You know what else is “wasteful”?
USAID still being wiped off the map.
The Trump administration said Sunday that it was placing all but a fraction of staffers at the U.S. Agency for International Development on leave worldwide and eliminating at least 1,600 U.S.-based jobs.
The move was the latest and one of the biggest steps yet toward what President Donald Trump and cost-cutting ally Elon Musk say is their goal of gutting the six-decade-old aid and development agency in a broader campaign to slash the size of the federal government.
The move comes after a federal judge on Friday allowed the administration to move forward with its plan to pull thousands of USAID staffers off the job in the United States and around the world. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols rejected pleas in a lawsuit from employees to keep temporarily blocking the government’s plan.
“As of 11:59 p.m. EST on Sunday, February 23, 2025, all USAID direct hire personnel, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and/or specially designated programs, will be placed on administrative leave globally,” according to the notices sent to USAID workers that were viewed by The Associated Press.
They’re keeping on a few people to arrange the plane trips home for the others, then it’s byebye to them too.
The move escalates a monthlong push to dismantle the agency, which has included closing its headquarters in Washington and shutting down thousands of aid and development programs worldwide following a freeze on all foreign assistance. A judge later temporarily blocked the funding freeze. Trump and Musk contend that USAID’s work is wasteful and furthers a liberal agenda.
But is it really a liberal agenda to buy global good will? However pricey it is it’s nowhere near as expensive as world wars.
I’m sure everyone here knows and understand this, but USAID was never a ‘liberal’ idea. Yes, it does good. Yes, it buys goodwill (generally) for the US – that was its entire point. Yes, it employs lots of idealistic and possibly liberal people. But, the entire point, with bipartisan support, was to create positive mindshare across a vast swathe of the world that the US was a great and noble country who should be trusted over the enemies of democracy and justice. That the US would contribute to doing what was right and improve people’s lives. It also funded what could loosely be considered propaganda through funding to VoA and independent journalists who dealt with actions by America’s enemies. Despite the Cold War origins and slightly cynical reason for creation, it is an organisation that has done and continues to do enormous good. And, like aid to Ukraine, the vast majority of its budget has always been spent within the US where the food, materials, and highest paid labour it uses are sourced. This is a genuine case of everybody except the oligarchs and dictators loose.
Y’know how five minutes ago we knew that transwomen weren’t literally women and singing along to DMX lyrics in the car was ok?
This is just like that… No one was pissy about USAID before last month, even Trump.
People as dumb and senile as Trump don’t understand that “liberal” has two different meanings. One is politically progressive within the typical range of politics in a modern, industrialized, Western country like America. The other is a centuries-old political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, consent of the governed, political equality, private property, etc. In the first sense, only some Americans are liberal. In the second sense, our entire system of government, and most of our society is liberal.
USAID has employed a lot of the first type of liberals, and probably some conservatives too, but it has not worked exclusively to spread those type one liberal ideas. On the other hand, it has definitely, like the rest of our government, had its foundation in the second type of liberalism. Like Rob says, a huge part of its purpose was to convince people abroad that a liberal (type two) form of government was good and desirable.
Like most of the “reforms” pushed by Musk et al. in his reformer cosplay, putting USAID “through the wood chipper” will not save America money; it will cost us in the long run. As Rob points out, most USAID money is really spent at home – we give things to foreign countries, like sacks of flour, but those things are bought by the US government from US sources. The people we’re first putting out of work are USAID workers; the second group of people we’re putting out of work are American farmers and manufacturers.
Politics is about tradeoffs, though. If the ROI for USAID in terms of preventing world wars or reducing our vulnerability to them is less than some other thing, then the other thing is where our resources should go. This is especially true if that change gets us the same result and leaves enough left over to spend domestically on silly things like ending homelessness.
I’m just talking in the abstract, though. I’m not arguing that USAID should go, just that it could be the case that it should.
I find it entirely plausible that some or even most of what USAID does is not actually very helpful to the US and our long-term goals. But figuring out what is helpful and what isn’t helpful would require thought, analysis, and intentionality. Not just sending threatening emails, hacking servers, firing random assortments of people. That’s not reform, it’s just cosplaying reformer.
