If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
This ancient sounding wisdom was probably coined in 1977, by then-President Jimmy Carter’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Thomas Bertram Lance.
Though, only half of his words got levelled (re-worded) into a catchy phrase, the whole quote sounds “that’s the trouble with government: fixing things that aren’t broken and not fixing things that are broken”.
The statement is as true as ever: Democratic governments in the U.S. have the penchant to extend bureaucracy and legislation repeatedly, pushing the boundaries just one step too many, in their urge to improve things. And at the same time, they are using these steps as “bandages” in face of the obvious.
Sometimes things are too broken to be kept together by patches and only a radical overhaul can fix the problem.
This is definitely true for the United States Agency for International Development, colloquially known as the USAID.
Founded in 1961 with the aim of countering Soviet influence, it grew into the U.S.’s main agency for delivering humanitarian aid worldwide during its six decades of existence.
And it suffered the same fate as many other organizations that were born during the Cold War.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it somewhat ‘lost the plot’. (A reminder: it was meant to focus on core American interests and good development outcomes in the countries it was operating in, quasi convincing them that it was their best interest to follow America’s lead.)
Instead of a complete overhaul, it was treated with ‘Band-Aids’, until it became an intangible web of international obligations while nobody knew what was hiding underneath.
A new program here, a new purpose there. By 2023 it was managing about $40 billion in aid programs across 130 countries. A massive hydra with its tentacles over far too many projects around the globe.
Soon, there were many who claimed that USAID was in dire need of a real reform.
Even the Inspector General of USAID has admitted this much in his recent reports, also admitting that due to a wide variety of reasons, the agency was unable to conduct a thorough follow-up on every dime it spent and was in need of a better system to identify wrongdoers, or to measure the effectiveness of its programs.
Complaints ranged far and wide, starting from claiming that its operations were not completely transparent. Also, with its complex system of contractors, subcontractors, aid groups and NGOs (it works with over 4,000 companies), many of the founds were spent on operational costs instead of arriving to those in need of aid.
There were claims of child sex crimes, labour abuse and social media threats – all investigated internally by USAID’s compliance division and subsequently kept secret in the organization’s vast underbelly. Even if, in theory, USAID ‘expected its partners to ensure accountability of perpetrators’, evidence suggests the contrary.
By far the worse accusation was that the agency became a tool for pushing (far)-leftist ideologies, or worse, being a front for the CIA. And indeed, there are many countries that can rightfully claim that USAID became a corruption-ridden political interference tool: from the ZunZuneo Project in Cuba, the Harvard Institute for International Development in Russia or the support for Bolivian opposition groups.
Some of the controversial programs listed by the White House (a DEI project in Serbia and Ireland, respectively, a ‘transgender opera’ in Colombia or a ‘transgender comic book’ in Peru) might have been blown out of proportion as they barely represent a fraction of the whole USAID budget (that is, also only 1 percent of the overall American budget). Other critics of the step pointed out that most of those programs are over or were, in fact, co-financed by the State Department.
But there were many that show how little oversight was exercised over funding at USAID, or as Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt put it, “preposterous waste of taxpayer money”.
Like when U.S. tax dollars were used to feed Al-Qaeda linked fighters in Syria. Or when funding was provided to a terrorism-linked nonprofit group (Helping Hand for Relief and Development), even after the inspector general’s office has issued a warning about the possible misuse of those funds. An investigation that was publicly reported only much later. Paying to send Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist to college just adds insult to the injury.
And they are all proofs that the leadership of the USAID was unable to recognize that certain (often repetitive) behaviour patterns of the organization became dysfunctional or worse, are hurting American/Western interests.
Aid programs shall stay, can (and probably will) reborn in a new, modernized version of USAID.
After all, they play a vital role in promoting stability, economic growth, and humanitarian assistance – like the PEPFAR program (the world’s leading HIV initiative), that was saved by a waiver issued by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The waiver also covers other life-saving humanitarian assistance programs, like emergency food assistance, life-saving medicine, and medical services, including reasonable administrative costs.
While there’s been a struggle between the Democrats and Republicans over the management of USAID ever since it was created (with the Democrats promoting the organization’s autonomy and the Republicans pushing for more State Department oversight), only a few hardliner republicans want to completely forego foreign aid. Rubio himself said that ‘foreign assistance was not charity’ and the U.S. ‘must make sure it is well spent … critical to our national security’.
The controversial rest (gender and DEI ideology programs or transgender surgeries) can go or give place to a more pragmatical approach. It would serve both America’s budget and the rest of the world.
