Closing USAID

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:cut it off

That’s for Congress to act on, they have the power of the purse.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'm just a regular person and the amount of dumb stuff this dept spends money on is pretty infuriating. Why is there also over 10k employees for a dept most Americans have never heard of. Good riddance and I hope they go back to the core mission under the state dept.

Again, WHY are there over TEN THOUSAND employees for a dept most Americans have NEVER heard of?

Because most of them are out doing the work in the field - different countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, mostly along with the support staff that goes with it.

This is not going to build support - especially when people learn of the ridiculous compensation and entitlements these employees get. Did you know we rent houses and apartments for these employees that happen to come with full time cleaners and personal chefs? The State Department only approves local landlords with robust personal service riders. So these “aid” workers are living in penthouse apartments in Bogota or gated mansions in Abuja with full household staffs - all at taxpayer expense. In Bogota that comes with a fleet of chauffeured SUVs that personally drive their kids to the $61,000 per year British International School that - again - US taxpayers pay for.

Trump places secret service agents in his own luxury resorts while he plays golf and yet here you are talking about people living overseas and helping humanitarian aid? How can you explain that?

We didn't buy the resort for Trump, though. Nor do we subsidize his mortgage. It's different to bill the taxpayers for the accommodations.

All this said, one thing I haven't seen mentioned is that a house staff is much cheaper overseas and is pretty standard for middle class and up. It would be weird to have diplomatic staff living below the normal lifestyle for their relative class in a host nation.

Right - so let them use their very high salary to pay for the staff instead of tying the staff into the state department paid for and approved lease.

Why are you so critical of working people but then you let the richest man in the world take government subsidies?

Huh - is this your comeback? USAID employees abroad compensation packages can near a million dollars. And this post is about USAID. As for Musk - I probably don't agree with many subsidies, but not the point of this discussion topic.

This is so stupid and obviously false. Not a single USAID employee’s compensation package is anywhere close to a million dollars.

https://www.commerce.gov/hr/practitioners/compensation-policies/general-pay/overseas-pay-for-civil-service-employees

There is nowhere in that link that makes ANY suggestion of a million dollar salary or benefit package.

Housing allowance in Bogota is 65k + a year. Education allowance is $18k per kid per year. Hardship pay is 15% of salary. Chauffeured vehicles for all transportation needs about 20k a year. Medical care and expenses can be very high. If a spouse is pregnant they get an all expense paid trip back to the states (full per diem for 4 months) to have the baby. They also get paid plane tickets and travel to take leave. Not saying that we do not need foreign service - but being a foreign assigned USAID employee is not a life of sacrifice and comes with significant cost/compensation.

The stuff gets really good when USAID couples who double dip, meaning a husband and wife couple work for the agency. They will serve their time and retire to start drawing on their retirement and then come back as contractors to the agency and still draw a salary and benefits as contractors, in addition to drawing on the retirement. It's quite a nice hustle, if you can manage it.

Military retire early and then go off and work in the private sector, using their military experience and often making more money--while drawing a government pension. Do you have a problem with that?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Can’t believe that democrats have chosen this issue as a hill to die on. Shows how out of touch they are. Guess their flow of money is about to dry up.

This isn't a hill to die on. This is stopping a president from unilaterally closing an agency (created by statute by Congress) for no reason and firing thousands of federal workers as well as stopping congressionally appropriated funding directed to the agency, the employees, and to the work that the agency does.

If Biden did this, you would be up in arms. There will be a Democrat president in the future - should he have this power? No, of course not. Then why should Trump have it?

When we get a Democratic president in 2028, I hope they fk sht up SO bad. I want them to go so fking low that they'll be shaking hands with the devil. You can't maintain your scruples when the other side has none.

I get the feeling but no. We are better than that. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

[Anonymous]

I find it very odd and suspicious that USAID is suddenly in Elon’s crosshairs like this. Did Trump or GOP ever mention this agency during the last campaign or in recent Congressional hearings, budget negotiations?

It seems there must be some other underlying reason (for corrupt purposes and financial gain) that Elon is going after it so aggressively. I hope the media will start digging!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm just a regular person and the amount of dumb stuff this dept spends money on is pretty infuriating. Why is there also over 10k employees for a dept most Americans have never heard of. Good riddance and I hope they go back to the core mission under the state dept.

Again, WHY are there over TEN THOUSAND employees for a dept most Americans have NEVER heard of?

Just because you're uneducated, don't assume most others are. Plenty of people have heard of USAID.

