Still, I love absolutely everything about what is happening here. USAID was given a budget of $50 billion in fiscal year 2023 and its more than 10,235 employees would cost the American taxpayer roughly $1.3 billion each year in salaries and benefits.
Before continuing on I want to note that I am not at all opposed to an American agency providing other nations and peoples with aid when necessary. Sending food to starving children after a tsunami strikes or funding a team of doctors to help dig civilians out of the rubble after an Earthquake is noble work that the American people overwhelmingly support. What the American people, and certainly no nationalist, should support is the massive socially liberal agenda that USAID has taken it upon itself to promote around the world under the guise of promoting ‘democracy.’
In one USAID policy document I was able to retrieve thanks to the Wayback Machine, the agency outlines how it spends American tax dollars on “sexual and reproductive health” in the Third World. The agency focuses on remarkably nebulous sociological nonsense such as “shifting harmful norms and practices” of other nations and peoples, “increase knowledge and reduce stigma” in other societies and funds “new and improved contraceptive methods” across the globe. I fail to see how any of these things are priorities for the American people. I want as many people to be healthy as possible, but why is it the responsibility of the American taxpayer to “invest in enduring effectiveness” or “advance care systems” in Third World regimes that will take the money and ignore goofy liberal NGO advice anyway?
Worse still USAID has long engaged in attempting to force radical changes to marriage and family structures on other societies. According to USAID’s “LGBT Vision for Action” document the agency has dedicated significant resources to “building capacity for local LGBT organizations in developing countries” and creating “openness and safe spaces” for gay advocates in developing countries. The agency dedicated itself to “integrating LGBT issues into USAID’s work” and its field missions (work on the ground). Perhaps I lack a creative mind, but I fail to see how delivering baby formula, emergency road repair, or chest tubes to the world’s most unfortunate people must also include a rainbow flag and a lecture about gay rights.
The agency’s interventions go beyond social agendas, however. USAID has been accused by multiple governments of funding opposition parties to legitimately elected democratic leaders. Mexico’s former president AMLO accused Biden’s USAID of funding his opposition while El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele tweeted on February 2nd that “Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up. While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.” These presidents are right to complain. One 2003 report from USAID titled “Political Party Assistance Policy” lays out how the agency directly funds political parties to the tune of $50,000 per political party, per NGO linked to a party, and per NGO functioning as a political party.