As Chesterton said:
Chesterton was a conservative. What happened to American conservatives? All we have now is fools. Musk has just fired 6700 IRS workers, in the middle of tax season. Most of these are new hires, lawyers and accountants whose job is tracking down tax dodgers. Every dollar paid to these workers returns twelve dollars in national income, so our deficit is being increased by this move. All-told, Musk’s scattershot “reform” is like to cost the United States money, not save us money.
Yes, that’s the essence of conservatism. I’ve often referenced Chesterton’s Fence as an example of why a healthy society depends on both impulses, the conservative and the liberal. (For lack of a better term.)
It’s much better to release a pressure cooker’s steam slowly and gradually than to just take off the lid straightaway. The latter’s going to see you cleaning food off the ceiling, and you’ll likely have to paint over the stains. If you let the pressure build too much, however, the lid may pop off on its own and wreck your kitchen. It’s reasonable to make the case that this is what we’re seeing; i.e., an extreme example of the rubber band snapping back and leaving a welt on your finger.
Again, this isn’t to say that Trump & Musk et al. or what they’re doing is reasonable. It’s basically trivial to make the case that these chucklefucks are overreaching in a reactionary, authoritarian, anti-republican way that’s going to do serious damage that will need to be repaired. Shutting down agencies willy-nilly and firing government employees for not responding to an email with what they’ve accomplished in the past week is just a fat middle-finger to small-r republican principles, and fixing what they break is probably going to take literal years.
It never occurs to Musk (or most people, including my liberal friends) that the federal government may not be all that bloated. That they may NEED most of the people they hire, and that those people are doing things that are valuable to us.
Yes, there is waste. I’ve said that before. But this is not getting at the waste; it’s carving up the main body of the object. It’s carving up the United States itself. And that is the plan. Musk isn’t interested in waste; he’s interested in destroying the governmental infrastructure…which will, before long, destroy the overall infrastructure of the country.
Most of the waste comes at the top, which has proliferated during my lifetime like bacteria on a particularly large and automatically restored petri dish. When a college vice president retires, what do you do? Hire two! It’s easy enough to pay for…just don’t hire any more of those pesky teachers. Let their job go when they leave, because what do we need them for anyway?
Much of government is the same way – it’s the top that is the problem, not the bottom. Musk is firing the bottom, the place where the work gets done. And I don’t think that’s an accident, and maybe not even ignorance. I suspect he understands hierarchical structure. He wants to stop the work from being done; it is a feature, not a bug.
Where he is ignorant is in thinking that things can run better, cheaper, and faster by being picked up by private industry. Most of the tasks government does will not be done by private industry because they are not profit-generating. Those that can generate profit – such as education – will not be done cheaper. They will not likely be done better. Musk doesn’t actually care about any of that; he just wants this vast pot of government money to be paid over to the wealthy…which a lot of it has been, anyway, in the form of lucrative contracts and subsidies.
Being the richest man in the world isn’t enough for him. He needs power, attention, and all the money that is wasted by the rest of us on silly little trivialities like food and medicine.
One idea that had been floated was that there would be something like a $5k “DOGE” check sent out to people as evidence that the “waste” being cut was a real thing. As is it’s like you stopped paying the light bill, the gas bill, and the water bill and yet your account balance hasn’t changed at all.
Who knows? They might do it; definitely makes their actions seem more justifiable on the surface. Of course, printing another $800+ billion might be considered by some to be unwise as inflation ticks up.
Down here in the Wonderful Land of Oz, we are in pre-election mode, constant speculation about when the election will be called and on what date it will be. A phony election, if you like.
The Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is proclaiming he will increase health funding by cutting 65,000 government jobs. But he won’t say which jobs, in which departments, or who will do the work.
I don’t know the answer to the first two points, but I sure as hell know the answer to the last – it will be consultants hired at 3 times the cost of the sacked workers. How do I know? Because that is what they do every time they get their hands on the levers of government, they sack and impoverish workers while funding fourth and fifth yachts for their rich prick mates.
Quite right, but I’d like to offer some better terminology! ;-P
“Real” conservatism is of course just part of the (real) liberal tradition, so clearly liberal is not the antonym of conservative. So what is? The antonym of Conservative is Radical.
Reforming vs. restraining impulse perhaps?