CSPAN - House Hearing on USAID, Part 1

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Feb. 16, 2025 04:53-06:55 - CSPAN

02:01:58

House Hearing on USAID, Part 1

Participants

Main

brian mast

rep/r 12:04

gregory meeks

rep/d 08:25

scott perry

rep/r 05:18

Appearances

chris smith

rep/r 03:01

joe wilson

rep/r 03:08

maria salazar

03:07

sheila cherfilus-mccormick

rep/d 00:37

Clips

brad sherman

rep/d 00:07

brian lamb

cspan 00:04

michael mccaul

rep/r 00:14

tim burchett

rep/r 00:10

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Speaker	Time	Text
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		Next, a House hearing on the Trump administration's funding freeze for the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID.
		Witnesses include former officials who worked at the agency during the George W. Bush administration and the first Trump administration.
		Here's a portion of the hearing.
		Nice to see you.
		Let me get this for you there.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Committee on Foreign Affairs will come to order.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		I ask that everybody in the room, regardless of your position, please rise, join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
unidentified		I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		The purpose of today's hearing is to discuss the misuse of public trust through USAID's woke programming and explore ideas for reorganization to promote a stronger, better and more prosperous United States.
		I now recognize myself for an opening statement on this hearing.
		I can tell you that we are here today very simply because many of the people and many of the programs in USAID have literally betrayed America.
		My colleagues to my left will say that I'm lying about these programs, and I know they damn well wish that I was lying.
		The programs that USAID and the State Department have spent money on are indefensible.
		They hurt America standing around the globe.
		And I think the fact is clear that America would have been better off if your money had been simply thrown into a fireplace.
		Instead, the Biden administration spent it imposing their far-left-wing ideology onto other nations.
		Under them, USAID spent $2 million for sex change surgeries in Guatemala, $22 million to increase tourism in Tunisia and Egypt.
		That's not life-saving.
		$520 million to pay consultants to teach people in Africa about climate change.
		That's not medicine.
		$4.5 million to teach people in Kazakhstan how to fight back against internet trolls.
		That's not life-saving.
		$20,000 to help LGBT individuals vote in Honduran elections.
		That's not medicine.
		$5.5 million to improve the lives of LGBT individuals in Uganda.
		$14 million to identify LGBT leaders in Cambodia.
		$425,000 to train Indonesian coffee companies on how to be more gender-friendly.
		$15 million for condoms to the Taliban.
		And I have pages and pages more.
		That's not diplomacy.
		To slap in the face to every American who got up this morning and went to work.
		To this moment, you haven't seen or heard any of my colleagues apologizing for this being wrong or wasteful.
		Instead, for the left, their biggest concern is that the person assembling a team to make sure that these programs are not funded is a billionaire named Elon Musk.
		So out of touch that they actually believe these programs are bringing other countries closer to us or that our adversaries are going to gain some kind of foothold if we don't continue doing these programs.
		That's not what competing looks like for the United States of America.
		On the contrary, last month, when I participated in a QA with my colleague here to the left in the United States Institute of Peace, which will have to explain their funding, the Ugandan ambassador stood up and said these programs were not doing anything to improve relations between our nations.
		Take a look at the video.
		Maybe we'll get some audio on it.
unidentified		Maybe we won't get audio on it.
		Maybe we won't do this video.
		But I have a video that shows exactly what the Ugandan ambassador was saying.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		And they were thanking us for not continuing these programs.
		That's what took place.
		And that's just one of the countless ambassadors that these programs will not continue.
		That they're going to come to an end.
		Yet my colleagues to the left are arguing for these programs to continue.
		Arguing for the people who put these programs in place to go back to work.
		Arguing that the agency that did this be allowed to continue wasting your money.
		They're going to argue that President Trump doesn't have the authority to do this, but the fact is, of those who were in Congress, all but three of them voted to give him the authority in 2024, and it says very specifically in S-FOPS appropes that the administration may potentially expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize covered departments or agencies or organizations.
		That's the language of the authority.
		It's not just the content of USAID that is the betrayal.
		It's the larceny that USAID has conducted.
		Crooked NGOs around Washington, D.C., swindling American taxpayers out of their money.
		A recent audit found that USAID's implementing partners were using upwards of 50% of their grants for overhead costs, not life-saving measures.
		The administration has said that the aid pause is temporary and they have proven it.
		The recipients of USAID programs can apply for a waiver.
		I have a list with me.
		Many have applied, many have been denied, and some have received waivers that actually proved their work was life-saving.
		Let me give a warning to my colleagues.
		It will be short-sighted of you if you turn a blind eye to USAID's betrayal and, more broadly, the betrayal within the State Department.
		Because we are going to bring in the people who put these programs in place.
		We are going to show to the American people exactly what they were doing.
		The videos, the documents, the everything.
		They are going to see it.
		like $25,000 for a drag show seminar for Venezuelan migrants in Ecuador.
		And we are going to show you that video.
		That's the USAID program, spending your money.
		We will be writing these programs out of law as we conduct our first full State Department review since 2002.
		I would say that when done right, foreign aid can be one of the best tools.
		It can help strengthen our relationships with our allies that need a hand up.
		And it can help countries realize that America is the best partner.
		But it's only true if we understand a couple of things.
		What does America actually need from each country or region?
		What does that country or region actually want from the United States of America?
		Because it's not these things.
		And it's only fair to Americans if we can prove that a dollar is better spent going abroad than staying in the pocket of an American who is right now hustling and grinding it out at work.
		And I now recognize my colleague, Ranking Member Gregory Meeks.
unidentified		I want to welcome our witnesses to our first full committee hearing this Congress.
gregory meeks ▲ ● ▼		But I would be remiss if I didn't make clear my disappointment in the midst of the chaos created by the Trump administration's unlawful attempt to shut up USAID and pause foreign assistance funds.
		We don't have anyone here today from the administration to explain, to appear, and to explain their actions before this committee.
		It shouldn't be just private sector individuals here.
		We are the oversight of the U.S. government, and we should have members from the State Department, the Secretary of State, Rubio, present.
		And my Democratic colleagues and I have asked the chairman to have a committee hearing with Secretary Rubio, and I urge that to be done as soon as possible.
		The American people deserve to have their elected representatives question the administration about the decision to shut down a government agency established in law by Congress.
unidentified		We don't have a king.
unidentified		We have a system.
gregory meeks ▲ ● ▼		If the administration believes what they have done is legal and merited, they should be before Congress.
unidentified		They should be here.
gregory meeks ▲ ● ▼		They should be talking to the American people directly.
unidentified		We should be summoning them here.
gregory meeks ▲ ● ▼		I also want to do away with the myth that this exercise with DOGE and USAID is about addressing waste, fraud, and abuse.
gregory meeks ▲ ● ▼		Because if you really care about waste, fraud, and abuse, you don't illegally fire 21 independent inspector generals in the dark of night.
unidentified		You don't fire the head of the government ethics office.
gregory meeks ▲ ● ▼		Just this week, President Trump fired USAID's independent inspector general just one day after he issued a report showing that the administration's own effort to dismantle USAID is wasting taxpayer dollars and putting our national security at risk.
		That's what's happening.
		Our national security is at risk.
		And I'm asking unanimous consent to enter that IG report into the record.
		This committee and the American people deserve to hear from the IG.
		I would urge you to invite the Inspector General to appear before this committee to tell us about the actual work of addressing waste, fraud, and abuse, if that's what this is really about.
		Now, many Republicans, this has not been a partisan issue.
		Many Republicans have long championed U.S. foreign assistance as critical to our national security, as a source of United States soft power, and a key tool to out-compete China's growing global influence.
		Despite my disappointment over not having Trump's administration panelists here, I am pleased that among our witnesses today, we have a number of individuals who are Republicans.
unidentified		I look at my former colleague, Ted Yoho, who I have traveled with on several times, several coldels, and we visited USAID programs.
gregory meeks ▲ ● ▼		I know when you go and travel and see firsthand the work of dedicated USAID Foreign Service officers, civil servants, and local staff to whom we owe our gratitude and our thanks, not the dishonor shown to them by wealthy billionaires with a social media platform.
		Now, I only have a few minutes left, so I won't spend my time debunking every mischaracterization or outright lie we've heard from the Republican distractors of USAID.
		These are distractions meant to obscure the critical work USAID does.
		I instead submit into the record the stories by the Washington Post, the New York Times, fact-checking, and dubious claims made by the Republicans.
		Do you have them?
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		So ordered.
gregory meeks ▲ ● ▼		And what I will use my time on is making clear that this hearing title, the USAID Betrayal, is absolutely correct because this is a betrayal.
		The Trump administration is betraying our national security.
		It is betraying our allies.
		It is betraying the Americans who carry out USAID's mission in some of the world's most challenging and dangerous places.
		It is betraying the generosity of the American people and is betraying the investments Americans have made for decades to stop diseases before they spread, to make sure girls have the same educational opportunities as boys, and to make sure that the innocent victims ravaged by war or natural disaster have basic human necessities.
		It's betraying babies who have been born with HIV in the last three weeks, who could have been born HIV-free if only we continued to provide their mothers with the necessary medication that was sitting on the shelves.
		It's betrayed America's victory in nearly wiping out polio around the world by stopping the funding to stamp it out in the last two countries on earth with the virus still present.
		Want to know what happens when we stop funding this type of work?
		Just look at Kansas where the outbreak of tuberculosis right now grows.
		So it's not just about health programs.
		Economic development programs in Latin America build stronger communities and help reduce migration to the United States.
		Good governance, independent media, civil society programs in developing countries help break debt traps from China and ensure citizens can enjoy their God-given rights.
		Bottom line, who wins when we pull back from one of America's greatest strengths?
		China wins.
		Russia wins.
		Our adversaries win.
		So yes, this is a betrayal.
		This is a betrayal of our national security.
		And I yield back the balance of my time.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Thank the gentleman for yielding.
		I think I called it exactly right what the arguments were going to be.
		Other members of the committee are reminded that opening statements may be submitted for the record.
		We are pleased to have our panel of witnesses here today on this important topic.
		Max Primerack, Senior Research Fellow at the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation.
		The Honorable Ted Yoho, former U.S. Representative from Florida's 3rd Congressional District, and the Honorable Andrew Nazios, former administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
		This committee recognizes the importance of the issues before us and is grateful to have you here to speak with us today.
		Your full statements will be made a part of the record, and I'll ask each of you to keep your comments, spoken remarks to less than five minutes in order to allow time for member questions.
		Hopefully you give us something more than what we could just read in your opening statements.
		And I would also ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. McCormick, be allowed to sit on the dais and participate in today's hearing.
		Without objection, so ordered.
		I now recognize Mr. Primerack for your opening statement.
unidentified		Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify before this committee.
