What was the purpose of USAID?

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too, and this is Stuff You Should Know, another timely topical edition of Stuff You Should Know, like I just said.

Speaker 2 That's right.

Speaker 2 As it turns out, weirdly super timely because as of this recording date, yesterday,

Speaker 2 this is July 1st, yesterday, June 30th,

Speaker 2 will have been the kind of the final day for most U.S. aid employees.

Speaker 2 I saw a headline yesterday in the New York Times where...

Speaker 3 Bono cries.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Bono probably did cry. But people like President George W.
Bush and President Obama and Bono

Speaker 2 all got together and said, hey, you know, USAID did so much good work. We're very proud of the work we did.
George W.

Speaker 2 Bush, in particular, was proud of the program that started under his watch, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that he initiated that saved 25 million people's lives.

Speaker 2 President Obama said,

Speaker 2 I wish I could do a good Obama. He said, ending U.S.
AID would go down as a colossal mistake. Ending your presence in your programs out in the world.
And this was directly to employees.

Speaker 2 They did like video messages. That's why it's in that person.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think they actually had a video call, too, for them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Ending your presence in your programs out in the world hurts the most vulnerable, and it hurts the United States.

Speaker 2 To many people around the world, USAID is the United States. And then I got to read Bono's quote because, you know, why not?

Speaker 3 Before you do, I just want to say, like, you nailed the Obama with the

Speaker 3 in the middle of it.

Speaker 2 Bono said, it's not left-wing rhetoric to feel hungry, heal the sick. If this isn't murder, I don't know what is.

Speaker 3 That was a pretty good Bono.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was more of a Larry Mullen Jr. But we say all that because I'm not really sure whether or not we should speak in the past tense on this with a lot of the stuff.

Speaker 3 Well, today's the day. So, like you said, yesterday was the last day that USAID existed as an independent agency in the U.S.
federal government.

Speaker 3 Today's the day that it got absorbed into the State Department.

Speaker 3 And I believe also today the State Department, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the former senator from Florida, announced that there is going to be some sort of new foreign aid agency called America First,

Speaker 3 which is a mind-bender.

Speaker 3 Is it really? Yes. That's funny.
So that it's not fully going away. It's just going to be restructured, and they're going to be doing it differently.
And it's really hard to say,

Speaker 3 it's really hard to get across how big of a deal it is that something like USAID specifically is being done away with wholesale, just rolled up, mothballed, done, really abruptly, really quickly.

Speaker 3 It's not being kind of slowly rolled back or anything like that. It just got its head cut off

Speaker 3 within six months after it being announced. It was just done.

Speaker 3 And it's, it's, of course, because we're talking about the United States, it's a political hot-button issue. Everything is a political hot button issue.
But this one should not be

Speaker 3 divided between the left and the right. Like, this is how America influenced the entire world for decades.
Some of it was really bad. Some of it was really good.

Speaker 3 But I feel like me personally, it needed a lot of restructuring, but I think it was a good

Speaker 3 infrastructure, a good apparatus that just needed to be retooled. I think it was a little ham-fisted, to say the least, to just stop it immediately.
That's my take on it. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 And for a second there a few minutes ago, I thought you were going to say Marco Rubio said it was now called America. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Is that a Team America reference?

Speaker 2 I think, yeah, that was from that movie, right?

Speaker 3 I think so. I hope so.
I think it was too.

Speaker 2 I saw there was a,

Speaker 2 who was it? There was...

Speaker 2 A Democratic House member senator the other day that was, as far as what you were talking about, and we're going to get into the numbers here and the history of everything, but he was talking about kind of what you were saying was like just kind of shuttering this guys uh if the if the budget of the united states is the height of the ceiling of this room and it was a big room he said the budget for us aid is these two credit cards stacked on each other wow and he said you know to

Speaker 2 um there has been waste in there and there has been some fraud and we're we're going to cover that stuff because we like to be even-handed sure he said and that's it at its worst but at its best you're shuttering something that costs so little money for us, that has saved tens of dozens of millions of lives of people.

