Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son works in conservation in Mozambique- not for/with anything US related thank goodness. According to him, ending USAid is going to devastate the very very poor Moz health system. Those 50,000 condoms? Because AIDs is a very big health issue in Moz and that’s where the condoms were headed, now hundreds of thousands/millions will die. Unless, of course, the Chinese step in, which is what’s happening all over Africa. We are simply ceding any political goodwill across an entire continent (& world), simply for a ‘rounding error’ $amount.

Difference is the Chinese say "We'll do business here and we're not going to tell you how to run your country, unlike the USA".

That's not how China operates.

Well, scientists estimate that hundreds of thousands of poor people will die due to the closing of USAID. But I guess if you only care about people in the USA--you would see that as "waste" even though the measles outbreak should make it entirely clear that diseases don't recognize borders.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/health/usaid-cuts-deaths-infections.html

Anonymous wrote:

redquasar wrote:For those of you who work in some capacity either directly with US Aid or NGO receiving funding from US Aid... how much real good was happening and how much grift/waste ? So hard to triangulate to get the real facts and certainly cannot rely on Elon, Fox, NYT, or CNN for truth..

It depends on how you define waste.
If you view USAID as a charitable organization that is helping countries in need around the world, then maybe 95% of the spending is good. But if you think that America should get something in return for the money spent by USAID, then more than 50% is waste.
We are not getting much in return.
Can we really afford to keep spending that amount of money when we can't balance our budget and our national debt is 36 trillion?
The answer is NO.
It is good to give money to charity and help others. We all get it. But only when you can afford it.

USAID's budget was about 36 bn per year and benefitted millions of people in poor countries with essential food aids and medicine and earned goodwill for the USA globally with allies, making our country safer from outside threats.

If you think there's so much waste-how do you justify Tesla having received more than 30 billion dollars in grants yet paying no taxes? Same for SpaceX which has received 21 billion in grants?

People who like to talk about waste are entirely hypocritical about what they consider waste. I guess it's not waste when it lines the pockets of billionaires.

I have implemented USAID funded health programs for 20 plus years. They focused on child survival, maternal survival, nutrition, infectious disease. I accounted for every dollar I spent and reported on it in excruciating detail. I spent countless hours thinking through and showing how activities created health impacts that mattered. And now it is all gone, my staff let go, and the impacts up in smoke.

OP, I know no one who wasted money on any real way. Did it happen? I’m sure. Humans do bad stuff sometimes. But I bet it happened at USAID much less than it happened in the private sector simply because the people who implement USAID programs did it for the cause, and wasting money hurt the cause.

I think that may be why so many people hate USAID so much - we are the annoying, idealistic, goody-two-shoes, church ladies of America and people hate us like they hate Mormon missionaries - they couldn’t really be that nice, could they? They must be closet hedonists and deviants.

Anonymous wrote:My son works in conservation in Mozambique- not for/with anything US related thank goodness. According to him, ending USAid is going to devastate the very very poor Moz health system. Those 50,000 condoms? Because AIDs is a very big health issue in Moz and that’s where the condoms were headed, now hundreds of thousands/millions will die. Unless, of course, the Chinese step in, which is what’s happening all over Africa. We are simply ceding any political goodwill across an entire continent (& world), simply for a ‘rounding error’ $amount.

Difference is the Chinese say "We'll do business here and we're not going to tell you how to run your country, unlike the USA".

My son works in conservation in Mozambique- not for/with anything US related thank goodness. According to him, ending USAid is going to devastate the very very poor Moz health system. Those 50,000 condoms? Because AIDs is a very big health issue in Moz and that’s where the condoms were headed, now hundreds of thousands/millions will die. Unless, of course, the Chinese step in, which is what’s happening all over Africa. We are simply ceding any political goodwill across an entire continent (& world), simply for a ‘rounding error’ $amount.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

redquasar wrote:For those of you who work in some capacity either directly with US Aid or NGO receiving funding from US Aid... how much real good was happening and how much grift/waste ? So hard to triangulate to get the real facts and certainly cannot rely on Elon, Fox, NYT, or CNN for truth..

