The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hosted a hearing on Thursday to discuss eliminating waste by the foreign aid bureaucracy. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D–Conn.) objected to the 90-day pause on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on the grounds that doing so would hurt American farmers. Of all the arguments that can be made in defense of USAID, subsidizing foreign demand for American agricultural products misdirects resources from charity to self-dealing.
Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), chairman of the committee, began the hearing by stating that America "should not be the sugar daddy for the entire world," emphasizing the nation's $36 trillion of debt. Paul proceeded to go through a list of USAID programs whose relevance to American national security interests is charitably characterized as tenuous.
Paul recounted how the agency paid "a group of Ukrainian women-led designers to travel to the Paris fashion show"; spent "$2 million on transgender surgeries, hormone therapy, and gender-affirming care in Guatemala"; spent "$20 million [to] produce a new Sesame Street show in Iraq"; spent "$6 million to promote sustainable tourism in Egypt"; spent "50 million on Tunisia's tourism"; and invested "$87.9 million to help Afghans farm," which unintentionally subsidized the production of opium.
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