Editor’s note: The following is prepared testimony to the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from Max Primorac, a former senior official at the U.S. Agency for International Development and now a senior research fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation. Primorac served at the USAID during the Trump administration, performing the duties of the deputy administrator and leading the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.
Over the past few weeks, we have been treated to a daily litany of examples of waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer funded foreign aid. The U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State used foreign aid as a global platform to push radical and even obscene ideas that have shocked and angered the American people.
One cannot help but ask, was there anyone in the room raising their hand to say, “Maybe this is not a good idea, maybe this will risk our bipartisan support in Congress, maybe this will lose us the trust of the American people?”
Yes, foreign aid should be a tool to advance our national security interests. In the past it did. Today it does not. Frankly it has been doing harm. While spending more and more money on aid, there is nevertheless more world poverty and hunger today, more political instability, and developing countries are more beholden to our adversaries.
While I was at USAID, during the previous Trump administration, I co-chaired an inter-agency working group that put all of our aid projects through a counter-China lens. That was dismantled. Instead, the Biden administration wasted billions of dollars on a global green agenda that forced poor countries to rely on China for its energy needs by focusing on solar and wind renewable energies. These countries wanted more trade with and investment from America in order to bind our countries more closely together but instead they got transgender, diversity, and abortion programs that have alienated billions of people.
Despite what we may hear in the media, there is no connection between how we do aid and our national security. South Africa has received billions of American aid dollars yet the country is China’s main African partner (South Africa is the “S” in BRICS). It supports Hamas and Iran and opposes us at every turn at the United Nations. Last summer, Mozambique and Tanzania, other large aid recipients, conducted two-week military exercises with the Peoples Liberation Army, expanding Communist China’s power projection to the lip of our Atlantic Ocean. Nineteen of the top 20 USAID recipients are members of China’s Belt & Road Initiative.
While acting chief operating officer at USAID, I approved strong vetting policies for our humanitarian assistance in countries swarming with terrorists. That too was ignored by the Biden administration. Since I left the agency, vast sums of U.S. money were diverted to fund terrorists in Gaza, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan. NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] have indeed been hit with heavy fines for violating our anti-terrorism financing laws, but closer scrutiny is warranted for the problem is endemic within our aid culture.
Last year, USAID launched its $45 million global civil society program, based on the social theories of an Italian Marxist. Literally we have been funding radical NGOs around the world that oppose capitalism, democracy, NATO, and Christianity. None of this is counter-China, this is counter-America.
Again, a resounding “Yes” that foreign aid can be a powerful tool of diplomacy to promote freedom, prosperity, and peace in accordance with our national interests and values. But not as an instrument of progressive imperialism.
Regardless of which party controls the executive branch, U.S. government aid officials must ensure that every single foreign aid program can pass the middle America smell test on waste, fraud and abuse. Aid decisions must always secure bipartisan support. There must be full transparency on who is being funded and for what, not only for all members of Congress but especially for the American people who pay for it.
The fiduciary failure 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. Let’s pray that President [Donald] Trump will restore the public trust in America’s foreign aid efforts.