It depends on how you define waste.
If you view USAID as a charitable organization that is helping countries in need around the world, then maybe 95% of the spending is good. But if you think that America should get something in return for the money spent by USAID, then more than 50% is waste.
We are not getting much in return.
Can we really afford to keep spending that amount of money when we can't balance our budget and our national debt is 36 trillion?
The answer is NO.
It is good to give money to charity and help others. We all get it. But only when you can afford it.

But we can afford to give $4 trillion in tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, amirite?

You aren't giving them any money to begin with. They earned it, not Uncle Sham. amirite?

Didn’t USAID funding help the CDC to eradicate global smallpox in the 1980’s?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's an ebola outbreak right now, so there's that.

https://www.infectiousdiseaseadvisor.com/news/us-cancels-ebola-aid-in-uganda-despite-elon-musks-claims/

Also tuberculosis is picking up steam. And of course, measles.

Wait? Are you saying all of that is a direct result of dismantling USAID? It all happened within the last month? I call BS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:USAID was long viewed as mostly being good, but not great, aid for the developing world. It’s also long been known as a place that offers cover for deep state types. Like a lot of the operations of the U.S. government internationally, it wasn’t always clear that there was good alignment with the general public’s interests.

So do you have cites for this? That’s a pretty big claim, so where are the cites?

Are you serious? I’m looooong acquainted with this world and this is virtually the most typical insider perspective on USAID for the last four or five decades. Why is DCUM so naive???

Anonymous wrote:

redquasar wrote:For those of you who work in some capacity either directly with US Aid or NGO receiving funding from US Aid... how much real good was happening and how much grift/waste ? So hard to triangulate to get the real facts and certainly cannot rely on Elon, Fox, NYT, or CNN for truth..

It depends on how you define waste.
If you view USAID as a charitable organization that is helping countries in need around the world, then maybe 95% of the spending is good. But if you think that America should get something in return for the money spent by USAID, then more than 50% is waste.
We are not getting much in return.
Can we really afford to keep spending that amount of money when we can't balance our budget and our national debt is 36 trillion?
The answer is NO.
It is good to give money to charity and help others. We all get it. But only when you can afford it.

Sure if you’re stupid enough to think we live on the planet alone and nothing outside the border can ever touch us. What’s our economic loss from another pandemic or terrorism in our own country vs the cost of USAID? Sometimes we have to invest money as a preventative measure.

Anonymous wrote:

redquasar wrote:For those of you who work in some capacity either directly with US Aid or NGO receiving funding from US Aid... how much real good was happening and how much grift/waste ? So hard to triangulate to get the real facts and certainly cannot rely on Elon, Fox, NYT, or CNN for truth..

It depends on how you define waste.
If you view USAID as a charitable organization that is helping countries in need around the world, then maybe 95% of the spending is good. But if you think that America should get something in return for the money spent by USAID, then more than 50% is waste.
We are not getting much in return.
Can we really afford to keep spending that amount of money when we can't balance our budget and our national debt is 36 trillion?
The answer is NO.
It is good to give money to charity and help others. We all get it. But only when you can afford it.

But we can afford to give $4 trillion in tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, amirite?

Anonymous wrote:USAID was long viewed as mostly being good, but not great, aid for the developing world. It’s also long been known as a place that offers cover for deep state types. Like a lot of the operations of the U.S. government internationally, it wasn’t always clear that there was good alignment with the general public’s interests.

So do you have cites for this? That’s a pretty big claim, so where are the cites?

Anonymous wrote:

redquasar wrote:For those of you who work in some capacity either directly with US Aid or NGO receiving funding from US Aid... how much real good was happening and how much grift/waste ? So hard to triangulate to get the real facts and certainly cannot rely on Elon, Fox, NYT, or CNN for truth..

It depends on how you define waste.
If you view USAID as a charitable organization that is helping countries in need around the world, then maybe 95% of the spending is good. But if you think that America should get something in return for the money spent by USAID, then more than 50% is waste.
We are not getting much in return.
Can we really afford to keep spending that amount of money when we can't balance our budget and our national debt is 36 trillion?
The answer is NO.
It is good to give money to charity and help others. We all get it. But only when you can afford it.

Wow, no Ebola on our shores and stability due to food aid is getting plenty in return.

And if you care about the debt, then why are you not advocating for no tax cuts?

Anonymous wrote:It’s human nature to not care about where you spend other people’s money out of an anonymous slush fund.

It’s human nature to ignore morons on the internet who talk about things about which they have no earthly clue.