Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced legislation in Washington, D.C., last Friday to permanently abolish the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), citing what they describe as decades of wasteful and corrupt federal spending.
According to a press release from Roy’s office, the two-page bill would immediately halt all taxpayer funding to USAID and reclaim any grant funds not yet distributed.
“I am very proud to work with Rep. MTG and co-lead this legislative effort to permanently eliminate USAID,” Roy said in the release. “With $36 trillion in debt, we have to get our fiscal house in order; but we can start right now with getting rid of USAID.”
Greene echoed those sentiments, calling USAID a “taxpayer- funded slush fund” in the release and stating that, as Chairwoman of the DOGE Subcommittee, she has launched a “War on Waste.”
The bill is co-sponsored by Reps. Eli Crane (R-AZ), Andy Ogles (R-TN), Ralph Norman (R-SC), Brandon Gill (R-TX), Diana Harshbarger (R-TN), Josh Brecheen (R-OK), Eric Burlison (R-MO), Scott Perry (R-PA), Greg Steube (R-FL), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and William Timmons (R-SC).
The press release from Roy’s office listed several examples of USAID spending, which it described as wasteful, including:
• $1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities”
• $70,000 for production of a “DEI musical” in Ireland
• $2.5 million for electric vehicles for Vietnam • $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia
• $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru
• $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala
• $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt
• Hundreds of thousands of dollars to a nonprofit linked to designated terrorist organizations, even after an inspector general investigation
• Millions to EcoHealth Alliance, which was involved in research at the Wuhan lab
• “Hundreds of thousands of meals that went to al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria”
• Funding for “personalized” contraceptive devices in developing countries
• Hundreds of millions of dollars to fund “irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan,” which the release claims benefited the Taliban Roy and Greene’s legislation comes as congressional Republicans push for broader spending cuts and oversight of federal agencies.