		My name is Max Primerak.
		I am a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
		I previously served at the U.S. Agency for International PEPFAR saves lives!
		Restore AIDS funding now!
		PEPFAR SAIDS LIVES!
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		RESTOR AIDS funding now!
unidentified		PEPFAR saves lives!
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Restore AIDS funding now!
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		PEPFAR saves lives!
unidentified		Restore AIDS funding now!
unidentified		PEPFAR saves lives!
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Restore the AIDS funding now!
unidentified		PEPFAR saves lives!
unidentified		Restore AIDS funding now!
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		I guess these guys don't watch the news.
		They didn't realize that PEPFAR was one of the many programs that did prove to be life-saving.
		So the funding was restored.
		Somebody better give them a link to, I don't know, maybe Fox News or something like that.
unidentified		You may resume your opening statement.
		Mr. Chairman, I previously served at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State.
		I've dedicated 35 years to international relations work.
		The views I express here today are my own.
		President Donald Trump's decision to shutter USAID reflects the agency's loss of bipartisan support in Congress and the trust of the American people.
		It exposes a bureaucracy that went off the ideological rails and no longer reflects the will or the values of the American people.
		What should be and must be an effective tool of U.S. foreign policy has turned into a partisan global vehicle focused on spending money rather than achieving concrete outcomes aligned with American interests and on imposing radical social ideas that divide us at home and spur resentment abroad.
		They refuse to be held accountable to Congress and American taxpayers who fund them.
		Advocates evoke dangers to our national security, citing programs to counter communist China, protect us from the global spread of infectious diseases, and provide life-saving humanitarian aid.
		I understand the importance of these programs.
		At USAID, I co-chaired a Counter-China Interagency Group, oversaw containment of two Ebola outbreaks, and led the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.
		But USAID's obsession with identity politics, gender fluidity, population control, and climate fanaticism undermined these goals.
		Americans are now aware of massive waste, fraud, and abuse of their money.
		Every single project was corrupted by this radical agenda.
		They are not happy.
		USAID's leadership failed in its most basic fiduciary responsibility, and that is to avoid the kinds of reputational risks that would imperil the agency's legitimacy with Congress and the American people.
		USAID pushed developing countries to rely on Communist China for their green energy needs.
		Two years ago, 131 African lawmakers and religious leaders from 13 countries implored Congress not to use PEPFAR to promote abortion, stating, We want to express our concerns and suspicions that this funding is supporting abortion, that it violates our core beliefs concerning life, family, and religion.
		Many Africans have told me, but also from other places in the world, the Chinese do not ask us to give up our religion to do business with them.
		Mr. Chairman, our aid approach has severely harmed our global standing.
		USAID's humanitarian system is also broken.
		In Gaza, American aid financed Hamas's campaign to exterminate Israel.
		Similarly, in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Syria, where we lack physical presence to ensure that our aid is not diverted to terrorists, our aid is sustaining these war economies.
		USAID failed to properly manage the billions of dollars entrusted to it.
		This committee discovered that USAID partners were charging 50% or more for overhead.
		A government audit showed that USAID could not account for overhead charges concerning $142 billion worth of awards.
		These funds proved a boon for the progressive-dominated foreign aid industry.
		President Trump's leadership has created a unique opportunity to fast-track important reforms of our aid system.
		Secretary Rubio might look at the reforms made during the last Trump administration.
		Our starting point was that the purpose of foreign aid is to end the need for it.
		Foreign aid is not an international welfare program.
		USAID is not an international NGO.
		These must align with American interests and values.
		A final point.
		Congress must also do its part.
		Why should pro-Hamas South Africa, Beijing's point country in Africa, receive billions of dollars of aid from us?
		We should support our friends instead.
		Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Mr. Primerack.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		I now recognize Mr. Yoho for his opening statement.
unidentified		Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Meeks, and members of the committee, it's an honor to participate in this hearing regarding USAID.
		I'm a former member of Congress serving from 2013 to 2021 representing Florida's 3rd Congressional District.
		During my eight years in Congress, I served on this and the Agricultural Committee.
		I had the honor to serve as chairman of the Asia Pacific Subcommittee during the 115th Congress.
		I entered Congress.
		Mr. Yoho, could you move a little closer to your mic?
		It'll help turn it on too, won't it?
		Thank you.
		I lost that knowledge already, huh?
		I entered Congress with the goal of eliminating foreign aid for various reasons.
		Looking back, I was ignorant on what I thought foreign aid was, what it did, and thought it was unnecessary.
		Soon after my first foreign congressional delegation trip, I realized that foreign aid, when used properly, can be a tool in soft diplomacy that strengthens the nation's economy, security, increases trade, decreases migration, creates strong partners and allies.
		When used improperly, it has the opposite effect on both our friends and adversaries and wastes taxpayers' money.
		I became a strong proponent of reforming international assistance by working in a bipartisan and bicameral fashion with my co-sponsors along with the first Trump administration when we introduced the BILD Act that authorized the creation of the DFC.
		This was the largest reform in foreign aid in over two decades, and my goal was to move countries from aid to trade with the use of effective tools managed correctly.
		I chaired along with Congressman Adam Smith the effective aid caucus and met with members and outside groups to improve efficiency and effectiveness on assistance.
		This committee has had many hearings dealing with USAID.
		It's frustrating that an agency set up to further our security, prosperity, engage in humanitarian projects, and work to prevent the spread of diseases, hunger, and conflict have strayed so far from its original intent when it was created under President Kennedy in 1961.
		U.S. aid has lost the trust of a large portion of the American people and the international community.
		Remember, President Lincoln, he said, with public support, you can do almost anything.
		Without it, you can't do anything.
		The redesigned U.S. Foreign Assistance Entity will have to work hard to recreate that trust here and abroad.
		Many new reforms are necessary in USAID.
		There are many ways reform can be performed.
		And many administrations, and as I heard here today, Congresses have acknowledged this, yet we did not act.
		The Trump administration acted, and there's a lot of angst and concerns about who has authority, how is it going to be done.
		Those debates will go on as long as people want to debate, criticize, and complain.
		President Trump and Secretary Rubio stated the objectives of international aid very clearly moving forward.
		Does it make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous?
		It'll serve the nation, our security, and economy, as well as developing nations and our allies to get new reforms in place as soon as possible.
		Not all aid is bad, nor is it all good.
		We should focus on those programs that are good and make them better and more effective.
		Programs that were misused and not aligned with the administration should be eliminated.
		Congress should look to support programs that have a proven track record of success, and there are many examples to look at, and I'll be happy to discuss those.
		Moving forward, I would recommend the Trump administration place aid into two categories.
		First, the hard infrastructure projects like road, water, energy, transportation.
		These are the projects that are necessary to build an economy in the recipient country so we can wean them off of aid.
		The U.S. government has instruments like the DFC, MCC, tasked with the heavy lifting in initial phases of a project by providing risk insurance, technical assistance, and expertise, and brings in outside investors and other nations' DFIs.
		Second, the humanitarian side of assistance via a repurposed U.S. aid-type entity working synergistically with the DFC and other USG agencies.
		Feed the Future, African Growth, and Opportunity Act are effective health and food security programs when implemented properly and generate much soft power goodwill.
		Unfortunately, if mismanaged, we lose credibility, money, and drive the affected nations to our adversaries.
		By pausing U.S. international assistance, a vacuum is created.
		China, Russia, or other are already moving in to fill those voids.
		The U.S. must quickly bring back the authorization, funding, and a knowledgeable workforce to implement those programs that align with the administration's goal.
		Does it make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous?
		One last point.
		By not being effectively present can be arguably worse than pausing a program.
		And all you have to do is look at South and Central America and look at how much we've ceded to China and their influence from Russia, China, and Iran.
		That has to be dealt with immediately.
		That's a national security threat.
		Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I yield back my time and look forward to your questions.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Mr. Yoho.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		I now recognize Mr. Nazios for your opening statement.
unidentified		Thank you very much.
		I speak for myself today.
		I speak for myself today.
		I've been involved in humanitarian work and developed work.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Let's try that microphone one more time, maybe pull it a little closer.
unidentified		Okay, how's that?
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Much better.
unidentified		Okay.
		I speak for myself today.
		I don't represent anyone.
		And I've been doing this work since 1989 when I joined the Bush administration, the first Bush administration, as the director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance when the World Order was collapsing.
		And our little office, along with the Food for Peace office, saved tens of millions of lives around the world, which they continued to do through the BHA Bureau, which is now much larger than it was when I was there.
		If you're upset about getting off course, so am I.
		But let's course correct, not course destroy.
		When I took over AID as the administrator in Bush 43, W's administration, in early 2001, I ordered my deputy to begin reviewing every single project, every single program in AID, line by line, and we eliminated 80 programs over a month.
		And we moved that cash back into the program because there was a cassava mosaic that was destroying the cassava prof in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Eastern Congo.
		There was a risk of a famine.
		And we got cuttings in, and we stopped the pandemic, the disease pandemic for the cassava.
		My point is, I eliminated a lot of philosophically offensive programs that a conservative administration would not tolerate.
		And when the Democrats took over, they moved the agency to the left.
		I moved it to the right.
		The Obama people actually said I was very right-wing.
		I was the most right-wing administrator in the history of the agency.
		And yet, the career people followed what I wanted to do in the agency.
		We put heavy emphasis on economic growth.
		Some of the things you've criticized, sir, with all due respect, are economic growth programs that have been highly successful.
		10% of the workforce in Egypt is from tourism.
		AID has properly invested $100 million over the years, and it's massively increased the number of jobs in Egypt.
		They are our ally.
		Don't we want people working instead of being unemployed?
		It is 12% of the GDP of Egypt, tourism.
		We call it development tourism.
		We do it in Lebanon.
		We do it in Tunisia.
		We've done it in Kosovo and in Bosnia.
		We've done it in Morocco.
		We do it all over the world.
		It brings in revenue and employs people.
		It's an economic growth project.
		I believe in economic growth.
		I believe in the private sector.
		I believe in free markets.
		That's what AID does.
		The notion that AID is some kind of a Marxist institution is absolutely ridiculous, okay?
		I know the career officers.
		I work with them.
		There is a career track called the private sector officers.
		And what do they do?
		They work with the business community.
		I started a program which the Democrats continued called the Global Development Alliance.
		We started it very early on, 2001.
		What it does is it matches AID money with corporate money to supply their supply chains.
		We did this, we do this all over the world.
		We're working with hundreds of American corporations.
		We've raised $60 billion in private sector funding with the American business community to increase jobs all over the world.
		We've been doing this for 24 years, very successfully.
