Secretary of State Marco Rubio highlighted the vast extent of USAID’s fraud, disclosing on Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that only “12 cents of every dollar” was actually going to humanitarian aid.
“At USAID, 12 cents of every dollar was reaching the recipient,” Rubio revealed. “That means that in order for us to get aid to somebody, we had to spend all this other money supporting this foreign aid industrial complex.”
“We’re going to find more efficient ways to deliver aid to people directly. It’s going to be directed by our regional bureaus,” Rubio explained, adding that the massive reforms to USAID “had to happen.”
Rubio announced the official cancellation of 83% of USAID programs in March, detailing plans for the “remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department.”
“The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.”
USAID Worked To Destabilize Israel And Fund Terrorism
Daniel Cohen, News Director for the Real Life Network, previously reported on USAID’s deep corruption, which was unearthed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), including funds given to Palestinian terrorists in Gaza.
“The United States government has been suffering from the ‘aid virus,’ a scandalous taxpayer-dollar giveaway loaded with waste and abuse,” Cohen underscored. “While you may have been struggling to afford a house, pay rent, and buy gas and groceries, your tax dollars were being used to fund terrorism in Israel. Let that sink in. USAID gifted $310 million for a cement factory project in Gaza. What do you think SANAD, the private company that was supposed to create cement mills, did with the money? You guessed it: They built terror tunnels, the infrastructure used to launch the October 7 massacre, and the dungeons where Hamas has kept many of the Israeli hostages.”
Cohen, an American-Israeli living in Tel Aviv, further explained that, through USAID, “your taxpayer dollars were being used to destabilize Israel’s democratically elected government.”
“Do you remember the violent protests across Israel before October 7?USAID was paying for it through a complex web of NGOs and civil society organizations,” he noted. “That’s not all this “aid virus” has been doing. In Judea and Samaria, USAID money has been supporting the Palestinian Authority’s ‘pay-for-slay.’ It’s a program that exists today in which terrorists are rewarded financially for carrying out attacks against Jews.”
Cohen thanked the Trump Administration for working to “turn off the spigot” which secretly helped to fuel terrorism against Israelis.
According to Fox News, “Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., sent a blistering letter to Biden-era USAID administrator Samantha Power in October 2024, sounding the alarm on the ‘likely misuse of more than one billion dollars in U.S. humanitarian aid sent to Gaza since October 2023.'”
Transparently In US Humanitarian Assistance
The USAID’s actions in Israel were far from the only bad actions revealed by DOGE. Millions of taxpayer funds were also used to fund radical liberal agendas abroad, including “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs in Serbia and Ireland.
Marco Rubio on Tuesday stressed that the goal of the Trump administration is not to shut down American humanitarian assistance abroad but to reform the system so that aid can be transparently and efficiently given.
“Even with the reforms we put in place, and what we’re suggesting as changes to our foreign aid, we still will provide more foreign aid, more humanitarian support, than the next 10 countries combined, than the entire OECD. And far more than China,” he told the committee.
Taking Aim At China
Rubio shot down claims that the Chinese Communist Party will replace American aid on the global stage, saying, “China doesn’t do humanitarian aid. China does predatory lending.”
“That’s what the Belt and Road Initiative is,” he emphasized. “That’s what all of their ‘aid’ is. They have zero record of doing humanitarian aid in the world. And frankly, they don’t know how to do it. They have no interest in doing it. What they’re very good at is going into some country, making you a loan, and then holding that debt over your head. And that’s what they continue doing… By the way, you have to hire a Chinese company to do it.”
“We provide development assistance,” the Secretary of State said. “They provide debt traps.”