Even if people didn’t know the name of the organization Americans understand that we send food, medicines, supplies to countries where it’s needed. We don’t only send bombs to kill undesirables according to the US.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find it very odd and suspicious that USAID is suddenly in Elon’s crosshairs like this. Did Trump or GOP ever mention this agency during the last campaign or in recent Congressional hearings, budget negotiations?

It seems there must be some other underlying reason (for corrupt purposes and financial gain) that Elon is going after it so aggressively. I hope the media will start digging!

Well, someone had to go first. USAID was "someone".

When the cutting is done, the headcount for that agency will be approximately 294 employees, down from 14,000.

Two thumbs up!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find it very odd and suspicious that USAID is suddenly in Elon’s crosshairs like this. Did Trump or GOP ever mention this agency during the last campaign or in recent Congressional hearings, budget negotiations?

It seems there must be some other underlying reason (for corrupt purposes and financial gain) that Elon is going after it so aggressively. I hope the media will start digging!

Well, someone had to go first. USAID was "someone".

When the cutting is done, the headcount for that agency will be approximately 294 employees, down from 14,000.

Two thumbs up!

I know a couple of people who will be losing their jobs. Both are among the best people I know. One is OIF veteran and both volunteer thousands of hours a year working to help kids born on the wrong side of the tracks. It’s pitiful that people like that have to be stripped of their livelihoods just to please sad sacks of shit like yourself.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'm just a regular person and the amount of dumb stuff this dept spends money on is pretty infuriating. Why is there also over 10k employees for a dept most Americans have never heard of. Good riddance and I hope they go back to the core mission under the state dept.

Again, WHY are there over TEN THOUSAND employees for a dept most Americans have NEVER heard of?

Because most of them are out doing the work in the field - different countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, mostly along with the support staff that goes with it.

This is not going to build support - especially when people learn of the ridiculous compensation and entitlements these employees get. Did you know we rent houses and apartments for these employees that happen to come with full time cleaners and personal chefs? The State Department only approves local landlords with robust personal service riders. So these “aid” workers are living in penthouse apartments in Bogota or gated mansions in Abuja with full household staffs - all at taxpayer expense. In Bogota that comes with a fleet of chauffeured SUVs that personally drive their kids to the $61,000 per year British International School that - again - US taxpayers pay for.

Trump places secret service agents in his own luxury resorts while he plays golf and yet here you are talking about people living overseas and helping humanitarian aid? How can you explain that?

We didn't buy the resort for Trump, though. Nor do we subsidize his mortgage. It's different to bill the taxpayers for the accommodations.

All this said, one thing I haven't seen mentioned is that a house staff is much cheaper overseas and is pretty standard for middle class and up. It would be weird to have diplomatic staff living below the normal lifestyle for their relative class in a host nation.

Right - so let them use their very high salary to pay for the staff instead of tying the staff into the state department paid for and approved lease.

Why are you so critical of working people but then you let the richest man in the world take government subsidies?

Huh - is this your comeback? USAID employees abroad compensation packages can near a million dollars. And this post is about USAID. As for Musk - I probably don't agree with many subsidies, but not the point of this discussion topic.

This is so stupid and obviously false. Not a single USAID employee’s compensation package is anywhere close to a million dollars.

https://www.commerce.gov/hr/practitioners/compensation-policies/general-pay/overseas-pay-for-civil-service-employees

There is nowhere in that link that makes ANY suggestion of a million dollar salary or benefit package.

Housing allowance in Bogota is 65k + a year. Education allowance is $18k per kid per year. Hardship pay is 15% of salary. Chauffeured vehicles for all transportation needs about 20k a year. Medical care and expenses can be very high. If a spouse is pregnant they get an all expense paid trip back to the states (full per diem for 4 months) to have the baby. They also get paid plane tickets and travel to take leave. Not saying that we do not need foreign service - but being a foreign assigned USAID employee is not a life of sacrifice and comes with significant cost/compensation.

and many USAID have designated “hardship” posts without a school for their kids, so US taxpayers get to pay for Swiss boarding schools or US/EU/UK boarding schools

Some even bring their parents to post and US taxpayers cover that too

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find it very odd and suspicious that USAID is suddenly in Elon’s crosshairs like this. Did Trump or GOP ever mention this agency during the last campaign or in recent Congressional hearings, budget negotiations?

It seems there must be some other underlying reason (for corrupt purposes and financial gain) that Elon is going after it so aggressively. I hope the media will start digging!

Well, someone had to go first. USAID was "someone".

When the cutting is done, the headcount for that agency will be approximately 294 employees, down from 14,000.

Two thumbs up!

