As America’s debt soars, Trump and Musk take aim at wasteful government spending—exposing shocking USAID expenditures that raise serious questions about fiscal responsibility
To be sure, America is faced with a myriad of problems. Many of those problems seem to be unsurmountable at times. However, there is probably no single issue facing America more important than that of the runaway national debt that is increasing at the rate of $5.93 billion per day. For all the statistical fanatics out there, that compares to about $4.12 million every minute. The politicians and bureaucrats that make up our governmental leadership have been spending like the legendary drunken sailor with an unlimited credit card. We have now found ourselves in a situation where we are paying for things we never needed and perhaps didn’t even know we bought.
Of all the things that Mr. Trump is attempting to do in the heat of the moment, nothing is more important than the necessity of reducing overall spending and reducing the deficit. Logical minds can argue about whether Mr. Musk should be the leader of the pack in this endeavor or even if his methodology is the correct way to proceed, but how in the world could anyone with a “lick of sense” be opposed to cutting out purely wasteful spending? For one, I am at least glad that somebody has the intestinal fortitude to get out the proverbial knife and proceed with the cuts.
Striking a Nerve
In this vein, Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have apparently struck a nerve this week when the blade was taken to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). For the historically challenged, USAID is an agency of the government created under President Kennedy during the days of the Cold War to counteract the economic intrusion from communism throughout the world. Funds are appropriated by Congress and then are supposedly used to fight poverty and sickness throughout the world and to assist with the development needs of penurious nations. Though efforts of this type, at least on the surface, are laudable, the realities are often not so. The latter is precisely the reason given this week by Mr. Musk when DOGE literally shut down the entire agency.
Oh, the cries of indignation that erupted over these “unwarranted” actions. How could any human being even think of taking food away from a malnourished child, etc.? Ultimately, what was discovered upon closer inspection is that the actual accounting is not nearly as simple and certainly not as poignant as the outcry would lead us to believe.
Lavish Spending by USAID
Of course, if the system was running as originally planned, USAID would be holding itself accountable, and then Congress would provide adequate oversight to avoid wasteful or useless spending. Unfortunately, that has not been the case for many years in USAID. That’s why Karoline Leavitt, the new 27-year-old White House Press Secretary, unlike some of her predecessors in title, actually did her homework and brought a list of lavish USAID spending on extremely questionable projects to a recent press conference. To make her point she offered a long list of expenditures of a “few bureaucratic necessities”:
- $2 million for sex changes and LGBTQ+ activism in Guatemala
- $6 million for tourism development in Egypt
- $20 million to create a “Sesame Street” type show in Iraq
- $4.5 million to fight “disinformation” in Kazakhstan
- $10 million for meals provided to an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group known as the Nusra Front
- $4.67 million to Eco-Health Alliance to fund bat virus research in Wuhan, China
- $6.3 million to men who have sex with men in South Africa
- $70,000 for a DEI musical in Ireland
- $1.5 million to advance DEI inclusion in Serbia’s workplace
- $150 billion allocated to building “an equitable world with net zero greenhouse gas emissions
And the list goes on almost ad nauseum!
Then we also discovered that more than $8 million had been paid to Politico and other media outlets for “subscription costs.” At a minimum, we now know that the phrase “free press” does not apply any longer. So, who in the “Sam Hill” could ever imagine that these types of expenditures were in any way helpful to America when according to reports one in five children in America are “food insecure” meaning they go to bed hungry? Just maybe all of this is enough for Mr. Musk and DOGE to determine that USAID is beyond repair and needs to be shut down. By using common sense logic, it is painfully clear that we simply cannot help those who are in need in America by wasting boatloads of money in some nondescript country on some asinine project.
Biblical Perspective
At Southern Evangelical Seminary, we acknowledge and hold fast to the biblical necessity of caring for our brothers and sisters wherever they may be. However, this does not include spending money on useless and even harmful expenditures in the name of doing good. In fact, the Bible has a few words about wasteful spending that ought to apply to us as individuals and as a nation as well. Truth be told, if we as a people were truly living according to Scripture, there would be no need at all for a welfare state even in America. Regardless, it is about time that we either sober up the drunken sailor bureaucracy or take its credit card away. Come to think of it, why don’t we do both?
