Calling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) “a slush fund for international wokeism,” Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) introduced legislation Tuesday that would immediately abolish the agency.
Gaetz’s bill would, as of its enactment, simply stop funding USAID, rescind any unobligated funds previously allocated to the agency, and transfer its other assets and liabilities to the secretary of state.
“American taxpayer dollars are being wasted to fund radical leftist propaganda in foreign countries,” Gaetz said in a press release. “The American people will not tolerate government-funded degeneracy at home, and we certainly will not accept its force-feeding abroad under Old Glory.”
The bill’s cosponsors are Representatives Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) — a full third of the Grand Canyon State’s congressmen — Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.).
Because the language abolishing USAID comprises just two paragraphs of the four-page bill, the remainder of the text serves as an indictment of the agency that easily justifies its shuttering.
“The United States, in dealings with allies and adversaries, should engage in diplomacy and international relations that do not undermine the culture or tradition of other nations and peoples, but instead seek to develop working and friendly relationships relative to the interests of both parties with United States citizens chiefly in mind,” the bill states.
Those words are reminiscent of President Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address, in which he called for the United States to seek “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
Unfortunately, as Gaetz’s bill points out, “USAID uses United States tax dollars to push radical, leftist ideology abroad, going so far as to undermine foreign governments who do not adhere to the perverse ideology it espouses.” Furthermore, “USAID does not act in the best interest of the United States or its people, nor the foreign nations it purposes to support.”
In his press release, Gaetz referred to a 2022 Heritage Foundation report on USAID that stated:
The Biden Administration [is] treating the U.S. foreign aid apparatus as a global platform from which to implement overseas a rigidly ideological and domestically divisive agenda to promote abortion, climate action, “gender equity,” and “racial justice,” goals that are likely to undermine the economic prospects and self-reliance of USAID’s beneficiaries, while also likely undermining the long-standing bipartisan congressional support for continued foreign aid funding.
Gaetz’s legislation lists a variety of ways in which USAID advances the radical Left’s agenda. “USAID,” it says, “aims to identify and address ‘restrictive gender norms and inequalities.’” It “meddles in local elections,” supposedly to help “traditionally marginalized groups.” And it now works with the United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA) to promote abortions thanks to the 2021 repeal of the Helms Amendment, which for 48 years had prohibited U.S. foreign aid from funding the murder of the unborn.
Then there are USAID’s recent, outrageous grants, including:
- $850,000 to the Bandhu Social Welfare Society to secure “the rights of gender diverse people” in Bangladesh;
- $3.7 million to the Aurat Publication and Information Service Foundation to “provide support for gender equity programs” in Pakistan;
- $1 million to the United Nations Development Program for “LGBTI human rights advocacy in Asia”; and
- $370,000 to Public Information and Need of Knowledge to promote “the human rights of LGBTI people in Armenian society.”
“USAID does not serve a meaningful purpose. It is used as a slush fund for international wokeism,” said Gaetz. “Therefore, serious lawmakers in Congress should support its complete abolition.”
Of course, in the minds of the Biden administration, USAID’s employees (who, according to Heritage, contribute overwhelmingly to Democrats), and the agency’s domestic and international partners, advancing “international wokeism” is USAID’s “meaningful purpose.”
In fact, the notion that foreign aid was ever some nonpartisan, kindhearted attempt at helping the world’s poor is plainly ahistorical. Foreign aid has always been dispensed with political objectives in mind, which is why it invariably comes with strings attached. One may agree with those objectives or not — Heritage applauds the Trump administration’s allegedly conservative strings while decrying the Biden administration’s liberal ones — but only a fool would pretend they didn’t exist. Foreign aid is thus the exact opposite of Jefferson’s stated policy.
Furthermore, nothing in the Constitution empowers the federal government to disburse American taxpayer dollars abroad or to meddle in other nations’ affairs. For that reason alone, USAID should be abolished.
Constitutionalists should keep an eye on Gaetz’s bill. Its fortunes in Congress will prove just how many “serious lawmakers” there really are.
