(DCNF)—Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar on Tuesday said she does not comprehend why Americans support dismantling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
President Donald Trump and Department of Government Efficiency Chair Elon Musk plan to merge USAID’s functions into the State Department. When host Brianna Keilar asked on “CNN News Central” about her message to the numerous “people out there who agree with this move philosophically,” Omar expressed no understanding and instead criticized the decision.
“Well, I don’t understand why they would agree with it philosophically. We are looking at this reckless decision that was made that took away the jobs of so many Americans who are working here in the United States and abroad,” Omar said. “These were people who were locked out of their offices, locked out of their emails. We have crisis response teams that are abroad, that are locked out of the resources that they need in case their lives were in danger. So what Elon Musk is doing is actually risking the lives of Americans by making this decision.”
Omar also appeared to downplay the billions of dollars USAID spends earlier in the segment.
“I think what is really important for the American people to understand is that this money really amounts to less than 1% of what our budget is as a country. It is money that goes to the most vulnerable around the world. It is already appropriated and it can’t be re-appropriated,” she said. “And so what we are seeing right now is Elon Musk, a billionaire who is attempting to take away resources from the poorest people around the world. This is someone who is not a government official. He wasn’t elected. He’s not appointed. He holds foreign debt and foreign interests. And so we should all look at this with cautious eyes and with curiosity to understand why he is making these decisions and why he’s being allowed to make these decisions.”
USAID is responsible for funding large grants for Palestinian initiatives, Afghan aid programs that have a significant risk of ending up in Taliban hands and indirectly funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The U.S. doled out $68 billion of foreign aid in 2023, with over $17 billion going to Ukraine, according to USAID and State Department statistics.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday was appointed as USAID’s new acting administrator.
“We’re spending taxpayer money here,” he told reporters while on a diplomatic visit to El Salvador on Monday. “These are not donor dollars; these are taxpayer dollars, and we owe the American people the assurance that every dollar we are spending abroad is being spent on something that furthers our national interest. And so far a lot of people who work at USAID have simply refused to cooperate.”