Speaker 2 And not only just life-saving, but as you'll see, just influence for people around the world to, like Bono said, like to some people around the world, USAID is America.

Speaker 2 And that's like, they're the people that came in and helped us when we were at our most dire. That's the United States.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So hopefully we'll kind of get it across.

Speaker 3 If you're already mad, you know, politically speaking, just settle down and listen because we're not, we're not approaching this from like a, no, Obama's right kind of thing.

Speaker 3 It's like, just listen to this and make up your own mind. We're not going to try to steer you.
We were just sharing our own opinions on it.

Speaker 3 We're allowed to have those because we're thinking, feeling human beings.

Speaker 2 That's right. All right.
So

Speaker 2 the U.S. historically is the single humanitarian, the largest single humanitarian aid donor in the world.

Speaker 2 We supplied about 40% of humanitarian aid in 2024 as either the wealthiest or one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

Speaker 2 Foreign assistance falls into these broad categories.

Speaker 2 And again, this is all foreign assistance. U.S.
aid is within that, as we'll see. But humanitarian assistance is about 25% of it.
And this is like, you know. medicine,

Speaker 2 food, and shelter to save people after epidemics and disasters and famine.

Speaker 2 Development assistance is 60%.

Speaker 2 Those are programs installed to develop

Speaker 2 democratic nations economically, politically, socially. And then the last smaller piece, smallest piece, is security funding, 15%.
It's not a part of the U.S. military.

Speaker 2 There are programs to help strengthen foreign militaries and foreign police to, you know, get their act together and instill some sort of rule of law where there might not be any.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and we don't want to be polyannish about this.

Speaker 3 Like, USAID identified the police and training and outfitting and helping financially the police in different countries is like the best way to tap into that local

Speaker 3 that nation's like the pulse keeping your pulse on that nation's local stuff right to because the police are the ones who like suppress riots and suppress demonstrations they're the ones who um arrest people like bringing in the military is way too big of a deal you could the the police can do it so usa definitely focused on training police that was a big one too and that just kind of peels back the layer because right now, Chuck, let me just say this and I'll stop.

Speaker 3 There's a lot of really like sunny, glowing, like really

Speaker 3 fairly not fully realistic talk about USAID and what it does. It does a lot of this stuff, but it leaves out a lot of the darker side.

Speaker 3 And I think you have to take it as the whole thing to fully understand its value in the world. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 And that's our aim here.

Speaker 2 But if you're talking about since World War II, we've distributed about $4 trillion in today dollars to foreign assistance, which is a lot of money.

Speaker 2 But like I mentioned earlier with a little credit card metaphor that I ganked from that senator,

Speaker 2 as a percentage of our federal budget, foreign aid accounts for 1% of our total government spending.

Speaker 3 And that's all foreign aid.

Speaker 3 The USAID's portion is 0.5%.

Speaker 3 So like just USAID has less than a percent of the federal budget just yeah just

Speaker 2 two credit cards laying on the floor you're right uh maybe credit card wasn't the best thing to use

Speaker 2 like insurance card or something or that probably wouldn't have been good either uh library card how about that yeah don't talk about insurance yeah library cards are not controversial right

Speaker 2 um yeah a little bit controversial sure all right especially school libraries since 1961 most of this foreign aid uh has come through the uh u.s aid office uh because that's when it was established, the U.S.

Speaker 2 Agency for International Development, created by John F. Kennedy.
And the idea was, as we'll see, was to create what he called, or what everybody calls, soft power around the world

Speaker 2 because it was a time during, you know, as you'll see during the Cold War when the influences of the Soviet Union and China were worrisome.

Speaker 2 Kennedy saw the writing on the wall and was like, hey, I think like we need to get in there

Speaker 2 before other countries get in there with their communism and spread our message of democracy by helping assist them.

