Hurricane Musk and the USAID panic

Photo: Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Photo: Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Summary

Elon gets a flavor of the pushback his DOGE project will get.

Hurricane Elon is blowing through Washington, creating panic and pushback wherever he and his government-efficiency minions appear. Mr. Musk sometimes blows hot air, and he needs to be watched to stay within legal guardrails. But he’s also hitting targets that have long deserved scrutiny and reform, which helps explain the wailing over the U.S. Agency for International Development.

USAID—not a household acronym—provides money to various countries and non-governmental organizations. The agency sends money to around 130 countries, including Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Syria, according to the Congressional Research Service. In 2023 the agency managed more than $40 billion and no fewer than 10,000 employees. The ostensible goal is to make friends and influence countries in the American interest.

No doubt spending $40 billion is bound to do some good somewhere. One oft-cited example is the Pepfar program that has funded anti-AIDS efforts in Africa in particular. But USAID, like most foreign aid, has become something of a plaster saint in Washington even if it does far less good than advertised.

Thus Mr. Musk brought down the wrath of the Beltway by targeting AID as part of his Department of Government Efficiency. His method taken from the private sector is to move fast even if he breaks things—and fix them later. When USAID officials leaked their dismay to the press, Mr. Musk tweeted that the place is a “viper’s nest" and the solution is “to basically get rid of the whole thing."

President Trump piled on with his typically restrained observation that “I love the concept but they turned out to be radical left lunatics." Cue the political panic.

USAID is hardly full of Mother Teresas who only want to do good without a political agenda. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast cites examples of USAID’s progressive agenda at work.

The agency in the Biden years supported electric vehicles in Vietnam and a “transgender clinic" in India. A Serbian LGBTQ group called ‘Grupa Izadji,’ received $1.5 million to ‘advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities." There are many other examples.

These grants are dumb and wasteful, but some USAID spending may undermine U.S. interests. An analysis by the Middle East Forum says $164 million of USAID money has supported radical organizations around the world, and $122 million of that aid was going to groups aligned with foreign terrorist organizations.

According to the report, USAID has given millions of dollars to “organizations directly in Gaza controlled by Hamas" and that recipients of the money have “called for their lands to be ‘cleansed’ from the ‘impurity of the Jews.’" The Middle East Forum notes that money also often flows to anti-American groups through intermediary recipients that fail to vet local partners.

This sounds like an agency that needs a house-cleaning and maybe a reduction in what it does so it can focus on the most important. That’s what Secretary of State Marco Rubio now says he plans to do, rather than shutting the agency down as Mr. Musk claimed he wants to do. Mr. Musk can’t shut it down in any case. Congress established it as an independent agency in 1998, under the supervision of State, and so it would require an act of Congress to close it down. That isn’t about to get 60 votes in the Senate.

The USAID uproar is a taste of the pushback that Messrs. Musk and Trump are going to face as they work to shrink and reform the executive branch. What Ronald Reagan called the “iron triangle" of interest groups, Congress and the news media isn’t going to give up power or money without a fight. You can add career regulators to that triangle.

That’s all the more reason for the DOGErs to have a plan that works within the law and builds political support. The lawsuits are already flying, and courts will derail Mr. Musk’s project before it even gets off the ground if he isn’t careful.

More oversight and transparency for a leaner USAID makes sense, and we wouldn’t mind if it vanished. But that takes more sustained political effort than a howling wind of tweets in the middle of the night.

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