical” in Ireland

• $2.5 million for electric vehicles for Vietnam

• $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia

• $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru

• $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala

• $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt

• Hundreds of thousands of dollars for a non-profit linked to designated terrorist organizations — even AFTER an inspector general launched an investigation

• Millions to EcoHealth Alliance — which was involved in research at the Wuhan lab

• “Hundreds of thousands of meals that went to al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria”

• Funding to print “personalized” contraceptives birth control devices in developing countries

• Hundreds of millions of dollars to fund “irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan,” benefiting the Taliban

The White House notes that the list goes much further over decades.

MSN reported that in a letter to senior lawmakers from both parties, Sec. Rubio cited USAID activities he described as “conflicting, overlapping and duplicative” with the State Department and noted “systems and processes [that] … often result in the discord of the foreign policy and foreign relations of the United States.”

“In consultation with Congress, USAID may move, reorganize, and integrate certain missions, bureaus, and offices into the Department of State, and the remainder of the agency may be abolished consistent with applicable law,” Rubio said in the notice.