I watch CBS Sunday morning every week. One segment on April 20 was Ted Koppel’s look at the cuts in USAID spending. There were three main things wrong with his reporting, all of which showed laziness or indifference or something else.
Koppel interviewed a British politician named David Miliband. Koppel stated:
For the past 12 years he’s [Miliband] been president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee. The IRC delivers humanitarian aid to some of the most vulnerable people in the world. So far, says Miliband, the cuts have affected about 40% of their international programs.
Then he showed heart-wrenching scenes about poor people in poor countries who will no longer get treatments for disease.
I wondered three things and Koppel didn’t try to answer them.
First, what percentage of the many billions of USAID spending went to this program? I’m guessing it’s a small percentage, but I’d like to know. Maybe we could cut the really bad stuff out of USAID and leave some of these programs that seem worthwhile.
The above is what I wonder as a numerate American independent of my political views.
Earlier in the segment was this:
And White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt provides the harmony, telling reporters on February 3, “I don’t know about you, but as an American taxpayer, I don’t want my dollars going towards this crap.”
Leavitt and Trump have a legitimate concern. That brings me to the second question I would have liked Koppel to ask.
The second question: How much corruption and waste is there in USAID?
My third question is one I would want answered because I think it’s wrong to forcibly take people’s money to help people in other countries, even if the money goes to good things, as some of it seems to do.
The question is this: Are there private organizations that take voluntary donations and use it for such programs? I would be shocked if there weren’t. I turned to my wife and said, “If there were such programs, and if they did a good job, I would donate a few hundred dollars.” That way, we could get the benefits of USAID without the corruption, without the waste, and without forcibly taking money from people.
If Koppel’s main concern had been those poor kids in Africa, he would have looked into this. Instead, it came off as another attempt to bash Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Of course, I’m assuming that Koppel had agency. Maybe he didn’t. If so, then my criticism is of the producer(s) of the segment.
PS: One plausible candidate to give money to is the earlier mentioned International Rescue Committee. It looks promising. I’ll look into it. Why wouldn’t Koppel mention to that viewers as an option? It would have taken about 5 seconds.
PPS: I checked IRC’s Form 990 for 2021. It gives the compensation of some of the main people. David Miliband made a little over $1 million from IRC that year. He could be worth it. But it makes me nervous.
READER COMMENTS
john hare
Apr 23 2025 at 7:40pm
PPS: I checked IRC’s Form 990 for 2021. It gives the compensation of some of the main people. David Miliband made a little over $1 million from IRC that year. He could be worth it. But it makes me nervous.
My son majored in accounting. He has mentioned that one of his classes was quite heavy on lucrative careers with the non-profits.
Mactoul
Apr 24 2025 at 12:05am
It didn’t take many days after USAID cuts for the news items about people in poor countries dying as consequence of the cuts. It prompts some questions:
Are these non-profits so badly run that they could not stand even a couple of weeks of interruption in their funding?
The senior staff of these non-profits could not be bothered to take some temporary cut in their own salaries before cutting the programs which as they claimed themselves –led to people dying.
Komori
Apr 24 2025 at 11:34am
It’s the hostage puppy narrative. “Let me rob this bank or I’ll kill this puppy. You don’t hate puppies, do you?”
This kind of story is an inevitable consequence of the media abandoning journalism in favor of activism, whatever their preferred politics may be.
Alan Goldhammer
Apr 24 2025 at 10:23am
This is an absolutely great point David raises. I have always supported government spending that provides a direct benefit (roads, parks, libraries, schools, etc.). I don’t know if USAID did an annual report, if not they should have. Programs should be described in detail and the overhead to run the programs noted. A lot of what USAID did was contracted out to non-profits. I have personal knowledge of two people who were working on public health projects in Africa and the funding for their organizations has been eliminated.
Also a great question, but be careful how corruption and waste are defined. If the US is a member of the “community” of nations, shouldn’t they help out? Is not this akin to charitable giving where those who have resources can help the less advantaged? OK, this is an approach that I am comfortable with but others here might not be.
Yes, there are many programs all over the world. I think there are also “charity navigators” that help you identify programs of interest to you and facilitate donations. We fund 3-4 organizations in this way. The difficulty is that we and maybe also David are small donors. The US government is potentially a big donor.
These are all difficult issues and from a geopolitical perspective. If the US does not provide aid maybe some other country will (e.g., China) and then there will be a recrimination down the road in the same way the “who lost China?” battle played out in the early 1950s.
Roger McKinney
Apr 24 2025 at 10:27am
Good points! The most common way the socialist media lie is with half truths. Most of what they say is true. But they give you only the information that would lead viewers to the conclusions they want.
steve
Apr 24 2025 at 10:05pm
When numbers and data are available they should be part of the evaluation process. If someone tells me USAID is wonderful or awful but doesnt provide the numbers I am skeptical.
Steve
V. L Elliott
Apr 25 2025 at 10:06am
The actions taken against the United States’ Agency for International Development (USAID) were due to issues of corruption and the use of US tax funds for activities against the common interest of the American people (i.e., the national interest of the United States). Not well addressed are policy issues and results.
When multiple US foreign aid programs growing from WW II-related activities were brought together in the early 1960s under then USAID organization, there was a common popular perception that a key long-term goal was “economic growth and development”. [Other important goals were emergency relief and economic stabilization and giving the populations of “Less Developed Countries” (LDC) incentives to remain in their home countries.] Discussions of “economic growth and development” involved break throughs into self-sustained economic growth. Taiwan and Korea had broken through with US help about 1960-61. USAID — not US foreign assistance — was established in 1962 and the funds guided by its policies had little if any impact before the last half of the 1960s due to US fiscal, appropriation and administrative requirements. An important question then is: United States’ Agency for International Development — what developed? What countries broke through into self-sustained economic growth and to what extent did US resources contribute? Sadly now, given the corruption and misuse discoveries recently revealed, there is the added question of whether or not there were sufficient USAID successes to warrant continuing American government conducted foreign aid? Given that foreign assistance resources can be de-stabilizing and escaping the “conflict trap” requires countries achieve and sustain overall GDP growth of at least 5% for decade or more, does the possible reward justify the risks?