Your glee at the unemployment of 13,706 people is nauseating. I am laying off all my staff because of the USAID shutdowns. The single moms, the dads with kids with cancer, the fresh-faced kids with their first apartment leases. And since my programs are shut down we aren’t stopping that Ebola outbreak in Uganda or preventing babies from getting Malaria in Nigeria. That’s what we all did all day. And we got paid the kind of salaries that people on this board scoff at, and we live in neighborhoods most of you won’t enter. Because we aren’t rolling in dough based on some big USAID fraud, right? We are nurses and social workers who use our skills in other countries.

What the F is WRONG with you?

[Anonymous]

Use those skills here in the US.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Catholic Relief Services shutting down programs and laying off staff.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/exclusive-catholic-relief-services-lays-staff-cuts-programs-after-usaid-shakeup?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR29YnvTmwIbdDJ1GnW_UZJRVMSGfLgcdQRcFFLjHK2eXKvK-nA1_SI1lRc_aem_2xEm_kI3fOOt-hdMbf4JPQ

This raises an interesting question: how much of these aid dollars result in material benefits to marginalized people and how much is to pay for staffing and other costs?

From the link:

CRS reaches more than 200 million people in 121 countries on five continents, according to its website

Among the programs and services provided by CRS: water and sanitation, education, agriculture, health, microfinancing, climate change resilience, as well as justice and peace-building programs in addition to emergency and disaster assistance.

CRS had 7,000 employees worldwide as of 2018 when it marked its 75th anniversary.

USAID math is always fuzzy and made up when you really dig in to what is going on.

Then why didn’t Congress hold hearings and investigate the agency, as they have authority to do? Why only now is USAID suddenly a target?

They do hold hearings, and issue reports, and have IG inspections. These things drag months and months and years and nothing fundamentally changes. It's almost like everyone is in on the game or simply does not care enough. Some of the claims of success that these programs make are highly dubious and USAID has had some really, truly wasteful whoppers out there.

One fundamental problem with USAID is that all of its claims to service U.S. interests and too nebulous and hard to measure. They're been getting away with making these claims for decades.

And yet all this time, with all these terrible things they are doing, the Republicans were never able to successfully cut their budget. Huh. So very strange.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find it very odd and suspicious that USAID is suddenly in Elon’s crosshairs like this. Did Trump or GOP ever mention this agency during the last campaign or in recent Congressional hearings, budget negotiations?

It seems there must be some other underlying reason (for corrupt purposes and financial gain) that Elon is going after it so aggressively. I hope the media will start digging!

Elon was under investigation, so this is his retribution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find it very odd and suspicious that USAID is suddenly in Elon’s crosshairs like this. Did Trump or GOP ever mention this agency during the last campaign or in recent Congressional hearings, budget negotiations?

It seems there must be some other underlying reason (for corrupt purposes and financial gain) that Elon is going after it so aggressively. I hope the media will start digging!

Yes in fact there is!
USAID was investigating Musk regarding starlink in Ukraine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Use those skills here in the US.

That's what Jesus would do!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Catholic Relief Services shutting down programs and laying off staff.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/exclusive-catholic-relief-services-lays-staff-cuts-programs-after-usaid-shakeup?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR29YnvTmwIbdDJ1GnW_UZJRVMSGfLgcdQRcFFLjHK2eXKvK-nA1_SI1lRc_aem_2xEm_kI3fOOt-hdMbf4JPQ

This raises an interesting question: how much of these aid dollars result in material benefits to marginalized people and how much is to pay for staffing and other costs?

From the link:

CRS reaches more than 200 million people in 121 countries on five continents, according to its website

Among the programs and services provided by CRS: water and sanitation, education, agriculture, health, microfinancing, climate change resilience, as well as justice and peace-building programs in addition to emergency and disaster assistance.

CRS had 7,000 employees worldwide as of 2018 when it marked its 75th anniversary.

USAID math is always fuzzy and made up when you really dig in to what is going on.

Then why didn’t Congress hold hearings and investigate the agency, as they have authority to do? Why only now is USAID suddenly a target?

They do hold hearings, and issue reports, and have IG inspections. These things drag months and months and years and nothing fundamentally changes. It's almost like everyone is in on the game or simply does not care enough. Some of the claims of success that these programs make are highly dubious and USAID has had some really, truly wasteful whoppers out there.

One fundamental problem with USAID is that all of its claims to service U.S. interests and too nebulous and hard to measure. They're been getting away with making these claims for decades.

And yet all this time, with all these terrible things they are doing, the Republicans were never able to successfully cut their budget. Huh. So very strange.

And the GOP - including Rubio - requested more funds for USAID so we didn’t lose to China.