		The Europeans and the Canadians and the Australians have taken our lead in this and tried to replicate these public-private alliances.
		25% of the money in those GDAs is U.S. government money.
		75% is private money.
		We invest together.
		We don't give them any money.
		They don't give us any money.
		We design the project.
		We co-invest and then we manage it.
		The notion that AID is irresponsible in terms of its oversight is utter nonsense.
		I wrote an essay 12 years ago called The Clash of the Counterbureaucracy and Development.
		It was published.
		It's the most cited thing I've written in the scholarly literature.
		And it was based on my frustration with the level over and over and over again of oversight.
		The Inspector General, the Special Inspector General.
		Why do we need two inspector generals in Afghanistan and in Iraq?
	Then we have the GAO, we have the OMB, we have the Congressional Oversights Committee.
	Every line of what AID does is overseen by seven different levels of oversight.
	You know why money disappears?
	I'll tell you why.
	Where do we work?
	Where do we work?
	Christian NGOs are now delivering food in Sudan in a famine.
	There will be two million people dead by the end of this year.
	Those are the projections.
	There is no government in Sudan.
	There's no police in Sudan.
	There are no courts.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for your opening remarks this morning.
		And I now recognize Chairman Emeritus, Ranking Member Meeks, for his five minutes of questioning.
		Chairman McCall, I'm sorry, Chairman Emeritus McCall, for his five minutes of questioning.
unidentified		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
		When I was chairman of this committee, I got congressional notifications of spending programs from U.S.AID and State Department.
		And I put holds on those programs, many listed by the chairman.
		Instead of working with me, the administration, the prior Biden administration, decided to blow through those holds, bucking a long-standing tradition.
michael mccaul ▲ ● ▼		And I want to go through some of those I put on hold.
unidentified		$1.5 million to promote LGBTQ causes for immigrants in Latin America, allowing them to litigate against foreign governments, primarily Catholic nations.
		I don't know how that advances the U.S. interests abroad.
		And as a Catholic myself, I find that very offensive.
		We've also heard about the $15 million for condoms and contraceptives to Afghanistan, a country under Sharia law, $15 million.
		What did USAID do?
		They blew through my holds in complete and utter disregard of this committee's oversight responsibilities.
		I also uncovered the department had spent $500,000 to advance atheism in Nepal.
		Atheism in a country where Tibetan Buddhists is a predominant religion.
		What does that have to do with advancing U.S. interest abroad?
		The humanist international group that they gave money to, the 500,000, the CEO called the Catholic Church an institution you should be ashamed to be involved with our taxpayer dollars to condemn the Catholic Church.
		Again, as a Catholic, I find that extremely offensive.
		And then the one we've heard so much about: $20,000 for drag shows and drag workshops in Ecuador.
		Mr. Chairman, I've seen the video you've sent out.
		It is utterly disgusting to the American taxpayer that we are funding that kind of behavior.
		All these programs gave USAID a black eye.
		And that's unfortunate.
		Because you go back to the Marshall Plan, really the genesis for thinking about USAID.
		The Marshall Plan was one of the most successful programs we endeavored in after World War II to make sure a Hitler never rose from the ashes again.
		The Food for Peace program, sir, that you discussed, the American farmer benefits from this.
michael mccaul ▲ ● ▼		It's been extremely successful.
unidentified		Why was USAID created in the first place in 1961?
		It was to counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
		I believe it still has a legitimate purpose to counter the rising threat of China and Belt and Road and our other foreign adversaries.
		It also has the ability to counter terrorism.
		Lindsey Graham and I passed the Global Fragility Act, state, DOD, USAID all working together to stabilize, destabilize nations, which breed terrorism.
		PEPFAR, one of the most successful global health programs ever developed under President Bush.
		Yet all of this is called into question because of the irresponsibility of the Biden administration's woke agenda and policies.
		Mr. Gello, we've been friends.
michael mccaul ▲ ● ▼		We worked together, colleagues.
michael mccaul ▲ ● ▼		Your greatest legacy is the BILD Act, and we need to reinforce that policy as well.
unidentified		But when you look at the core mission, all these programs need to go and they will be gone.
		But as we look at program by program and strip down to the core mission, do you still believe that this is a worthwhile endeavor, the core mission of USAID?
		I do.
		I think what you see over a period of time is a mission creep.
		You know, these programs were designed with purity of purpose.
		This is what they're supposed to do.
		And when you get mission creep, you get these things that we're seeing, and they're indefensible, some of the programs that you guys mentioned.
		And that loses trust, like you said.
		And in business, what I've learned, and I think everybody can agree with this, people like to do business with people they know, they like, and they trust.
		If that's true with us on a business setting, it's the same in nations.
		If other nations know us, they like us, and they trust us, they're going to do business with us.
		And we've heard this over and over again.
		You know, it's been brought up by other leaders that.
		And can I just ask my times?
		Sure.
		Is it in our national security interest to maintain the core mission?
		And I would argue under the State Department for proper supervision.
		Yes, it is.
		And if we don't do that, we cede that leadership to other people.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		I now recognize Ranking Member Meeks for five minutes.
unidentified		Thank you.
unidentified		And I, too, am a chairman emeritus of this committee.
gregory meeks ▲ ● ▼		And I can recall where President Trump, when he was the president, blew past some of my things that I wanted to hold.
		In fact, he's blown past some already in this term.
		So that's just the will of what presidents do at times in that regard.
		But in this instance, 93 missions, everyone, has been closed.
		Everyone.
		That's not trying to fix something.
		That's destroying something.
		But let me just stop there because one of the reasons why I ask Mr. Nacios to testimony here, because he is a lifelong Republican, and he understands the insides and the outsides of running USAID.
		More so than anybody, no disrespect to anybody that's on this panel.
unidentified		He's the one that has done it.
gregory meeks ▲ ● ▼		And I will admit, we don't agree on certain things.
		Democrats and Republicans don't agree.
		Some things that Republicans do that I believe is full of waste, destructive, but if they win the elections, they have a choice to try to move it in that direction.
		When Democrats win, what we stand for, we move in our direction.
		That's part of having a free, democratic society.
		We're not Russia.
		So I want to put the politics aside for this discussion and ask Mr. Nacios, can you explain to the committee why you believe foreign assistance and the work of USAID as you've done so is so essential and you feel so passionately enough about it that you did respond because I've seen administrators,
		Democrats and Republicans alike, who have worked at USAID alike come out against closing USAID.
		Can you tell us that today?
unidentified		Well, let me tell you two stories.
		One story is my last month at AID.
		No one knew except my wife I was going to leave and teach at Georgetown.
		And this was December of 2005.
		And I always would get a briefing from the Director of Counterterrorism at the CIA.
		And he came in to see me and he said, Mr. Natsios, the chatter is you're coming and they're going to attempt to assassinate you.
		I said, who?
		He said, well, obviously the Taliban.
		He said, why are they going to assassinate me?
		Because you're the head of AID.
		They can't deal with AID.
		They can deal with the military.
		They just shoot each other.
		But they can't build health clinics.
		We built 400 health clinics.
		We got the child mortality rates and the maternal mortality rates down by a third.
		It took seven years to do that, but we did it very successfully.
		And we opened schools.
		We published 90 million textbooks in the schools to get the kids back in school.
		And the Taliban can't deal with that.
		They're going to try, and we advise you not to go.
		I said, well, let me think about that.
		But if you do go, announce you've arrived as you're stepping on the plane to leave.
		I said, what?
		He said, announce your, when you're stepping on the plane to leave, announce you've arrived.
		In other words, they won't know you're there.
		So I went.
		I decided to go, and nothing happened.
		And I did what he suggested.
		But what I found out was from talking to the mullahs in the village, the religious leaders who were pro-democracy and pro-America, that the Taliban disregarded the greatest enemy of the Taliban was USAID.
		You know in Kosovo, they named their kids USAID?
		They actually, the Albanians are Muslims in Kosovo, and they made it into a Muslim name, USAID.
		If you go to the refugee camps and displaced camps around the world, U.S.AID is the image of the United States.
		We used to bring 20,000 students to the United States to get their advanced degrees during the Cold War.
		You know what the Chinese, you know what we're doing now, 900 scholarships.
		We stopped doing it.
		The Chinese, the Chinese, are spending huge amounts of money to bring 40,000 people from the developing world to get their degrees in China.
		We should be investing in that.
		We're not.
		And I think we're falling behind and we're focused on the wrong things.
		The amount of DEI stuff, I started going through the RFAs.
		It's a small percentage.
		It is not accurate to say that this is, and some of these things that have been shown, those are not AID projects.
		Those are State Department programs.
		Why are you blaming AID for what the State Department did?
		The F office in state controls all this stuff.
		Now, let me tell you a second story.
		After the Aceh tsunami, we did a huge response.
		Aceh is a part of Indonesia, which had a Muslim insurgency for many years against the central government.
		We did a huge response.
		We put the aid logo on everything.
		The mission director got carried away, 50,000 stickers, U.S. aid from the American people.
		Before the Aceh tsunami, bin Laden had a 57% approval rating in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world in a democracy.
		After it, he collapsed from 57% to 27%.
		We had a 26% approval rating.
		We went from 26% to 63%.
		Now you say, Americans like to be liked.
		We all like to be liked.
		But what difference does it make?
		President Uduono, the president of the country, said, I like President Bush.
		I like the United States, but it's very hard to work with you because you're so unpopular.
		Not after the Aceh tsunami.
		The newspapers in Indonesia said, where is bin Laden?
		When we need him.
	The Americans here we really don't like, and now we realize who our real friends are.
	Thank you.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for answering our questions today, sir.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		We appreciate it.
unidentified		We agree.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		A lot of waste, like $10 million through USADAID.
		Everything I listed was USAID.
		$10 million for circumcision in Mozambique.
		There's another example for you.
		I now recognize Mr. Smith from New Jersey.
chris smith ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
		Upon assuming office, President Biden repealed President Ronald Reagan's Mexico City policy, expanded by President Donald Trump in 2017.
		But the Biden administration didn't stop there.
		They initiated a new radical vision that integrated aggressive abortion on demand into PEPFAR programming, called it Reimagining PEPFAR, that included explicit guidance directing recipients, and this is billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funds to use their leverage to enact pro-abortion laws and policies in PEPFAR countries.
		Biden hijacked PEPFAR and he shattered, I mean, I did the reauthorization of PEPFAR for five years during the Trump administration, the first one.
		I'm all for it.
		In this place here and on the floor of the House and all over Africa as I traveled, all for it.
		But then it was hijacked.
		In a strong rebuke, and Mr. Max had mentioned this earlier, 131 African lawmakers and religious leaders said that the PEPFAR funding is supporting abortion and they admonished us to say the NGOs that we finance are hijacking their ideals by pushing it so aggressively in Africa.
		Mr. Nazi, as you testified today, and I read your written statement, that USAID needs to be refashioned and you said that, quote, you believe it is bad policy to transfer domestic culture wars into politics to the developing world.
		Do you believe that the Biden administration was wrong to integrate abortion on demand into global health?
		Because they did it across the board, USAID, and of course, PEPFAR, much of that money is deployed through USAID.
		When you did say that efforts to protect the weakest and most vulnerable from extermination, I do believe that's trivialized when you somehow bottom line it and say it's a culture war.
		We believe in defending unborn children and their mothers from the violence of abortion.
		It's not a culture war.
		It is a fact when they're in these countries pushing it that unfortunately children will die.
