Senator Joni Ernst, “USAID Is a Rogue Agency” So Legally Shut it Down

I did not expect to be writing about USAID twice in a row, quickly. My previous post stands, but so does this.

USAID Is a Rogue Agency

The Wall Street Journal has a blistering Op-Ed by Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa.

Ernst claims, among other things, USAID dodges congressional questions about money that went to sex traffickers and the Wuhan virus lab.

Please consider Sen. Joni Ernst: USAID Is a Rogue Agency

The U.S. Agency for International Development, entrusted with disbursing tens of billions of aid dollars to other nations annually, is a rogue bureaucracy. I’ve uncovered that the agency often acts at odds with our nation’s best interests and uses intimidation and shell games to hide where money is going, how it’s being spent and why.

USAID repeatedly rebuffed my requests for a list of recipients of U.S. tax dollars sent to Ukraine, claiming that the information was classified. Despite the pushback, I persisted. Eventually, USAID permitted my staff to review documents under surveillance in a highly secure room at USAID headquarters, with note-taking prohibited.

What warranted such secrecy? We learned that the aid that was supposed to alleviate economic distress in the war-torn nation was spent on such frivolous activities as sending Ukrainian models and designers on junkets to New York City, London Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week and South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

I faced the same stonewalling from USAID when I asked about tax dollars being diverted from project missions for largely unrelated costs, known as the negotiated indirect cost rate. The agency claimed that it wasn’t possible to track. My team debunked that by providing USAID staff with a link to a public database. The agency fired back, warning that divulging this information would violate federal laws, including the Economic Espionage Act.

When I launched a formal investigation in cooperation with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, USAID relented. Turns out, the agency is allowing grantees to skim significant amounts of money, up to and even beyond half of the total, for themselves.

We need guarantees that U.S. assistance is helping people in need, but a recent review by the agency’s own inspector general found USAID still “does not have proper documentation to support indirect costs charged” by grant recipients.

I shouldn’t have to ask these questions. All federal spending is required to be publicly available on the website USAspending.gov, a searchable database created nearly two decades ago by a bipartisan law.

USAID’s sketchy spending schemes were the impetus for this law aimed at making federal funding more transparent. Congressional investigators in 2005 caught the agency supporting an organization involved with the trafficking of teenage girls in Asia. USAID staff called the claims “destructive” and vehemently denied them. The evidence proved otherwise. A pass-through group, set up with the help of former agency employees, was found funneling U.S. tax dollars into abetting the sex trade operation.

The agency has learned to exploit loopholes in the law, as my investigation into the origins of the pandemic exposed. The watchdog organization White Coat Waste Project was the first to release evidence that both USAID and Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases were financing bat studies involving coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Yet no grants to the Chinese lab appeared in USAspending.gov. Audits later uncovered that more than a million dollars from the U.S. government were paying for the dangerous research. The bulk of the money was provided by USAID, not Dr. Fauci.

USAID evaded the obligation to report this transaction to USAspending.gov by using multiple pass-through organizations, including the nefarious EcoHealth Alliance, which is now barred from receiving U.S. government grants.

What was our international development agency developing at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology? If the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation are correct that the Covid virus likely originated from a lab leak, USAID may have had a hand in a once-in-a-century pandemic that claimed the lives of millions.

There’s no shortage of other questionable USAID projects. More than $9 million intended for civilian food and medical supplies in Syria ended up in the hands of violent terrorists. Another $2 million was spent promoting tourism to Lebanon, a nation the State Department warns against traveling to due to the risks of terrorism, kidnapping and unexploded land mines. USAID spent millions of dollars paying people to dig irrigation ditches in Afghanistan and encouraging farmers to grow food crops instead of poppies for opium. The result: Poppy cultivation nearly doubled.

Many other groups supported by USAID are doing great work, such as caring for orphans and people living with HIV. Imagine how much more good work could be supported with the dollars that instead ended up enriching terrorists, sex traffickers, mad scientists and drug cartels.

After keeping its spending records hidden from Congress and taxpayers, USAID employees are now protesting the review of the agency’s records by President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. It’s no surprise that Washington insiders are more upset at DOGE for trying to stop wasteful spending than at USAID for misusing tax dollars.

The question we should be asking isn’t why USAID’s grants are being scrutinized, but why it took so long.

Ms. Ernst, an Iowa Republican, is founder and chairwoman of the Senate DOGE Caucus.

Q & A on USAID

Q: Is there any doubt USAID is a rogue agency?
A: No

Q: How should we deal with this?
A: Move USAID and it functions to the State Department or shut it down entirely.

Q: How?
A: Legally, by an act of Congress

That was my opinion in my previous post, The Elon Musk Sponsored, Ted Mack Legal Amateur Hour

The problem with the DOGE approach is the mission may backfire spectacularly.

Many pretend that what DOGE is doing is not illegal.

Those same Republicans chastised Biden, correctly so, for flouting the Supreme Court multiple times on student aid.

Unfortunately, both sides are fine with the President breaking the law as long as the result is what they want.

The only sound approach is to proceed down the path Senator Ernst suggested. Properly tailored, the Senate just needs to find 7 Democrats willing to go along.

Once again, I am not arguing against the DOGE idea. I openly cheer the idea behind DOGE.

Instead, I am arguing against the methods.

Hypocrites may be happy with the approach, but I assure you that Trump can achieve much more by going about this in a constitutional manner.

I side with Senator Ernst. “If there are truly good pro-American programs, then let’s move them to the State Department. Let’s make sure we have proper oversight.”

The Way Forward

With the latest revelations of Senator Ernst, the way forward should be easy enough.

The details Ernst posted, and no doubt there are hundreds if not thousand more, should be enough to get 7 Democrats on board, breaking a filibuster.

In fact, might I suggest some details are so damning that Democrats are caught up in them.

Bring it on. Let’s make the changes legally. It shouldn’t be that hard now.