Speaker 3 Yeah, which is like totally in step with the containment policy of keeping communism in check and keeping it from spreading.

Speaker 3 Rather than using the military every time, you could also basically, you know, grease some palms around the world. And these countries that were hanging in the balance in the third world,

Speaker 3 you could sway them over the democracy side and they could become an ally and trading partner of the U.S. Why not?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and you can trace the roots of this back to the Marshall Plan, when in 1947, post-World War II, Secretary of State George Marshall said, hey, we got to rebuild Europe and put a lot of money into that.

Speaker 2 I think it was about $175 billion in today dollars.

Speaker 2 And he claimed at the time that it was, quote, not directed against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos, which is partly true.

Speaker 2 But what was also true was the Marshall Plan was to stop the Soviets and stop Stalin from going in further to Europe. And like we said, sort of plant the American flag over there in a way.

Speaker 2 And this was one of the tools. U.S.AID was one of the tools, one of the bigger tools during the Cold War to establish our influence as like a country that's trying to do good.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this was helped along. I think the Marshall Plan was 1947.
Did you say that? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Like later on in the 50s, it was helped along by a couple of MIT economists, Walt Rostow and Max Milliken.

Speaker 3 And they basically said, this Marshall Plan that we used to rebuild Europe and keep countries from falling into the hands of the Soviets and communism, this is a good idea, even outside of the context of rebuilding after World War.

Speaker 3 This should just be part of American policy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and Kennedy liked this idea eventually so much. Senator Kennedy at the time would hire Walt Rostow as a policy advisor on his staff.

Speaker 2 And when he was elected president, he appointed him as his deputy national security advisor. And Kennedy, before, you know, when he was a young congressman, he was, he was not into foreign assistance.

Speaker 2 He was like, America first, we got to help ourselves first. But then he went on a seven-week congressional trip in 1951 to Pakistan, Israel, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Korea, Japan, and

Speaker 2 what is now Vietnam, French Indochina at the time. And he was like, you know what?

Speaker 2 I'm all for the military, but it can't just be a military exercise. We got to have an economic stake in this.
and we got to do that through foreign aid.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there was also a book that helped change his mind a few years later, The Ugly American. It was published in 1958.

Speaker 3 It was a bestseller, and essentially it was a fictionalized version of the experiences of the authors as diplomats in pre-war Vietnam. And

Speaker 3 it almost satirizes American diplomacy at the time, which was you had diplomats who were at parties with other diplomats diplomats in gated communities way far away from the people of the country they were trying to serve.

Speaker 3 And these guys argued, no, you need to immerse yourself in it. You need to learn the language.
Like, you have to

Speaker 3 find out what these people really need, or else all you're doing is patronizing them and wasting money. And it had a huge impact

Speaker 3 on America in general, but also Kennedy, who is like,

Speaker 3 this is my North Star here in guiding how foreign policy in America should go. And he even took out a page in the New York Times, a full-page ad saying, this is

Speaker 3 a great

Speaker 3 book.

Speaker 3 How is that?

Speaker 2 It was pretty good.

Speaker 2 This, you know, shortly thereafter in 1959, when Cuba falls to Castro, all of a sudden it's like, hey, this is literally happening right

Speaker 2 outside our back door. So the time is now.
He didn't create the idea for foreign aid.

Speaker 2 We had programs at the time, Food for Peace, the Development Loan Fund, and others, but Kennedy was the one in March of 1961 to wrap that all up,

Speaker 2 tie a bow on it, and say, here, Congress, this is U.S. aid, and

Speaker 2 this is a new program along with the Peace Corps that we're creating that like the great ambitions that America should pursue. And Congress got on board.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and one of the big things that he pushed for with the creation of U.S. aid in particular was five-year budgets.

Speaker 2 Ha, good luck.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so foreign aid up to that point, and then after that point, because he didn't get the five-year budgets he was looking for,

Speaker 3 the USAID budget was tied to annual federal budgets. And so it was, you know, it suffered the vagaries of congressional fights over budgets that happened every year.