		I, in like-minded pro-life advocates in Congress and around the world, seek to protect unborn baby girls and boys from violence of abortion, including dismemberment, decapitation, and of course the abortion pills, which are now being pushed all over the world, including the United States.
		How do they work?
		They starve the baby to death.
		That's how it works.
		So I'm all for global, we did two bipartisan.
unidentified		I was the prime sponsor of it, Global Food Security Acts.
chris smith ▲ ● ▼		I'm all for mitigating global hunger.
		But when you turn around and say to an entire segment of humanity, unborn children, we're going to starve you to death through these abortion pills, to me that's unconscionable.
		So do you agree that pro-abortion NGOs should continue to be empowered and subsidized with billions of dollars each year by the American taxpayer to promote abortion with the goal of changing pro-life laws in these nations?
unidentified		And I would ask all three of our witnesses.
		Congressman, you can check my voting record in Massachusetts.
		I had 100%, and in Massachusetts, this is in Massachusetts, I had 100% pro-life voting record for 12 years in the House.
		So my position is very clear, and I took a lot of heat from the feminist groups in Massachusetts.
		My views have not changed.
		I called you once because we found them doing vaginal scraping in Bangladesh in a remote village.
		And the mission director called me immediately.
		He said, we discovered this.
		We put a stop to it, Andrew, because if you do that and the woman is pregnant, the child dies, okay?
		And you're supposed to check before you do it.
		They weren't trained properly.
		They weren't doing it maliciously.
		They just didn't understand because they weren't trained properly.
		We fixed it very quietly.
		I called you up and told you what happened.
		We were being transparent about it.
		Other than that, that's the only violation we had in the five years that I was the administrator.
		The career people will do what they're told to do.
		I am appalled at what you're telling me that they have done.
		And by dragging AID into these culture wars, the Biden administration has undermined the need for bipartisan support for AID.
		We cannot tolerate in an agency with programs all over the world, a war between parties, which I'm seeing right now.
		In my view, it's a failure.
		All of the things I did at aid, I tried to do it in a way that would not alienate the Democratic Party when I left.
		If you look before they took apart the agency, everything I created is still there, was still there.
		They left it in place.
		Thank you.
chris smith ▲ ● ▼		I'm almost out of time, the other two, to say which witnesses.
chris smith ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Congressman, everything that we did during the first Trump administration, and I had these senior positions, we worked very hard to make sure that everything that we did had bipartisan support.
		What I've seen with the last administration is actually breaking the law because you're not supposed to, by law, you're not supposed to.
		And I think the PEPFAR coordinator has stressed that point.
		But when you fund International Planned Parenthood, when you fund UN agencies that openly promote it, and when the Africans themselves tell you it's happening, then the law is being broken.
		I hope that the second Trump administration pursues the pro-life policies that it had in the first one, but also to include humanitarian assistance.
		Thank you.
		When we set these policies forward, it's going to behoove all of us, and this is hard to do, these policies should be what's best for America.
		If it's best for America, it's going to be best for the rest of the world.
		And those policies are based on our beliefs as a nation.
		If we're a Christian nation, as we always talk about, that's the right thing to do.
		And I think we need to stay that way.
		And the hard part is, with us in this body, we have to keep the checks on that.
		If not, it goes away.
		I yield back.
chris smith ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
		And I'm glad to hear the conversation about university spending as well, because there's a lot of that within USAID also.
		$42 million for Johns Hopkins to research and drive social behavior and $250,000 for FIU for DEI training, and $244,000 for Stanford to do leadership training, not life-saving programs.
		And I recognize Mr. Sherman from California.
unidentified		Foreign aid is a good thing.
		Americans think that we spend 25 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid and want it reduced to 10 percent.
		But the fact is it's way less than 1 percent.
		It helps us challenge China and the world.
		It reduces not only hunger but migration to our borders.
		And it helps us fight communicable diseases over there before they mutate and come here.
		And that's why Ronald Reagan recognized the importance of foreign aid.
		Mr. Chairman, my fear, because I've been here for a long time, when I got here, it wasn't just Democrats against Republicans.
		It was the legislative branch against the executive branch.
		And we need to play that role.
		And as the ranking member points out, we need to have government witnesses here so we can talk about the future rather than just be a cheering squad for the executive branch.
		But I want to bring to your attention, Mr. Chairman, an action taken by the State Department today that was too woke for Sherman.
		They announced that they're going to spend $400 million on zero greenhouse gas emitting armored cars.
		That's right, electric armored cars, $400 million to replace perfectly good gas-driven armored cars.
		They said they were going to be Tesla cybertruck armored cars.
		This administration will get too woke for Sherman if it helps the shareholders of the Tesla automobile.
		There have been a number of falsehoods stated.
brad sherman ▲ ● ▼		The biggest one is the $50 million for Conda Gaza condoms.
unidentified		Musk admitted that it was just completely false.
		He apologized.
		So he made a Doge made a mistake.
		Are we going to terminate Doge?
		Well, I'd like to, but we're going to terminate Doge because it made one mistake?
		No.
		You identify mistakes that are a lot less than $50 million.
		People want to terminate USAID.
		Musk statement he should be apologizing for and publicizing because the truth has a tough time catching up with the falsehood.
		But let's go through a few others.
		We're told that there's $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt.
		Mr. Nacios, you would demonstrate how that's a good program.
		We should give credit to Donald Trump for that program.
		He started it under his first administration.
brad sherman ▲ ● ▼		Now it's being attacked.
unidentified		We're told that circumcision is terrible.
		It's a very cheap operation.
		It's only done voluntarily.
		It's been done by Democratic and Republican administrations, including Trump.
		Why?
		Because it's a 60% reduction in the risk of female-to-male transmission of HIV.
		We were told that USAID was spending $80 million on subscriptions to Politico.
		No, the entire executive branch was doing that.
		But you know who else spends money on Politico?
		Republicans in Congress who spent $800,000 of their office budget on Politico.
		And Mr. Chairman, you didn't spend any money on Politico like me.
		You spent your money on Bloomberg.
		As do I. Of course, Michael Waltz spent his money, over $8,000 on Politico just for his own office.
		The list goes on and on.
		But we are told that there's waivers for all this.
		Well, PEPFAR has been allowed to work, but they have no access to funds.
		But what doesn't get a waiver is democracy programs, and we need democracy in Iran.
		Education programs and economic development.
		So it's okay under Trump to give a hungry man a fish, but it's illegal to spend a dollar to teach him to fish or to tell him how to get a fishing pole.
		And under that, we'll be feeding hungry Egyptians forever because they won't have the tourism so that they can buy their food on the world market.
		We need education.
		We need democracy.
		We need economic development.
		Finally, there's a sad incidence.
		71-year-old Pei Khao Lau.
		She was able to survive and flee from Myanmar to Thailand.
		She was in a camp with over 10,000 people.
		They cut off the money and they cut off our oxygen and she died.
		And no future waiver is going to bring her back to life.
		Mr. Chairman, I ask that this committee take a minute of silence to remember Pei Cao Lau.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		The gentleman's time is...
		Gentleman's time has expired.
		And I would also point out that PEPFAR care and treatment, HIV prevention, other PEPFAR programs have been reauthorized for $500 million and other appropriations as well, just in case you were not aware.
		We now recognize Mr. Wilson.
		Mr. Carolina.
		Mr. Wilson is recognized.
unidentified		Thank you very much, Chairman Brian Maston.
unidentified		Thank you for your leadership on this very important hearing.
joe wilson ▲ ● ▼		In the past, I have supported the very inspiring messages and missions of American outreach.
unidentified		I have, though, sounded the alarm for abuse and wasteful spending in aid programs, sadly, for years.
joe wilson ▲ ● ▼		We have utterly seen aid diverted to dictators such as Assad of Syria and oppressing the very people it was meant to help.
		The Biden administration insanely provided and funded woke deranged depravity in Syria instead of trying to help the people, and the UN delivered aid through the regime itself to the people as they were being slaughtered by Baser al-Ashad.
		Legitimate aid was diverted from the needed earthquake recovery that occurred there in Syria.
		Fortunately, Assad is now removed by the people of Syria, and he is in hiding, of course, in the appropriate location, Moscow, with war criminal Putin.
		Another example, Mr. Primerak, is the tragic example of dictator diversion, and that is in Tunisia.
		Once a shining success of the Arab Spring and partner in North America, it has now been turned into a full-blown dictatorship by QA Saeed.
		While Millennium Challenge Corporation rightfully suspended aid, USAID sent $30 million to cover unclear programs, while their dictator has corrupted the economy, destroying jobs.
		What can be done to stop prompting dictators and also aid being diverted, as you correctly identified, even to terrorists themselves?
		Mr. Primarak?
unidentified		Yes, sir.
		I am not familiar with the situation in Tunisia, but this happens a lot.
		I think there is a lot of goodwill in these programs.
		There are a lot of good programs overall.
		But the problem is that very often these things just go on year after year after year, and though there are no changes, we are actually propping up bad regimes and socialism.
		I was in Mozambique in October for the elections there.
		We have a Marxist-Leninist regime.
		They stole the election.
		We are spending a billion dollars, half a billion to a billion dollars a year.
		And then what happens?
		There is no reform.
		We are supporting socialism.
		And the government, just two months before we came there, provided their port in order to allow the Chinese Navy to project their power into the Western Indian Ocean.
		So there has to be a much better affinity between what we do on the development aid side and the diplomacy, where we put our ambassadors on the hook to make sure these things don't happen.
		Thank you.
joe wilson ▲ ● ▼		And indeed, we have seen in the Republic of Georgia the corrupted election of October, where the legitimate President Salome Zoritzfatvili has been replaced by Georgian Dream, which, as you identify, ports.
		Indeed, the Chinese Communist Party has taken over the port there in Georgia on the Black Sea.
		And simultaneously, the Georgian Dream dictatorship in Tbilisi has reached out to work closely with Tehran at the same time as Tehran has sent assassins to murder Donald Trump.
		With that in mind, thank goodness we have good people like our congressional alumnus, Ted Yoho, here.
		And so, Ted, delivery mechanisms for aid have been co-opted by enemies of the United States running the U.N. Fortunately, President Trump has supported Elise Defanik as the U.N. ambassador in the tradition of Ambassador Nikki Haley, who will stand firm for America first.
		Many of the nonprofits that are doing the bidding of dictators are being supported.
		What can we do to ensure that indeed these agencies are working for the people we're trying to help and not prop up dictators or support terrorists?
unidentified		I think the biggest thing is just oversight, and we need to follow up on the oversight.
		We hear every year how many erroneous spending programs there are, how money is being wasted.
		We hear those reports, but yet when I was in Congress, I didn't see us acting.
		It was hard to get everybody to act.
		And that's where I go back to the purity of purpose and what is the mission.
		We have to stay within those guardrails, and we need to make sure, well, the body of Congress needs to make sure that they stay that way.
		And it's a tough thing.
		If it was a static world, it would be easy, but it's a tough world.
joe wilson ▲ ● ▼		And also in the best Florida tradition, our Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has announced just last week a great letter to Chairman Mast about how they would be stepping in to identify programs and promote those that promote the people legitimately in the world who need it.
joe wilson ▲ ● ▼		I yield back.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Representative Wilson.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Now recognize Representative Keating.
unidentified		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
		I welcome two of my former colleagues here, Ted Yoho, who is one of the more conservative people I served with here in Congress, and Andrew Natsios, who I think is the most conservative member I served with in the Massachusetts House as a Republican and Republican leader in Massachusetts as well.
