Sen. Joni Ernst: USAID Is a Rogue Agency – WSJ

Yet the U.S. Agency for International Development, entrusted with disbursing tens of billions of aid dollars to other nations annually, is a rogue bureaucracy. I ve uncovered that the agency often acts at odds with our nation s best interests and uses intimidation and shell games to hide where money is going, how it s being spent and why.

USAID repeatedly rebuffed my requests for a list of recipients of U.S. tax dollars sent to Ukraine, claiming that the information was classified. Despite the pushback, I persisted. Eventually, USAID permitted my staff to review documents under surveillance in a highly secure room at USAID headquarters, with note-taking prohibited.

What warranted such secrecy? We learned that the aid that was supposed to alleviate economic distress in the war-torn nation was spent on such frivolous activities as sending Ukrainian models and designers on junkets to New York City, London Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week and South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

I faced the same stonewalling from USAID when I asked about tax dollars being diverted from project missions for largely unrelated costs, known as the negotiated indirect cost rate. The agency claimed that it wasn t possible to track. My team debunked that by providing USAID staff with a link to a public database. The agency fired back, warning that divulging this information would violate federal laws, including the Economic Espionage Act.

When I launched a formal investigation in cooperation with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, USAID relented. Turns out, the agency is allowing grantees to skim significant amounts of money, up to and even beyond half of the total, for themselves.

via www.wsj.com