He knows how to pick a target.
Republican voters don't like foreign aid. They don't like the U.S. Agency for International Development that distributes it. They think we should direct grants, if any at all, in order to make friends, not to serve the neediest. YouGov
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| USAID signage removed immediately |
Trump has a consistent world-view: It is a dog-eat-dog world. Every person looks out for himself. Every country looks out for itself. Trump added an outlaw quality to this orientation by incorporating that winners make their own rules. Trump tells the story at rallies of the tender-hearted woman who saves a freezing snake by feeding and warming it. When healthy, the snake gives the woman a fatal bite. The woman is surprised at the ingratitude. Trump quotes the snake saying, "But you knew I was a snake when you took me in." The snake coldly looked out for number one. This is the way of the world, Trump says.
When Trump sent in people to do wholesale agency-wide cuts, he started with USAID, the least popular federal program with Republicans. It is unsentimental realpolitik. His MAGA base doesn't like foreign aid. Trump is riding a wave of backlash against the policy and message of Democrats on immigrants, on policing, on accommodating personal choices on gender. Voters overwhelmingly considered Democrats too indulgent and accommodating, at a cost to people like themselves. Trump and DOGE are in charge, so it is okay to be tough-minded and cruel. MAGA-supporting farmers in the wheat belt are unhappy that USAID isn't buying last year's crop. Their voices are heard. The people who might have gotten wheat, but currently are not, have no voice that matters.
Jack Mullen thinned pears alongside me in the summers of the mid-1960s. After college, he entered the Peace Corps. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Guest Post by Jack Mullen
I prefer Presidents Day and Martin Luther King Day, holidays that allow us a chance to read and reflect about ourselves as a nation.
Although a century apart, two books, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and The Ugly American, provided a moral impetus for two Presidents to challenge our country to be better than we were.
Following only the Bible, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the second largest selling book in 19th century America. Harriet Beecher Stowe brought the abolitionist cause to the forefront of American political discussion. Her writing led to the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, and the ultimate destruction of slavery in our country. Lincoln honored Harriet Beecher Stowe in her 1862 visit to the White House. He told her she changed the arc of America.
A hundred years later, Eugene Burdick and William Lederer wrote The Ugly American at a time when an American arrogance overshadowed our feel-good World War wins. The book became the genesis for President Kennedy to establish the Peace Corps and its offshoot, the United States Agency for International Development -- USAID.
The Peace Corps resonated in many ways. Americans, mostly young, lived in rural communities, enjoyed the local customs, ate the local food, and spoke the local language. The scope of Peace Corps programs ranged from agriculture and health programs to education and small business development, and many more.
When Kennedy started Peace Corps in 1961, he also started the Agency for International Development. New attention came to AID this month when the current Administration’s DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, claimed on social media that AID is a “criminal organization." Automated responses -- bots -- from Russia, China and Iran agree is the case.
AID is the combination of Herbert Hoover’s post-World War I American Relief Administration, which administered food distribution to a war-battered Europe, our post-World War II Marshall Plan that rebuilt war torn Europe, and all the aspects of the Peace Corps programs.
AID, much like the EPA, is dotted with former Peace Corps volunteers who found cause to continue work they loved while in Peace Corps. That is a problem for those agencies now and it makes them a special target. The wrong sorts of persons are filling those jobs.
Is AID too bureaucratic? Without a doubt.
Do those who work for AID become rich doing that work? Hardly.
Is our aid too generous and foreign policy overkill? No. Our AID workers aren’t even managing to counterbalance Chinese or Russian assistance taking place in those countries. Aid work improves relations with the recipient countries, which is why it has traditionally had bipartisan support in Congress, and why Russian, Chinese, and Iranian bots jumped on the bandwagon of cheering the idea we end our assistance. Workers at AID are mission-driven. They work to provide American foreign aid because it is the right thing for the richest country in the world to do.
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7 comments:
The president’s unilateral dismantling of congressionally established agencies without the approval of Congress is blatantly unconstitutional, but far be it from Trump to let the law get in the way of his amusement. His approach to USAID is typically perverted: He’s put the richest man on the planet in charge of dismantling aid to the poorest people in the world, which he will redirect to his multi-billionaire elites through tax cuts. About all I can say to those who made this criminal our president is, enjoy your not-so-cheap eggs.
I haven’t been able to independently confirm this, but 10 years ago when I was working in Niger W Africa, I struck up a conversation with a consultant for USAID.
He said that most of the dollars that flow to foreign aid, must by law, go to US companies and NGOs, which then gets reinvested in the US economy. This often means we send food aid produced from US farms. That’s why you see those truckloads of food in US- flagged bags. This kind of aid undermines the local farm economies in those counties because they can’t compete with free food and they become politically beholden to the US. AID is really a lever for power and control. It isn’t all philanthropic.
I see at least three consequences.
1. It will hurt our economy - especially US farmers;
2. People there will suffer; and
3. Other countries will fill the gap and US will lose allies and intelligence
Maybe that’s a good thing and we shouldn’t be holding these countries hostage and making them dependent on our “largesse”.
Thank you, Peter and Jack. We've gone from celebrating the best we can be to celebrating our worst instincts.
"Waste, fraud and abuse" has been a Republican trope since Reagan and the early conservative movement as a way to camouflage tax cuts for the wealthy and promote privatizing government services.
Now it's just right in your face...is this what the bros voted for? Actually, What DID they vote for, exactly?
The Snake, by Oscar Brown, Jr.
I remember several government program cuts that affected me personally. The first was NASA cutbacks and program eliminations. As a high school science teacher, an enormous pot was set aside for teachers and curriculum development. The sudden pullback left many school districts unable to provide sustained programs due to the dollar loss, cutting teachers, staff, and course offerings.
The second event was the rollout of the Grace Report under the Carter administration. I had worked summer jobs for Soil Conservation Service as a field engineer. At that time I was considering leaving teaching and starting a career with SCS. The department I was working with had its mission transferred to what is now NOAA.
Observation: The Title One students in my classes thought if NASA cut backs funding that money would magically become available to them and their family. People don’t understand how spending priorities are established within government agencies or what happens to funds when programs are cut. Believe me, unless your in the top one percent it means nothing. More likely the funding cuts will I end up as tax cuts for the very wealthy.
President Musk is simultaneously making America weaker and its adversaries stronger.
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