		You know, I think that what we're seeing with our witnesses, witnesses like this, is the fact that up until three weeks ago, this issue, USAID, used to be the most bipartisan issue.
		And I've been on this committee now for 14 years plus.
		We used to agree with these things.
		We could find things wrong with it that we can correct.
		And the irony of all this is this.
		The Republicans are in charge of the White House, the House, and the Senate.
		They have the power to do this the right way.
		They have the power of oversight to look at all the things that are being pointed out.
		That's your responsibility if you don't like it, and you have the power to do it.
		You don't need this draconian executive directive to do it.
		It's causing chaos, not just here in this country, but around the world.
		It's not necessary.
		And it's a huge departure from everything I've seen occurring in the 14 years before this.
		Along those lines, I'd like to submit, Mr. Chairman, a letter to the Republican and Democratic leadership in the House and the Senate.
		And it's from almost 150 former administrative officials, Republicans and Democrats, those who served in the military and the State Department, and urging the rescission of the Trump executive orders aimed at freezing our foreign assistance and dismantling USAID.
		It deplores the undemocratic and unconstitutional dismantling of these agencies.
		I'd like to submit this with unanimous consent.
		And I'd also like to point out some other correspondence that occurred around this issue.
		The people that praised this action, where did they come from?
		I'll tell you where they came from.
		They came from our greatest critics, the greatest critics of democracy right now in the world.
		They came from the leaders of Russia and Hungary and Venezuela.
		They're praising this effort.
		That's who's for this effort.
		In fact, the Speaker of the Russian state, Duma, said that anyone who received funding from USAID should be made to publicly confess and repent on Red Square.
		That's who's praising this.
		That's who's happy with this.
		Putin's happy with this.
		This is so important now in Ukraine.
		One example, Putin's primary target in Ukraine is to destroy the electrical grid, to use that as an energy weapon of war against the Ukrainians in his illegal aggression.
		And what does USAI do?
		They're helping to train and give the resources so that the Ukrainians can repair these damaged electrical grids so they can keep the power on and fight Putin.
		Putin's happy with this.
		I mentioned the military leaders.
		General Mattis, who is also Secretary of Defense under Donald Trump, used to come to this committee time and time again and say, don't fully fund these programs like USID.
		And you know what?
		If you don't fund it, just buy me some more ammunition.
		The military in our country understand the importance of this program.
		I've had discussions for years, and I just recently had discussions with our special operations forces.
		Those people, I respect them beyond words.
		They are in the most dangerous parts of the world, in small numbers, a global footprint, working to know where our greatest threats are in the country.
		They're placed in positions hosting the most dangerous threats to our country, as are so many people working for USAID, risking their lives as well, trying to secure the safety of people, not just in the world, but in our own country, from terrorist threats that are metastasizing and pose increasing threats right here back at home.
		They told me of the importance of USAID.
		They told me how they work together on security issues, on intel issues, on understanding how they can use their ability to keep us safe and use it more effectively.
		And they particularly pointed out what a threat China is, and it'll become a greater threat in the absence of USAID.
		That's who's asking us not to make these draconian changes.
		And, you know, do it the right way.
		All those things you did, all the little small cuts.
		I won't say anything about circumcisions being a small cut.
		Listen, all these small cuts.
		You have the power to do it yourself.
joe wilson ▲ ● ▼		Do it.
unidentified		Do it the right way.
		Don't support this.
		I yield back.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts.
		We will write $10 million of foreskin out of the budget.
		I now recognize Representative Perry.
scott perry ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
		USAID was created through executive order in 1961 by President Kennedy, long having lost and strayed from its mission, lost its direction.
		Even the Clinton administration tried unsuccessfully to reform it.
		And we spend, I don't know, somewhere between $40 and $50 billion annually on this organization.
		And with the things that you hear, well, many of us, probably most of us in the room, agree with projecting America's power for the good of all the world around the globe.
		Quite honestly, if our enemies were asked to design a foreign aid program that would actively undermine the United States of America at maximum cost to the taxpayer, they would be hard pressed to create a scheme more effective than USAID.
		That's shocking to say, but I just it's look, let's just go to a couple things here.
		We left Afghanistan and I'll just characterize it as left in August of 2021, August of 2021.
		So the Taliban's in charge.
		Taliban threatens the lives of the NGO personnel distributing USAID.
		They claim credit for USAID distribution.
		They interfere with the distribution of USAID aid.
		They tax the beneficiary of the aid.
		They tax the delivery service.
		They steal the food commodities.
		They divert the funds.
		They extort citizens for protection for USAID aid.
		They create sham procurement schemes, and they threaten the lives of those who oppose those schemes.
		Now, that all occurred before August of 2021, when we were there, when we were there.
		Now, you know, you don't have to be a rocket science.
		You can just read the Taliban is classified.
		And if you don't know, the Taliban's in charge of Afghanistan.
		They're classified as a specially designated global terrorist organization by OFAC.
		So post-2021, so this is last year, 2024, we spent $697 million of the taxpayers' dollars in Afghanistan, including $534,719,000 in change from USAID and Afghanistan.
		I don't know what we think we're going to change in Afghanistan.
		We lost 22,000, lost or wounded 22,500 Americans in Afghanistan over the course of our term there in the war, spending over $2 trillion.
		We're just going to keep on spending because somehow we think it's going to get better.
		And if you're wondering who's in charge of Afghanistan getting the money, and that money I just mentioned, the $697 million is on top of, and is in addition to the weekly to every 10-day shipments in cash of $40 to $80 million.
		Afghanistan is ruled by folks named Sarah Yudin Haqqani.
		The Haqqani network mean anything to anybody in the room?
		How about Abdullah bin Laden, who gets some of that money?
		Does that name ring a bell to anybody in the room?
		Because your money, your money, $697 million annually, plus the shipments of cash funds madrasas, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, ISIS Khorazan, terrorist training camps, that's what it's funding.
		If you think that the program under Operation Enduring Sentinel entitled Women's Scholarship Endowment, which receives $60 million annually, or the Young Women Lead, which gets about $5 million annually, is going to women, who, by the way, if you read the Inspector General's report, is telling you that the Taliban does not allow women to speak in public.
		Yet somehow you're believing, and American people are supposed to believe, that this money is going for the betterment of the women in Afghanistan.
		It is not.
		You are funding terrorism, and it's coming through USAID.
		And it's not just Afghanistan, because Pakistan's right next door.
		USAID spent $840 million in the last year, last 20 years on Pakistan's education-related program.
		It includes $136 million to build 120 schools of which there is zero evidence that any of them were built.
		Why would there be any evidence?
		The Inspector General can't get in to see them.
		But you know what?
		doubled down and spent $20 million from USAID to create educational television programs for children unable to attend the physical school.
		Yeah, they can't attend it because it doesn't exist.
		You paid for it.
		Somebody else got the money.
		You are paying for terrorism.
		This has got to end.
		I yield, Mr. Chairman.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Mr. Perry.
unidentified		In addition, we don't even have an embassy in Afghanistan.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Chair now recognizes the representative from California, Mr. Barra.
unidentified		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
		I want to start off by, I know a lot of USAID workers, former workers, alumni are watching this hearing.
		I want to thank them for their work.
		They're patriotic Americans.
		They're out there.
		They're doing God's work, helping save lives and everything else.
		And I'm sorry that you guys are caught up in this.
		So I want to appreciate this on behalf of the United States of America.
		You guys are patriotic Americans.
		I've visited with a lot of these folks.
		I travel a lot, gone into refugee camps, and seen what they do in terms of life-saving stuff.
		And again, it's super important work that they do.
		It represents the best of American values.
		And it is really sad to see these folks get thrown under the bus.
		When we talk about stronger, better, more prosperous, I think we're all in favor of that.
		We're all in favor of working together.
		Mr. Chairman, Congressman Yoho is my classmate, and he may have been more conservative than you when he got to Congress.
		Ted, you and I traveled, I think on your first former, your first trip abroad.
		We went out and saw some of these USAID projects.
		I watched you over time become the champion of the BILLDAC, a champion of reforms, and we've continued to stay in touch.
		Now, what saddens me about this whole approach, I'm not going to talk about Elon Musk.
		I'm not surprised by how he's approaching things, but this isn't Twitter.
		I don't want a 21-year-old tech bro going through deciding which programs should continue and not continue.
		Mr. Chairman, I want us to work and do that work.
		We can go line by line, or we could hire Mr. Yoho to go through line by line and say, hey, here's the programs that make sense.
		Here's the ones that don't.
		But that's our job.
		That's what we're supposed to be doing.
		That's our oversight.
		I don't want that 21-year-old tech bro, probably has never traveled anywhere, has no passport, doing our job.
		Let's do this work together.
		And I'm not here to defend every USAID program, but I do believe it serves a really important purpose for our values.
		You know, we've read Heritage Foundation reports.
		I worry about what's happening in the Pacific Islands.
		They put out a good report.
		We've met with them.
		We're seeding our influence there.
		We're already seeing China step in and take things over.
		We're watching it in Cambodia and Southeast Asia programs that are good programs like demining.
		China has stepped in.
		It's front page news.
		Let's not shut everything down.
		Let's make necessary reforms.
		Let's, Congressman Yeo said, let's focus on humanitarian aid.
		Let's focus on development.
		And let's look at the programs that do this.
		For the American people, the most successful development program in the history of the world was the Marshall Plan.
		That was us.
		That was the United States of America rebuilding Europe, creating stable democracies, preventing war, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
		That was us.
		We can do this, and we can do it better and smarter and not betray our values as Americans.
		But we should do this.
		This is Congress's job.
		It's not someone else's job.
		And I'm willing to work with you to figure out what programs make sense.
		Let's write a foreign aid authorization bill, but let's do it in a smart way.
		Let's get former administrators in here.
		Let's us do the work, Democrats and Republicans, to rebuild a better, stronger, more prosperous USAID.
		Congressman Yal, we're friends and we've stayed in touch over the years.
		I appreciate the BILLDAC.
		That was bipartisan and your leadership there.
		I am a little bit worried because I've heard President Trump talk about creating a sovereign wealth fund, perhaps making that DFC's mission.
		Will you actually talk about the difference between DFC and sovereign wealth fund?
		Yeah.
	What I see is the DFC was designed for a specific purpose when we put it together.
	We wanted to move countries from aid to trade.
	That was our big thing.
	And I won't go into why I came up with that.
	We were on a Codel over in the DRC.
	And if they want to create a sovereign wealth fund, I think they should do that separately.
	And I think there was an executive order, in fact, to do that, which is good because if you put it in the DFC, it starts clouding the mission.
	You know, are we going to do development?
	Are we going to do Build the Trust Fund or the Sovereign Wealth Fund?
	And you start clouding the mission and you get away from what I like to call purity of purpose.
	The DFC was for hardcore infrastructure projects that will bring in other investors in a region that needs those jobs and the opportunity so that we can wean them off foreign aid.
	You know, foreign aid by itself has not brought anybody out into prosperity.
	But working together to build that infrastructure, to create that structure there, that will.
	That brings in the opportunity outside dollars.
	And then we create friendships and allies around the world.
