Were lots of DC-area professionals overpaid?
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Anonymous
That's a great and popular idea! Guess who blocks us getting our own money at home? |
Anonymous
This response sounds like ChatGPT. |
Anonymous
are these not factual? follow these people they are going from administering aide money to NGOs then immediately joining those NGOs as leaders or ceos. wtf. |
Anonymous
You should review the resumes of the people on that list through the lens of professional development, career trajectory, and political appointments. You should also review how budgets and appropriations work, especially in the context of aid legislation, contracting laws, and regulations that govern post government employment at firms that contract with the government. Wtf, indeed. |
Anonymous
You should also review this through the lens of incentives, not just resumes. Yes, people have career paths and yes, budgets and appropriations have layers of process. None of that erases the obvious concern when senior officials leave government and quickly land highly paid roles at organizations that benefit from the same aid ecosystem they just managed. Saying it is legal is not much of a defense. Weak ethics rules often allow behavior the public still sees as wrong. There should be real cooling off periods before senior officials can join groups receiving grants, contracts, or policy advantages tied to their former agency. And unlike many areas of government, foreign aid is often hard for taxpayers to measure in tangible terms. Roads, bridges, airports, and local infrastructure are visible. Even defense spending usually produces something concrete such as ships, aircraft, weapons systems, bases, technology, or readiness improvements. But much of the aid world runs through layers of NGOs, consultants, conferences, studies, and administrative overhead where results are difficult to verify and accountability is weaker. That is exactly why the revolving door matters more here, not less. When outcomes are vague and money flows through intermediaries, trust becomes critical. Watching officials move straight from USAID into executive suites of organizations tied to that same funding stream makes the whole system look like a self-serving club, not public service. |
Anonymous
I'm a fed who works with billion dollar industries. There IS a cooling off period before you can join new companies. My dh (in defense) also has similar prohibitions. Our ethics rules are very tight. Were they not at USAID? Political appointees don't seem to have the same ethics issues that career officials have. They go straight to industry from what I've seen. |
Anonymous
| Regarding foreign aid, there's a case study to be made for how different China is doing it versus the US. We're just greasing a million hands, they're building bridges/ infrastructure and saddling countries with debt. I think China's way might actually be helping the actual citizens of those countries more than greasing hands does. In Africa, the rich just keep getting richer using our method and very little goes where it should. |
Anonymous
Apparently not in practice, because some of the examples listed show people leaving USAID and stepping into those roles immediately or within weeks. Dennis Vega moved from senior USAID leadership in Aug 2024 straight into the CEO role at Pact that same month. Others made similarly rapid transitions. If career staff face tighter rules than political appointees, that is exactly backwards. Political appointees often have the most influence over priorities, relationships, and funding direction, so they should face the strongest restrictions, not the weakest. At minimum there should be a real investigation into whether any decisions benefited future employers while those officials were still in office. If someone steered grants, contracts, or policy favors in exchange for later employment, that can move beyond ethics concerns into potential criminal territory such as bribery, honest services fraud, conflicts of interest, procurement fraud, conspiracy, false statements, or kickback violations depending on the facts. Maybe everything was clean, maybe not. But when someone goes from funding or influencing an ecosystem one month to cashing checks from it the next month, the public has every right to demand scrutiny. I also think DOGE may have missed one of the biggest areas to investigate: NGO networks benefiting from federal money while being led by former government officials who helped direct funding into those same organizations or sectors. |
Anonymous
Read the rules governing moving from a senior official to a firm that receives federal money. Seriously, read it. Once you do that, look at the role of the man you mention as well as his previous responsibilities. |
Anonymous
Let's use public information and analyze the first example directly. Dennis Vega was publicly listed in 2024 as SES at USAID, meaning Senior Executive Service, the top management tier of the federal government. These officials typically have visibility into budgets, operations, strategic priorities, staffing, and high-level decision-making. His public profile shows he served as Acting Deputy Administrator for Management and Resources through Aug 2024, then became President and CEO of Pact that same month. Pact was already a longtime USAID implementing partner. So when people say "read the regs," that actually proves the point. The rules often focus on limiting direct contacts back to the agency for a year or restricting work on specific matters previously handled. What they may not stop is leaving one month and becoming CEO of a USAID-linked organization the next. That means the technical rule can be followed while the revolving door still happens in plain sight. The real concerns are obvious: insider knowledge, relationships, future job incentives, and public trust. There is also a timing issue. If USAID was later gutted or shut down, that may ironically help former officials because the agency that would normally be around to scrutinize these transitions is gone. The key period that deserves review is from Aug 2024 until the shutdown, including any grants, approvals, or decisions involving groups like Pact. That would be quite an irony if closing USAID ended up protecting the very behavior people were criticizing. |
Anonymous
Along those lines: there's many NGOs who fund themselves based on suing agencies. When agencies lose (they always do), we have to pay their fees. |
Anonymous
A lot of these infrastructure projects are already crumbling, but the country remains indebted to China. A way for China to expand its reach all over the world by demanding repayment for shoddy work. |
Anonymous
The public has no idea what is an appropriate amount for DoD to be paying Lockheed Martin or what that money is going to. And it is very easy for bad contracting decisions to be made, including outright bribery, and not discovered. Fat Leonard was operating for decades until he got caught--if you can show that blatant and massive of an example in foreign aid, then we'll at least be at "maybe these things are similar". |