House Republicans zeroed in on the Biden administration’s use of foreign aid to bankroll left-wing causes that undermine American interests across the world in a heated oversight hearing Wednesday.
House Republicans, led by Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) Subcommittee chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, sought testimony from experts to outline how the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) advanced a left-wing policy agenda during the Biden administration that in turn alienated U.S. allies and made the world less safe for Americans. Democratic lawmakers struggled to defend the worst abuses of USAID funding, such as pushing far-left ideologies on countries with conservative cultures and indirectly financing terrorist groups.
House Oversight Republicans’ hearing on foreign aid comes after President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has effectively dismantled USAID and left its future in limbo. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday the Trump administration cut roughly $60 billion in USAID and State Department grants and multi-year awards that it determined did not align with American interests.
Greene also said the DOGE Subcommittee will consider recommending investigations and criminal referrals to those it believes have abused foreign aid. The subcommittee is expected to release a post-hearing review on USAID’s foreign aid abuses next week.
“USAID has been transformed into an America-last foreign aid slush fund to prop up extremist groups, implement censorship campaigns and interfere in foreign elections to force regime change around the world,” Greene said in her opening remarks. “That is the dark truth about USAID.”
“Taxpayer funds have literally been used to undermine U.S. interests and counter American foreign policy goals under the guise of foreign aid,” Greene continued. “This is unacceptable, and the American people agree.”
More than 60% of Americans believe that U.S. foreign aid is being “wasted on corruption or administration fees,” according to a survey published by the Financial Times on Feb. 17.
Democrats appeared unable to confront the worst USAID abuses that occurred under Biden, and at times, sought to deflect attention to unrelated topics.
After Greene outlined how USAID funding had been funneled to terrorist groups, Democratic New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury, the top Democratic lawmaker on the subcommittee, began her opening remarks with the statement, “Welcome to the Elon Musk chainsaw massacre.”
Stansbury then proceeded to rail against Musk for weighing into Germany’s recent parliamentary elections, Vice President J.D. Vance scolding European elites for abandoning core civil liberties and the president’s recent comments on the Russia-Ukraine War.
Democratic lawmakers’ witness Noam Unger, director of the Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, struggled to answer a question posed by Texas Republican Rep. Brandon Gill if spending more than $3 million “for being LGBTQ” in the Caribbean aligned with American values.
Stansbury and other Democratic lawmakers on the panel appeared to have learned few lessons about USAID’s abuses. Stansbury notably defended former USAID director Samantha Power’s push to turn the department into a de-facto “climate agency” and attempted to get the experts testifying to agree that USAID should continue to push LGBTQ rights on the rest of the world.
“If we want to do counter China, there’s nothing more that has alienated billions of people than pushing an ideology that they resent,” Max Primorac, who served as USAID’s acting chief operating officer, senior agency vetting official and regulatory reform officer in the first Trump administration, told Stansbury in response. “None of this is counter China. This is counter America.”
“A resounding ‘yes’ that foreign aid can be a powerful tool of diplomacy to promote freedom, prosperity and peace in accordance with our national interest and our values, but not as an instrument of progressive imperialism,” Primorac continued. “Aid officials must ensure that every single foreign aid program can pass the Middle America smell test on waste, fraud and abuse.”
Primorac previously told the Daily Caller that USAID’s left-wing agenda under former President Joe Biden weakened the United States’ influence abroad.
Experts also tore into the Biden administration’s use of foreign aid for damaging the United States’ standing in the world. Biden notably left office with an increasingly unstable world stage, with ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East.
“It [USAID] has been doing harm while spending more on aid,” Primorac told lawmakers.
“There is more world poverty and hunger today, more political instability, and developing countries are more beholden to our adversaries.”
“The fiduciary duty of our aid officials over the past four years has done tremendous damage to foreign aid’s credibility and America’s standing in the world,” Primorac continued.
Despite Trump moving to cut the vast majority of USAID contracts and shut down the agency, most lawmakers on the panel — Republican and Democrat — still believe the U.S. government should be doling out some foreign aid to counter China’s influence in developing countries and provide relief in humanitarian crises. But foreign aid practices must align with American interests as outlined in the president’s executive order on foreign aid, according to Republican lawmakers.
“That’s just hyperbolic nonsense that we do not recognize that there’s a role to play for the United States in the federal aid space,” Republican Texas Rep. Pat Fallon said Wednesday. “But what we want to expose is $164 million going to radical organizations — $122 million of it to organizations that have aligned, or at least tied to terrorism.”
A DCNF analysis found that more than $1.3 billion taxpayer dollars doled out by the Biden administration ended up in terrorist groups’ coffers.
The hearing was disrupted on two occasions by left-wing protestors in the crowd. An elderly woman was removed after making an “obscene gesture” to an unnamed lawmaker while South Carolina Republican Rep. William Timmons spoke. Another person attending the hearing was promptly removed by police after shouting at lawmakers to stop DOGE.
Greene told the crowd that private individuals, including those in the crowd, were free to fund far-left causes around the world, but no longer would the government be bankrolling left-wing activism on the taxpayer’s dime.
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