OPM - Separation-Of-Powers Edition

or... Look Who Discovered The Constitution!

In case you've been living under a rock, Trump, Musk, and the band of cost-hackers at DOGE snatched a piece of low-hanging fruit by gutting the USAID program. More properly known as the United States Agency for International Development, it's a $50B agency that "is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance." In practice, it’s a playground for the agenda-driven, the self-serving, and the corrupt. While it's not the only foreign aid funnel in our government, it is the largest, and Trump just smashed it to smithereens.

Naturally, leftist politicians are Not Amused.

The irony of politicians complaining that an unelected bureaucrat is cutting the spending that thousands of other unelected bureaucrats have been deciding and milking for decades is lost on some of our esteemed elected officials. That this spending includes a long list of "you have got to be kidding me" line items, including $50M for condoms in Gaza, $6M to fund tourism in Egypt, and $2M for sex changes in Guatemala, apparently doesn't matter.

Some will dig deep and cherry-pick programs that they can argue with a straight face are worthwhile, but a nation $36T in debt that continues to spend nearly $2T more than it collects should not be funding a transgender opera in Colombia... or funding the Wuhan lab where COVID very likely originated. That’s all before we question whether the moneys spent were actually used as advertised, rather than corruptly and covertly misused. At this point, I feel safe in concluding that USAID is a giant grift.

Or worse.

The protestations that the power of the purse belongs to Congress is a hoot, given that Congress has pretty much abandoned its duty in that regard. Massive omnibus spending bills written not by Congresspersons or their staff per their directions, but by an incestuous marriage of political lifers and rent-seeking lobbyists, give large chunks of money to such bureaucracies as USAID with woefully insufficient guidance or oversight.

Nothing tickles me more than a big-government politician suddenly finding Constitutional religion when his or her sacred cows (read: gravy train) are gored. It's like someone who thinks the Second Amendment should be revoked suddenly running out to buy a gun after getting mugged or hearing his neighbor's house got robbed. Late to the party, and I bet you don’t stay after you get what you want.

Yes, there are real Constitutional questions as to at least some of this cost-cutting. Fundamentally, the President’s job is to do what Congress legislates, and that includes an obligation to spend as Congress directs.

However, the delegation of purse-power to the Executive Branch is a double-edged sword, and frankly, given how insanely out of control, wasteful, duplicative, corrupt, and just unnecessary so much of our government spending is, I'm inclined to favor an "ask for forgiveness rather than permission" approach. After all, that's what the spenders have been doing for decades, and the government is systemically biased in favor of more spending. Reap what you sow.

The Judicial Branch is going to have its hands full figuring out what the Executive can legitimately claim rescission authority over, and what it’s obligated to follow through on, and if you’re screaming “checks and balances,” that’s where they begin.

As for Representatives Raskin and Omar? Sorry, your outrage is a farce. No, Musk was not elected, but neither are any of the 10,000 USAID workers suckling on the government teat while they participate in a wasteful, corrupt, and counterproductive endeavor. Your protests ring hollow given how your party has been wiping its ass with the Constitution for years. The reality is that yours and your fellow statists’ screams of outrage are at the unmasking of the great big con job that has been perpetrated on the taxpayers for decades. Afraid of a little sunlight? So are bloodsucking vampires.

And, as for good programs that may be "babies tossed out with the bathwater?" Go ahead, make the case for each one. Re-appropriate for it, by itself, on its own merits, in sunlight and with public debate, rather than letting some bureaucrats who have been handed buckets of Other People's Money dole it out on the QT. I will note here that a number of programs have requested or been granted waivers, i.e. they will get to continue after being deemed worthwhile, and that the plan to put the program under the State Department’s banner means that much will continue.

Remember this: The kid who tries to buy friends is the kid that will perpetually be played for a sucker, and the sorts of friends that he buys will not be the sorts of friends he should want. How well have the hundreds of billions disbursed across the past sixty-four years worked? Are the recipients our best pals now? Or are they quietly snickering while they await the next bushelful of greenbacks?

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A cruise around the internet offered these wonderful distributions of your tax dollars by USAID:

• $70,000 for an Irish musical about DEI

• $50 million for condoms in Gaza

• $7.9 million to teach Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid binary-gendered language

• $20 million for a new Sesame Street show in Iraq

• $520 million for ESG consultants in Africa

• $45 million for DEI scholarships in Burma

• $1.5 million for art for inclusion of people with disabilities

• $2 million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala

• $1.5 million to support various LGBTQ causes in Latin America and the Caribbean

• $6 million to transform digital spaces to reflect feminist democratic principles

• $6 million for tourism in Egypt

• $45 million in USAID funds for emergency food assistance and economic support for Venezuelan migrants in Colombia through the United Nations World Food Program

• $1.5 million effort aimed at empowering women to adapt to climate change in northern Kenya

• $4.5 million to combat disinformation in Kazakhstan

• $1.2 million to help the African Methodist Episcopal Church Service and Development Agency in Washington DC build a state-of-the-art 440 seat auditorium

• $46,000 of oral and injectable contraceptives were distributed to the Middle East

• $1.5 million for a Serbia Workplace Diversity Program

• $15 million worth of contraceptives and condoms in Afghanistan

• $480 million award over five years to upgrade Sierra Leone's energy infrastructure, contingent on the nation's adoption of pro-abortion policies

• 2.1 billion in humanitarian assistance to Gaza, at least part of which was co-opted by Hamas

• $100,000 to Islamic Relief Worldwide, a known fundraiser for Hamas that's been banned in both Israel and the United Arab Emirates

• $1.3 million to Arab and Jewish photographers

• $81 million to promote civic engagement and peace in Palestine

• $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru

• $78,000 grant to the West Bank-based Community Development and Continuing Education Institute (CDCEI), whose chairman, Imad Al-Zeer, attended an anniversary event commemorating the founding of the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

• $1 million to help disabled people in Tajikistan become climate leaders.

• $102 million on Democracy, Gender and Rights Programs in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan

• $446,700 to promote the expansion of atheism in Nepal

• $55,750 for a presentation—led by female and LGBTQ+ journalists—warning about the impact of climate change in Argentina

• $2.5 million for electric vehicles for Viet Nam

• $11M to tell Viet Nam to stop burning trash

• $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia

• $20M for Iraqi Sesame Street

• $2M for Moroccan pottery classes

• $27M for gift bags for illegal migrants

• $25M for Deloitte to promote green transportation in Georgia

• $160,000 grant to Al-Quds University, known as a hotbed of Hamas activity and has praised the group's militants as "martyrs"

• $39,000 for a book festival seminar about gender identity

• $8000 to educate Polish youth on how to be LGBTQ

• $20M to a key player in the Russiagate hoax

• $53 million to the EcoHealth Alliance — which was involved in research at the Wuhan lab

• $27M to the George Soros prosecutor fund

• $1.5M to rebuild the Cuban media

• $30M for Afghanis to grow crops

• $200M on an (unused) Afghani dam

• $250M on an (unused) Afghani road

• Hundreds of thousands of dollars for a non-profit linked to designated terrorist organizations — after an inspector general launched an investigation

• 38,000 meals for al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria

• Hundreds of thousands of meals that went to al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria

• Funding to print personalized contraceptives birth control devices in developing countries