'Nothing to be proud of': State Department spits on USAID's grave following Bono, Obama eulogies
Bono, the Irish singer valued at around $700 million whose real name is Paul David Hewson, did his apparent best on the May 30 episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" to push the narrative that the Trump administration's dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development would result in the deaths of multitudes of foreigners.
Rogan didn't buy what Bono was selling, noting, "For sure, it was a money-laundering operation. For sure, there was no oversight. For sure, billions of dollars are missing."
Just as the Irishman's fearmongering fell flat on the podcast, similar efforts by Bill Gates and other super-wealthy individuals apparently keen to keep American taxpayers running funds through their organizations and on the hook for wasteful foreign projects failed to achieve their desired effect.
'The amount of USAID dollars going to local partners increased only from 4% to 6%.'
The USAID was officially shuttered on Tuesday, just weeks after the State Department took over its foreign assistance programs.
Responding to the eulogies offered up for USAID during a video conference on Monday by former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, as well as by Bono, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce made abundantly clear that tears shed for the agency are wasted on what was a bloated and ineffective bureaucracy.
To drive home her point, Bruce damned the former agency with some admissions from its former administrator and longtime champion, Samantha Power.
"Samantha Power, the last USAID director under the last administration at the end of 2024, complained in public statements that when she started only 7 percent of aid money that was assigned to various projects and groups made it to its intended destination, and that’s because of bureaucracy and layers of contractors," said Bruce. "And she was proud that she got it up to 10 percent."
Power noted in a 2021 speech, "In the last decade, despite numerous efforts, initiatives, and even support from Capitol Hill, the amount of USAID dollars going to local partners increased only from 4% to 6%."
She suggested that cash was instead poured into big, remote NGOs "because working with local partners, it turns out, is more difficult, time-consuming, and it's riskier," adding that local partners "often lack the internal accounting expertise our contracts require."
USAID funds are instead gobbled up by "implementing partners," such as private contractors, government agencies, NGOs, and international organizations. The Congressional Research Service noted:
Few foreign governments receive direct budget support, and some foreign assistance dollars never leave the United States at all — instead going to a U.S. business for the end benefit of a foreign population. Money goes to U.S. farmers, defense contractors, and management consultants, among others, for commodities or services provided to benefit foreign populations.
In 2021, Power set a target for the agency: By 2025, 25% of USAID funding would go directly to the intended destinations to support the efforts of locally led organizations. The Democratic former adviser to Obama failed miserably.
According to Devex, the percentage of eligible funding that went to local organizations went from 10.2% in 2022 to 9.6% the following year.
'We are not ending foreign aid. We are making it more nimble.'
"Less than 10% of our foreign assistance dollars flowing through USAID is actually reaching those communities," Walter Kerr, co-founding executive director of Unlock Aid, told PBS earlier this year. "About 98% of USAID grants pay for activities and not results."
"Forty-three percent of [the activities] failed to achieve about half of the intended results. But in spite of that, they still got paid in full almost every time and sometimes more," added Kerr.
Kerr indicated that working with local partners could prove far more effective.
"One study found that, when working with a local partner, as opposed to an international aid contractor, you could find savings upwards of 32% alone. And that's a conservative estimate," said Kerr.
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Bruce noted that within the Trump administration's new foreign aid framework, bureaus will be assigned to various regions around the globe.
"That foreign assistance for that region will now sit with the bureau assigned to that region as opposed to some massive bureaucracy, not even housed in our building, dealing with countries and regions separately without dealing with the experts here who understand what those regions might need," said Bruce. "It will be more efficient. It will be more effective. We are not ending foreign aid. We are making it more nimble."
'This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end.'
Obama, among those evidently happy to pretend USAID was worth its salt, said in a video excerpt obtained by the Associated Press on Monday, "Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it's a tragedy. Because it's some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world."
Bono reportedly read a poem, repeated his suggestion that millions will now die without USAID, then told agency workers, "They called you crooks. When you were the best of us."
Bruce countered in her Wednesday press conference by stating that "there is nothing to be proud of when 90%, according to Samantha Power, is not even making it to the people to whom it was promised."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a July 1 article on his department's Substack page, "Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War. Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown. On the global stage, the countries that benefit the most from our generosity usually fail to reciprocate."
"This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end," continued Rubio. "Under the Trump Administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests."
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