Speaker 3 But the point was: the reason Kennedy wanted a five-year budget was because if his USAID people were going to these countries that were like, Should we go communist or democratic?

Speaker 3 Um, they they needed to come to them and say, Hey, you're

Speaker 3 sympathetic to democracy, you're running for president, here's what we can do for you that you can actually build a platform around because we're going to guarantee that you're going to get this funding X number of dollars for five years because we want this country to be a democracy and we want to make you the leader of the democracy any way we can.

Speaker 3 Um, and Congress was still like, no, we're not going to do that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I feel like that's a good time for a break. And we'll come back and talk about some successes of USAID over the years right after this.

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Speaker 2 All right, so we're back. And as promised, we're going to talk about some of the success stories of USAID over the years.

Speaker 2 More than half of our funding for USAID in the 1960s went towards something we talked about quite a bit over the years here and there called the Green Revolution,

Speaker 2 which was a campaign

Speaker 2 led by Dr. Norman Borlaug, a hero to many in history, to fight hunger in Asia by saying, hey, let's modernize your agricultural practices.
Let's bring them into the new age

Speaker 2 with your irrigation techniques, fertilization techniques,

Speaker 2 how to rotate crops, getting you better crop yields, even when it's a drought going on. And he was very, very successful at this and changed the world.
And this ran through USAID.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 today's estimates put the number of lives that Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution and USAID for overseeing this program saved was probably about a quarter of a billion people.

Speaker 3 So right out of the gate, one of the first things USAID does is save a quarter of a billion lives from starvation. Yeah.
That's good enough.

Speaker 3 But at the same time, Chairman Mao is pushing the great leap forward in China, where he's completely restructuring the agricultural industry, taking a ton of peasant farmers, putting them in iron and steel factories, and drastically limiting the food supply so that 45 million Chinese citizens die

Speaker 3 in three years.

Speaker 3 So people were able to look around and be like, wow, this communist idea really didn't work. This USAID idea worked really well.
Tell me a little more about USAID.

Speaker 3 And Chuck, I feel like I should also say, it's just come to me. Yumi used to work for Peace Corps, not as a Peace Corps volunteer, but as like one of the people in the home office.

Speaker 3 And I told her we were recording on USAID and she pointed out very quickly it's USAID.

Speaker 3 So we've been saying USAID this whole time. Apologies to everybody.
I say we just keep saying USAID.

Speaker 2 I think most people say USAID and I identify it as USAID, so I think that's fine.

Speaker 3 Okay, good. It's just Yumi who calls it USAID?

Speaker 2 No, no, no, no. I'm just saying

Speaker 2 I think we'll be forgiven because most people read that as USAID and they know what we're talking about.

Speaker 3 Gotcha. Okay.

Speaker 2 One of the ones I want to mention, well, I mentioned earlier the initiative launched by President Bush in 2003, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and what a success that has been.

Speaker 2 But the one that really gets me is smallpox.

Speaker 2 This was a deadly disease in the 1960s that was killing kids all the world.

Speaker 2 And we eradicated that thanks to USAID.

Speaker 3 How's that?

Speaker 3 Very nice.

Speaker 2 Partnering with the CDC to establish an anti-smallpox campaign in each country where it was a big, big problem. And they have saved over the past 11 years by completely eradicating smallpox basically

Speaker 2 millions of lives every single year.

Speaker 3 Yes, and the only two places in the world where you can find smallpox on the planet today is in Siberia and Atlanta. Yeah.

Speaker 3 That's right. Talking about saving lives, not just from, like you said, PEPFAR and from smallpox, but the U.S.
AIDS taking on tuberculosis has saved an estimated 58 million lives since 2000.

Speaker 3 And I believe that estimate was either from 2017 or 2020. So it's probably higher than that by now.