	Great trade.
	Mr. Chairman, I'm willing to work.
	Let's do the work here in Congress in this committee, and let's build a better, stronger, more prosperous.
	And I commend you guys for saying that.
	Could I just add something, if I could?
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Gentlemen, time has expired.
		I do thank the representative for wanting to work on the State Department reauthorization.
		Look forward to working with you on that.
		Representative from Tennessee, Mr. Burchett, is recognized.
unidentified		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
		I want to submit for the record an article of why condoms cannot always be trusted.
		It's dated March 19, 1993.
		And it goes on to say that USAID distributed around 800 million condoms last year.
		And this was in 93.
		The argument that condoms are not being distributed obviously has some holes in it, Mr. Chairman.
tim burchett ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Primerick, can you provide an example of USAID programs, USAID program that was harmful to the U.S. foreign interests?
unidentified		You.
		I probably didn't say your name right.
		No, that's okay, Congressman.
		Thank you.
		Jonathan Jackson still doesn't get Burchett right, so we're good.
		Now, I've heard a lot about the issue of China, and I agree that it's very important to counter China, but the last four years went in the opposite direction.
		The strong counter-China infrastructure that we had developed over at USAID was simply dismantled by the next administration.
		I can't think of anything that's harmed the developing world than the climate agenda.
		It has pushed all of these countries, especially in Africa, to go green.
		Solar, wind, EV, who produces all of those materials?
		It's China.
		And then on top of it, we tell them, no, you can't develop your own fossil fuel industry because it's anti-green.
		So what happens?
		They can't generate the revenues to create good jobs at home.
		They can't generate the revenues in order to finance their own health, education, and other needs.
		And it increases the price of energy, which does what to the poor?
		It hurts them.
		The climate agenda has done more in increasing poverty and increasing hunger than anything else.
		Of course, the resentment that's building up from around the world that's much more conservative than we are on these woke things, it's extremely, it's extremely damaging.
		And look, a friend of mine at work provided me this morning with something that's very, very telling.
		Of the 19 of the top 20 countries receiving aid from USAID are part of the Belt and Road initiative that China runs.
		I mean, this is showing that our efforts are not working.
		And I agree with Congressman Yoho and Administrator Nazios that the developing world, they want more trade, they want more investment.
		I don't care if you're speaking to government officials, business leaders, religious leaders.
		They don't want all of this other kind of aid where 50% of it is gone and we're violating their normalization.
		Let me get a couple more questions in to you, if that'd be all right.
		Did U.S.AID assist in illegal immigration on our southern border?
		I think that's something it's both state and aid that shared in that responsibility.
		PRM over at state, I think, is doing this.
		There was this whole thing about root causes and spending billions of dollars in Central America as if that would stem illegal immigration.
		But the problem with that argument is that these countries earn tens of billions of dollars of remittances.
		So the amount of aid that we're spending is such a tiny amount, it doesn't have any impact.
		If you want to stem illegal immigration, it's not foreign aid.
		It's closing the border.
		And we're seeing the results of it now.
		Did USAID fund foreign terrorist organizations such as the Taliban?
		You know, when I launched and led the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, we had an internal risk assessment tool, and I pushed it immediately into red because we were sending money in places where we didn't have an actual presence.
		In a place like Afghanistan, we're not there.
		All of the international NGOs that we worked through, they left.
		And the Afghans that had worked for us, they fled or were killed.
		So we have absolutely no idea what's happening with that money, but it's being spent.
		Before I left as the COO, I put in a very tough vetting requirement that anybody who touches the money must go through our databases to see whether or not these are terrorists.
		But the next administration just removed it.
		So I think we can safely conclude that we are.
		Those groups will hate us for free.
		Ted, does Congress authorize the spending for every individual USAID program?
		And that's to say, did Congress approve the $20,000 for the drag show in Ecuador or the $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia?
		No, they don't.
		It goes, again, those things happen without the oversight.
		And it's hard to do oversight when you have a big organization like that.
		And that's why, again, you have to have the purity of purpose.
		And we have to be diligent when I was in Congress to be the ones that say we're not spending this money.
		Thank you.
		But those two projects are State Department projects.
		They're not USAID projects.
		That is inaccurate, sir.
		I didn't, did I say that?
		I asked, I didn't say that, sir, but thank you for putting words in my mouth.
		I would like to submit this article for the record, Mr. Chairman.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		So ordered.
		Gentlemen's time is expired.
		Now, I'd add, they don't just happen whether we authorize or deauthorize.
		They happen because of bad people in U.S.AID or the State Department that put these forwards programs.
		You don't belong there if you're putting these programs forward, and their time at those agencies will come to an end.
		And now I recognize the representative from California, Ms. Jacobs.
unidentified		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
		First of all, a question for my colleagues.
		I know all of us probably remember Ebola from the 2014 outbreak that President Trump, a private citizen at the time, was particularly outspoken about and terrified of.
		For those of you who don't remember, Ebola is a disease that has about a 41% fatality rate, no vaccine, no treatment.
		It causes vomiting, muscle pain, and hemorrhagic bleeding.
		Pretty bad.
		I'd like all of my colleagues, please raise your hand if you would like Ebola in the United States.
		No one?
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		You say your question again.
unidentified		Would you like Ebola in the United States?
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		I'm glad the Trump administration approved Ebola response in the wave.
unidentified		On that point, I ask for unanimous consent to enter into the record a New York Times article.
unidentified		Life-saving aid remains halted worldwide despite Rubio's promise.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		So ordered, but it's not if you want to see the list.
unidentified		And on Tuesday, Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur empowered by President Trump to combat the agency, I'm quoting the article now, told reporters in the Oval Office that the administration had turned on funding for Ebola prevention and for HIV prevention.
		But in reality, again, quoting this article, the Ebola funding and virtually all of the HIV prevention funding remains frozen, according to USAID employees and several aid groups.
		And that is because the payment system called Phoenix that USAID relies on to disperse financial assistance has been inaccessible for weeks.
		So as you may know, Mr. Natsios, the outbreak of diseases, infectious diseases, is one of the big things that USAID helps to prevent, which is why I think we all should be so horrified that because of Elon Musk's illegal takeover of USAID, USAID is no longer able to screen travelers at airports leaving Uganda, where there is currently an Ebola outbreak that Americans have already been affected by.
		Mr. Natsios, you led USAID, correct?
		Do you think stopping the screening of travelers makes America more or less safe?
		It makes us less safe, but I would add that there is, over the last 30 years, we've built a system in 90 southern countries for monitoring all infectious diseases, and that's the early warning system.
		So if an outbreak of any disease takes place, we know about it.
		The countries where, like China, where COVID started, I certainly wouldn't advocate having an AID mission there, but the countries where there's an aid mission, the ministries of health have been trained and there's a comprehensive early warning system to protect us.
		That system is, in terms of AID support for it, has been shut down.
		That's right.
		I might also add.
		Sorry, I just want to reclaim my time because I have a few more questions, but I completely agree with you.
		So let's take my Republican colleagues at your word.
		You want to reduce waste fraud and abuse.
		I agree with that.
		You want to reform how USAID does its work.
		I agree with that too.
		In fact, I have bipartisan legislation to do that that I'm happy to work with you, Mr. Mast, on.
		But let's talk about what's actually happening.
		So, Mr. Natios, again, would you consider yourself liberal or woke in any way?
		No.
		Okay, great.
		Do you believe that USAID is a criminal agency plagued by waste fraud and abuse?
		No.
		And on February 4th, nearly the entire USAID workforce was notified that they were being placed on administrative leave.
		Mr. Natsios, would you say that removing the majority of the staff responsible for overseeing USAID's programs increases or decreases the risk of waste fraud and abuse?
		Well, it increases it because the oversight of AID offices are there for oversight.
		That's what they do.
		40% of the staff of AID are compliance officers.
		They spend all day trying to make sure these things don't happen.
		They do happen sometimes because of where we work.
		And the USAID Inspector General agreed with you as the ranking member entered into the record, stated that all of USAID's oversight controls are largely non-operational.
		But instead of addressing this problem, Trump actually fired the Inspector General, who released this report the very next day.
		Mr. Natsios, does firing USAID's Inspector General generally reduce or increase waste fraud and abuse?
		Well, Congresswoman, I'm trying to stay out of the vitriol here, but the Inspector General is there to investigate abuse.
		And let me tell you how it works.
		People think that they watch us and then they find this stuff and then they arrest us.
		That's not how it works.
		The 80% of the investigations done by aid are initiated by aid compliance officers who call the IG and say there's a problem.
		You need to come in here and fix it.
		And then they work with them.
		Just to clarify, not only is this freeze endangering Americans, but Trump and Musk's argument for stopping this assistance to reduce waste fraud and abuse is a complete lie because they are doing the opposite.
		That's because this is not about oversight.
		It's not about reform.
		It's about completely gutting foreign assistance itself.
		With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		I thank the gentlelady for her questions, and I would remind everybody that Ebola response has been restored: $250,000 through IOM, $1.5 million through UNICEF, another $250,000 IRFC and others.
		The list goes on.
		And we should be supporting the correct programs.
		Uganda was brought up, and I would say, as an example, there, there was a program, oh, $5.5 million for promoting LGBT acceptance in Uganda.
		That is not life-saving, and that's not combating Ebola.
		Gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Greene, is now recognized.
unidentified		Thank you, Chairman Mass, and I appreciate your leadership, and I look forward to working alongside you to bring needed reform to our diplomatic strategy.
		We certainly have a lot of work to do, and this hearing is just beginning.
		Accountability is coming.
		Thank you also to our witnesses today.
		The corruption going on behind USAID's doors has been a wake-up call for all Americans.
		As chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, I spent the last two years exposing the Biden administration's sabotage of our border and the policies that kept America safe.
		I saw firsthand their willful refusal to protect this country.
		Under the guise of foreign aid, USAID has been an unapologetic front for a far-left agenda.
		It has become self-evident there weren't a handful of foolish policies, but rather a coordinated strategy of radical, idiotic, and often anti-American priorities.
		Idiotic, you say?
		Millions to teach Moroccans how to make pottery?
		The Moroccans were making pottery before we were a country.
		This entire debate today and the crocodile tears from Democrats just goes to show what's wrong with this town.
		Not a single Democrat I've heard has expressed dismay at the many examples of crazy, wasteful spending.
		I don't understand the objection to a deep dive in how we spend our money, but perhaps it's the fact that over the last several weeks, a massive surge has occurred in the search for a criminal defense attorney.
		That probably says it all five times in this city, any other city in the nation.
		I'd like to remind the committee that President Kennedy unilaterally created USID through an executive order in 1961, yet the president, President Trump, orders a momentary pause after winning a mandate for reform, and Democrats cry, constitutional crisis.
		This is after four years of reckless spending and unrepentant lawlessness from the Biden administration.
		I want the American people to understand how this works in Washington.
		As long as you're spending other people's money, no one bats an eye.