Speaker 3 And then malaria, too. I think they estimate that since 2000, the President's Malaria Initiative under USAID has saved nearly 12 million lives.

Speaker 3 And that in countries where the President's Malaria Initiative exists, there's been a 48% decline in malaria deaths on average.

Speaker 3 So like they're literally saving actual lives by going in and being like, oh, this is a real problem. Let's fund the people who are working to combat this in the place that we're where it's a problem.

Speaker 3 And it's having these like

Speaker 3 demonstrable effects, like positive positive effects, like saving people's lives. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And they had their little American flag patch on the whole time. People know exactly where it's coming from.

Speaker 3 That's right. They don't put that Canada flag on their backpack and lie to everyone.

Speaker 2 Man, that was even a thing when I traveled Europe in the mid-90s. Yeah, for sure.
It was a Canadian flag because they were like, we're not American. Please don't be fooled by my accent.

Speaker 3 Right, exactly. I have no love for Bill Clinton.
I don't even know who that is. Why would I even bring up Bill Clinton?

Speaker 2 We said said we were going to cover this even-handedly, and we, you know, there have been plenty of criticisms and controversies over the years with USAID.

Speaker 2 I guess, which one should I talk about?

Speaker 3 How about this one?

Speaker 2 It's not a perfect program. There have been all kinds of what you would call a devil's bargain over the years trying to fight communism,

Speaker 2 one of which was,

Speaker 2 you know, we've talked in the past about CIA-engineered coups across the world to topple dictatorial regimes. Foreign assistance provided by U.S.

Speaker 2 aid was used a lot of times as a negotiating chip to basically

Speaker 2 win allies here and there. So that's, you know, maybe not the purest use of what it was set out to be.

Speaker 3 No, a good example of that is Afghanistan.

Speaker 3 U.S. AIDS involvement in Afghanistan after the U.S.
invaded

Speaker 3 is just widely considered a total disaster.

Speaker 3 Afghanistan received more than $100 billion in foreign aid from the United States, and something like 40% of it went directly to government officials, warlords, drug lords, insurgents who bought weapons with it and then fought the United States with it.

Speaker 3 Not a good look. And I found a statistic, too, that

Speaker 3 over 15 years, USAID spent almost $1.5 billion

Speaker 3 just on helping Afghan farmers transition from opium production to anything but opium, essentially. And the opium farmers in Afghanistan said, thanks a lot for the money.

Speaker 3 We're just going to use this instead to expand our opium production as it stands.

Speaker 3 And between 2013 and 2015, in Kandahar province alone, opium cultivation more than doubled, like 119% in two years, because of USAID money, which was now going not just to insurgents, but to create the heroin supply in the United States.

Speaker 2 Yeah, black eye on that one for sure.

Speaker 2 More recently, there was a company called Chemonics that was awarded the single largest contract ever from USAID. It was a $9.5 billion contract.

Speaker 2 And the goal there was to streamline delivery worldwide of medical supplies, you know, mosquito nets, contraceptives, vaccines, stuff like that. And it was very poorly managed by USAID.

Speaker 2 And there was Chemonix was involved with false reporting between them and their partners. And it was just a pretty big debacle.

Speaker 2 And, you know, USAID continued to pour money into it even as it was floundering, which, again, another stain on their reputation, which, you know, we say all this stuff to fairly report, but also to point out that like it makes it a really easy target when you can say, you know, we spent $9.5 billion on this thing that was mismanaged.

Speaker 2 And, you know, fraud like that is definitely something to root out. You know, no one's saying like that stuff's okay.

Speaker 3 And then, Chuck, there's one more terrible story of USAID dropping the ball that we just have to share. Can we?

Speaker 2 Take it away then.

Speaker 3 Well, there is a guy named Alan Gross, who I guess was an IT dude who was hired as a subcontractor for USAID to go to Cuba in 2009 and set up alternate access to the internet for the small Jewish community in Cuba there.