		But the second you want to save taxpayer dollars, the swamp cries wolf, or in this case, unprecedented constitutional crisis.
		This breathless, fake outrage from the left is utterly insane.
		And you know what the American people, you know they can see right through it.
		The generosity of Americans and the blessing of giving aid to others has always been one of our most valuable tools for diplomacy.
		The American people have a proud history of championing aid to our fellow man, but lawless bureaucrats have poisoned that goodwill.
		Many USAID programs are wasteful and actively sabotage our diplomatic relationships by forcing woke ideology on our partners.
		Just look at PEPFAR, a beacon of hope in the fight against HIV AIDS, yet the Biden administration even weaponized this crucial program, jeopardizing lives and undermining our relationship with African nations.
		Under administrator powers, our message to Africa was explicit as it was heinous.
		Abort your babies and violate your religious convictions or we won't grant you life-saving aid.
		Let me be crystal clear to those who've been complicit in this betrayal.
		Firing those involved is just a start.
		We have a long way to go.
		And one last point.
		I want to correct the record on a couple of things.
		First, Elon Musk and the team that is working does not have access to personal data.
		They don't have access to your social security number.
		That is a lie.
		Elon Musk does have a security clearance.
		He has a top secret security clearance.
		By God, he makes the rockets for NASA.
		But the suggestion that he somehow can't be trusted to dig into how we're spending our money is nothing but a smokescreen to hide the corruption and the wasteful spending that has occurred there.
		And I am personally offended at the left's continued references to 19-year-olds and 21-year-olds in there doing work.
		There are 19-year-olds who have won the Medal of Honor defending this country.
		Just because you're 19 doesn't mean you're some child who can't be trusted.
		It is offensive.
		And if you're 19 years old out there, 20 years old, and you're serving this country, by God, your service matters.
		Keep serving.
		We thank you for that.
		It would appear that I'm out of time, Mr. Chairman.
		I yield.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Amen.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Representative Castro is now recognized.
unidentified		Thank you, Chairman.
		I would just say that if you can find us a 19-year-old Medal of Honor winner who'd love to serve in the U.S. government, we'd love to have him, rather than this 19-year-old who's a mystery man and got fired from his last job.
		As y'all hear a lot of angry, fire-breathing rhetoric coming from the other side, I want you to consider as Americans where we started the year.
		Our country, for all the complaints and all the anger, is still the most powerful, prosperous nation on earth, with the lowest unemployment rate in decades and a strong economy, where foreign aid represents about 1% of our total budget.
		And yet, Elon Musk and this administration's attempt to illegally shut down USAID and freeze ongoing foreign assistance programs has been met with support and applause from some of the world's worst authoritarians.
		Venezuelan Interior Minister and Nicolas Maduro's key lieutenant celebrated the Trump administration's actions in ending support to the Venezuelan opposition.
		In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega's sons said that, quote, Trump turned off the faucet for terrorists when he shuttered USAID funding.
		Belarusian leader Lukashenko applauded the administration's decision to cut funding for, quote, the fugitive opposition.
		The opposition that for years Republicans have said they support, they have now abandoned.
		President Trump has abandoned.
		He cut off TPS for Venezuelans and betrayed the people of South Florida and sent them back to a man he says is dangerous, yet sent Rick Rinnell to handshake with.
		After this administration's halted funding to Cambodia to remove unexploded bombs that the United States dropped on their country years ago, China offered to move in and replace U.S. funding.
		China has offered to go do the job that we are no longer doing.
		What do you think that does for American diplomacy?
		What do you think it does for our reputation around the world?
		What do those people think of us that we won't help them take away the bombs that we dropped years ago?
		Similar celebrations have come from leaders in Russia, Iran, Hungary, Cuba, and other countries as we've cut support to democracy activists in these countries, democracy activists.
		Republicans have been eager to accuse Democrats of, quote, abandoning our allies.
		The reality is that the Trump administration abandoned our allies everywhere, and it didn't even take a week.
		Donald Trump has abandoned those fighting for democracy in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and China.
		He's abandoned Taiwan, freezing security assistance to the island nation facing threats of invasion from China.
		Donald Trump abandoned our partners in Indonesia, Malaysia, Iraq, and other countries fighting terrorism with the support of USAID.
		He's abandoned the country of Jordan by freezing security assistance, abandoned millions of victims of HIV AIDS supported by PEPFAR, and abandoned those suffering from malaria and TB.
		Donald Trump has also abandoned American citizens, American farmers that feed the world, whose produce is rotting in ports and warehouses, and our USAID professionals and families that he stranded abroad.
		Make no mistake, these decisions will come back to haunt the United States of America.
		And not only in terms of diplomacy, not only in terms of how people think of us in faraway lands.
		Those diseases that we're no longer helping to cure, people will get sick not only in those countries, but in the United States.
		And I hope that just as folks are taking credit for what's going on now, that when those diseases hit the United States, that they will take full credit for that.
		I have a question of the panel.
		I want to ask, Mr. Natsios, whether you think these actions, and you are a USAID administrator, you saw the good and the bad and you had reform.
		I had a reform bill myself, which some Republicans joined me on last Congress.
		You think the totality of this is making us stronger in the world or weaker?
		I think that our aid program makes us stronger, and I think USAID, prior to all of the controversy, was achieving that, except for the woke program that has been introduced, which has alienated very conservative Christian societies in Africa.
		And Mr. Nancy, I want to interrupt you for just a second, because there was an example of funding to help LGBTQ communities in Uganda.
		In Uganda, the death penalty was proposed for gay people.
		Is that considered woke?
		Is that what they're using as an example of woke is helping gay people because they're under the threat of death by their own government?
		Any violence against any person is not acceptable.
		So I understand what you're saying.
		So you would be for that funding then?
		What I'm saying is that we're dealing with very conservative society, Muslim and Christian, and we need to respect not what you're talking about, because that happened, I think, in reaction to us, actually, because it wasn't there before.
		But let me just say that we give, AID gives, a billion dollars a year to Christian NGOs, Evangelical, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, my church, the Orthodox Church, and mainline Protestant, a billion dollars a year.
		All those programs are now frozen.
		They've laid off the staff, and I have to say, it's damaging the church's mission in the world.
		I think this whole shutdown is, and I might say, Mr. Chairman, just not to be partisan, just to tell you what's happening.
		I've met with the Christian groups.
		Even though they have waivers, the Phoenix system is not operating.
		Unless the Phoenix system can operate, they can't issue checks.
		No one is getting funded, even though the waiver has been granted.
		I'm not saying that in a partisan way.
		Please do something about it.
		It's having an effect in the field in a profound way.
		A lot of AIDS orphans are being taken care of by the church.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Gentlemen's time has expired.
unidentified		And the staff has been laying out.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		The gentleman's time has expired.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Representative from Kentucky, Mr. Barr is now recognized.
unidentified		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
		Appreciate the very important hearing exposing the jaw-dropping waste at the USIAD.
		And many U.S. aid foreign assistance grants are not only wasteful, but counterproductive to our diplomatic and foreign policy objectives.
		Just a few examples.
		$75,000 for a drag show workshop in Ecuador.
		$37 million for services for sex workers and their clients and transgender people in South Africa.
		$31 million for providing U.S. aid employees with resilience, wellness, and work-life balance counseling.
		$24 million to build green transportation alternatives in Georgia.
		A half a million dollars to help Indonesian coffee companies become more climate and gender friendly.
		$15 million to promote LGBT rights for individuals in Kenya.
		And $2 million to conduct sex change surgeries in Guatemala through a trans-led organization.
		My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are whining that President Trump has fired the inspector general of this agency.
		Thank goodness for President Trump for firing an inspector general for not exposing what Elon Musk has exposed with this waste.
		Are these programs what hardworking American taxpayers should be funding?
		But let me focus on Uganda because my colleague from Texas raised that issue, a country that has thousands of soldiers fighting for our counterterrorism interests against al-Shabaab in Somalia.
		And that country was severely punished by the Biden administration for signing its anti-homosexuality law into law in May of 2023.
		The Biden administration revoked Uganda's AGOA eligibility, enacted visa restrictions on Ugandan individuals, and pressured the World Bank to prohibit new public financing.
		Despite this, U.S. aid has provided a $600,000 grant to, quote, empower Uganda's LGBT community to push back against this legislation, and a $5.4 million grant to shift public perception and attitudes in Uganda towards LGBT acceptance and to train LGBT individuals on the skills needed to engage in the economy.
		Now, in Uganda, China is expected to finance the $5 billion East African crude oil pipeline directly because Western leaders and the World Bank are walking away from the project because the Biden administration's response to their own domestic legislation.
		Mr. Primerak, should taxpayer dollars go toward penalizing countries like Uganda for making their own internal domestic political decisions on social issues that one administration doesn't agree with, which in turn strengthens countries' relationships with our adversaries like the communists in China.
		Congressman, I've spoken to many officials from the region there, and they explained to me their shock when they would prepare for meetings with Secretary Blinken.
		They prepared about how we can work together to combat China, actually.
		But when they had the meeting, they were hit with the woke things about the climate, about the LGBT, and all these issues.
		They were utterly stunned that here they are, Africa, they know about the challenge and the great geostrategic fight that we have, ready to work with us, but we weren't ready to work with them.
		Well, look, I get it.
		The gentleman from Texas disagrees with the Ugandan people.
		I get it.
		The Biden administration disagreed with the Ugandan people, and Secretary Blinken and U.S.AID in the previous administration disagreed with the Ugandan people on this issue of homosexuality legislation.
		I get it.
		The question is not their opinion.
		The question is: what is the diplomatic job of the State Department and U.S.AID?
		Is it to lecture the Ugandans or is it to help us counter Belt and Road?
		Is the job of the State Department and USAID to advance American national security?
		That's the question.
		And what they did in that instance with Uganda is compromise American national security and empower our adversary.
		Representative Yoho, Ted, it's good to see you.
		Thank you for your amazing work and your authorship of the BILLD Act.
		You were instrumental in the passage of that bill and authorized U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.
		Can you see DFC playing a much more effective role in advancing our interests abroad and countering China's Belt and Road?
		Absolutely.
		And if you could, how can reforms like equity scoring and country eligibility changes help U.S. investments in countries like Panama?
		It's a big reform.
		I mean, that's the best tool we have to counter the BRI, the Belt Road Initiative.
		And the equity scoring is a must-fix.
		It's something that has to be because right now it limits what the DFC can do.
		And then raising the country of eligibility allows us to go into these countries strategically where we can counter the BRI where we can't go now.
		And this is something that we're going to talk about next month in the reauthorization.
		And I hope it's a bipartisan effort.
		And there's a lot of support.
		But if we don't do it, we're going to see that much more influence.
		And it goes to people that aren't friendly to the United States.
		Well, thanks for your leadership on that.
		And I agree with you.
		Move from aid to trade.
		To trade.
		And thank you to President Trump for his leadership on rooting out all of this waste and Frankly, activity that undermines our national security.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Votes have been called.
		We're going to go through one more round of questions and then recess until the conclusion of votes.
		So, Representative Sherpal-McCormick, you will be the last one to be recognized before we recess.
unidentified		Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ranking Member.
		And thank you, everybody, for being here.
		U.S.AID, along with the State Department, has been one of our strongest mechanisms to secure the region and national security and also build relationships throughout the entire world.
sheila cherfilus-mccormick ▲ ● ▼		In Haiti, we've seen huge support and huge, huge forward movement when it comes to USAID providing an option for many children who are either forced to join the gangs or face starvation and their families dying.
unidentified		But USAID has stepped in and actually gave them an option, which is to eat and provide food.
		We recently spoke with the World Health Organization and other organizations that are there feeding people in Haiti.
		And one of the things they brought up to us is that if they don't have the funds by March, they will not have the option to start feeding again and doing those programs in Haiti.
		Although there is a waiver, we've already talked about at length about the problems with the waiver and them kicking in back with the payment system.
		But we also have to talk about how there is not enough people to be working at USAID right now to facilitate that.
		We've gotten several calls of people who are anxious about what is going on, including people who are actually sending food out through our ports in Palm Beach.
		We've heard a lot of people wondering if their food is going to be sent.
		Farmers now are worried.
		We have over 23 farms that are being impacted in the state of Florida.
		So I have a question for you.
		My question is: I think we all can come together and agree that auditing U.S. aid is actually a good thing.
		We can talk about where we agree and disagree.
		However, the real issue is implementation.
		We're finding that this implementation is creating extensive collateral damage to American citizens and also to our partners.
		And we're also finding that some of this damage is irreparable harm, meaning that we just can't fix it by giving them money.
		We're hearing more and more about people who are exposed and who need life-saving treatment who are not getting it despite the waivers.
		And so I believe that the strength of our nation is us following that constitutional privilege of us embodying and allowing Congress to actually determine the implementation.
		So I want to know for you how much of USAID's programs are actually life-saving programs.
		Yes.
		Of the $38 billion last year, $15 billion was humanitarian assistance and emergencies, famine relief, disasters, civil wars.
		$8 billion was for health.
		Most, except for the family planning program, which is the last time I checked, was $275 million.
		Most of the health programs were life-saving.
		And so do you believe that if Congress actually had the opportunity to do its role in actually crafting out the implementation over DOGE, do you believe that we would have been able to substantiate or even to make sure that many people who are being harmed right now are not being harmed?
		Well, there's a problem now that people who are being denied who can't get the anti-retrovirals because the system is shut down.
		There's violence against the aid workers and against our AID officers.
		There was an incident just now in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Lakondo, where the aid officers had to take their families and go across to Brazzaville, across the river to another country, because they were under attack for people who thought they were going to die because they couldn't get this aid.
		There's a whole bunch of articles on this.
		This is not a small incident.
		This was very, very serious.
		Some of the embassy people were under attack, too.
		Well, thank you so much for identifying that because U.S. aid is not a faucet that you can turn on and off.
		You cannot pause it and then turn it on and think that there will be no damage.
sheila cherfilus-mccormick ▲ ● ▼		However, I do have confidence that if Congress had the opportunity instead of Doge, that we could have worked across the aisle to identify what would have been the consequences and, in fact, protect not just our farmers, but the people who are using it.
sheila cherfilus-mccormick ▲ ● ▼		We're hearing more and more stories about people who are actually losing their lives because they were part of an experimental program, they were part of a U.S. aid program.
unidentified		Even hearing stories about people who have objects and instruments who are still in their body, and because there's a stop order, they cannot remove them.
		And so, as we move forward, I would like for us to focus on what is the strength of our nation: us being able to work together and identify how we can actually promote the agenda of the United States, but still preserve our compassion.
		And I have full faith and confidence that if we had the opportunity to do our constitutional duty as members of Congress, working with the chairman, who I've worked with several times before, and I believe he's a compassionate person, that we would have saw what was happening and prevented any kind of collateral damage to our farms, to our district, to our ports, especially the loss of life.
		So, as we go forward, I think we should stop focusing on totally a few programs which you may disagree on, but focus on how we can regain ourselves internationally.
		Because every single day that we actually have these arguments and funding isn't going out, China is stepping in.
		Russia is stepping in.
		And what they're telling them is that we are not reliable, that we will not be there, that we will start and we will stop and people will get hurt.
sheila cherfilus-mccormick ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Representative.
		We do have time to do one other round of questioning before we recess for votes.
		And so, we're going to recognize Representative Salazar.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the witnesses.
		My name is Maria Salazar.
		I'm the chairman of the Western Hemisphere Committee subcommittee here in the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
		And I am very distraught because some of the programs that we have been talking about come from the region that I represent, many of many people in South Florida that come from those countries of origin, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Peru.
		So, I understand, Mr. Anacios, that you do not agree with the way that Elon Musk has conducted his investigation into USAID.
unidentified		But I do believe, you know, coming from the world of television, that you are judged by the results, not by the process.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		And Musk has discovered things that are completely and absolutely embarrassing.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		And in my, specifically in the region that I'm saying that I'm representing a lot of constituents.
unidentified		So, I just want to salute you because you said that you did the job, you were the administrator, that you went line by line, that you were cleaning up the different programs, that you took your job very seriously.
		But apparently, we are in different times.
		And I'm just going to share with you within the time that I have three programs coming from Latin America, which I think are highly embarrassing.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		Let's start with Venezuela.
		And here's the video that Chairman played before.
		You know, Venezuelans are fleeing Marxism.
		They're hungry.
		The average Venezuelan weighs 15 pounds less because of lack of food.
		We know that Chavez has destroyed the country.
unidentified		They make it to Ecuador.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		I mean, they're tired.
		And then they encounter that United States, which is the beacon of hope, is offering this program to become a drag queen.
		So I think there's something wrong with that picture.
unidentified		And I think I'm not sure if we can play yet again, but I just wanted your opinion.
		Well, that particular program was a State Department program.
		And I have great respect for the State Department, but I think it's appalling they did it, to be very frank with you.
		So you do not agree with those $35,000 investors?
		I think we should stick with our basic mission.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		But you agree that they have not, not under you.
unidentified		Well, no, they have not.
		They have not.
		Okay, so let's go to the last one.
		I just want to hear your thoughts because, unfortunately, time is a good question.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		One self.
		$2 million for Native Indians in Guatemala.
		You know, President Jamate called me.
		I mean, I've never had a president from a country saying, I don't want the United States money.
unidentified		I mean, highly conservative.
		These are the native Indians in Guatemala, people who are just, you know, flipping the tortillas and they just want to learn how to do a job, not sex change surgeries.
		What do you think about that?
		That's beyond what this AID mission is.
		I don't think.
		Good.
		That's all we need to know.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		Peru, in the Amazon.
unidentified		This is the jungle.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		This is not Jeff Besso's Amazon.
unidentified		This is like where people have harsh conditions.
		They need mosquito nets to fight malaria.
		So $25,000 for diversity recruitment events.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		What is a diversity recruitment event in the middle of the jungle?
unidentified		I have no idea.
		Congressman, just one comment.
		You can move A to do what you want by hiring a development professional, a conservative, who knows how to manage a large, complex operation.
		Mark Green was such a person, okay, under Trump.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		But then what happened between your time and this time?
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		Tell me, what happened?
unidentified		Well, politics gets involved.
unidentified		Oh, politics.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		But then Elon Musk comes and tries to cling politics and go back to the original mission of the program.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		Is that correct?
unidentified		I think it would be useful if Musk and some of his staff would go to the field and see the projects.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know if they're taking control of it.
		I'm sure they don't have time, sir, to do that.
		But what I'm saying is that he did something that, according to what you just explained, brings benefit to the USAID programs.
unidentified		USAID staff do what the political appointees tell them to do?
unidentified		Well, they don't initiate these things.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		They don't.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		So that means that all those directives came from the White House.
unidentified		The White House, yes.
		And the State Department.
		Okay, but then the White House, the State Department responds to the White House.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		So you are telling me that under the Biden administration, the USAID lost its course.
unidentified		Yes or no?
unidentified		I think AID needs to be more independent of the political wars in Washington.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		You just told me that the State Department is the one that directs that.
unidentified		Okay.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		And the State Department responds to the White House.
unidentified		That's correct.
unidentified		All right.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		So that means then that the White House gave the wrong directives to USAID.
unidentified		In my view.
unidentified		In my view.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		In your view.
unidentified		Yes.
		Thank you.
		Well, that's all we needed to know.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		So now we have a new sheriff in town called Donald Trump, and then that guy brought another guy called Elon Musk to do the job, something that no one else has done before.
unidentified		So why do we need to criticize him?
		Because he doesn't know anything about development.
		He may be a genius at technology.
		He does not know anything about development.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		Development has nothing to do with what is the mission statement for USAID.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		Secure, prosper, and value American values.
unidentified		I mean, the $2 million for the Native Indians in Guatemala to change their sex surgeries has nothing to do with that.
		$15 billion was spent on humanitarian assistance and emergencies in refugee camps.
		There's particular skills you learn in doing that.
		I did that.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		I understand.
		You're talking about what works.
		I'm talking about what does not work.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		Gentlelades tell me I appreciate, Chairman.
maria salazar ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, sir, for your time.
brian mast ▲ ● ▼		I would also let you know, Ms. Salazar, that I've had numerous calls from ambassadors during the Biden administration who intend to provide us with the reprimands that they wrote against career employees who were undermining their work, doing these programs that they didn't want, but did them anyways, and the administration didn't care.

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