Speaker 3 A few things. USAID was illegal in Cuba at the time.
It probably still is.

Speaker 3 The government controlled access to the internet in Cuba, probably still does. And the Jewish community in Cuba did not ask for alternate internet access.
It was just thrust upon them.

Speaker 3 So Alan Gross was discovered and arrested as a spy

Speaker 3 because USAID sent him in there. The guy barely even spoke Spanish from what I read.

Speaker 3 And the United States had to trade three Cuban actual spies that they'd had since the 90s to get Alan Gross back from Cuba.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, I remember that.

Speaker 3 Do you remember that one? I do. It's just so nuts and just so misguided that I couldn't not include it.
Yeah, agreed. Yeah, let's talk about it being an easy target because

Speaker 3 the thing is, they have so many different things going on in so many parts of the world that inevitably some of them are going to turn out to be crooked or rotten or poorly managed or a waste of money.

Speaker 3 That's just, that's a given. Nobody's, I don't think, debating that.

Speaker 3 What I think is important is how the agency or N agency or anybody in that position responds to that kind of thing. Right.

Speaker 3 So there's been like a few examples of controversies that were non-controversies because USAID handled it really well. A big one was a USAID charity

Speaker 3 or a charity that USAID funded in Kenya, the Children of God Relief Institute, ran an orphanage for children in Kenya who had been affected by AIDS.

Speaker 3 And in 2021, USAID was told by a whistleblower that this charity was covering up rampant sex abuse of children in its orphanage.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the USAID Inspector General said that the Children of God Relief Institute, quote, knew or should have known of multiple incidents of child sex abuse.

Speaker 2 And USAID found out about this and they cut off funding in 2023 and told the Kenyan police, like, here's everything we have on this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's another kind of indirect service that USAID provides:

Speaker 3 they do high-quality international inspections of

Speaker 3 something like a single charity in Kenya, and then they share the information, the results of their inspections, their investigations.

Speaker 3 And sometimes it can bring criminal charges against people who were doing wrong.

Speaker 3 But really, USAID is making sure that their money is not being misspent or going to bad actors, but it has this other rippling effect that

Speaker 3 I think in some ways actually provides justice that otherwise might not have been provided.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, Jr.: Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 You know, another sort of annoying way that modern politics works in this country is the, you know, sort of homing in on a single

Speaker 2 either sound bite or just something that they know will be super grabby. And both sides do this.
I'm not like picking on any particular side here

Speaker 2 of, you know, of the way we absorb our content these days. And like a big example of this is, you know,

Speaker 2 we spent $50 million on condoms in Gaza. And that's just not true.
That's not what happened.

Speaker 2 But no one cares to know the truth, it seems like, as long as they can run that headline and tweet about it, you know?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's just bad info all around. The $50 million

Speaker 3 is, so this group was actually getting an injection of $100 million. They were getting it in 50 and then another 50 later.
So it wasn't even just $50 million. There was $100 million.

Speaker 3 It was going to a group called the International Medical Corps working in Gaza. They provide emergency medical services, and they do have

Speaker 3 a,

Speaker 3 there is some family planning that they provide, services they provide, but that includes way more than just contraception.

Speaker 3 And that's not anywhere near a focus of what they do in Gaza or anywhere else with their emergency medical services.

Speaker 3 And then to top it all off, the director of the International Medical Corps said, the money that we've already gotten, not a single dollar has been spent on condoms anyway.

Speaker 3 So this whole thing is just totally not just blown out of proportion, it's wrong. And yet, like you said, that's the soundbite that gets reported all throughout the news on any part of the spectrum.

Speaker 3 And it's just

Speaker 3 like, it's just such a bad time to

Speaker 3 take in information right now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's pretty depressing. I totally agree.

Speaker 3 Thanks.

Speaker 2 Should we take another break?

Speaker 3 Yeah, let's. We've got much more.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. We've talked about some highs and lows.
We're going to talk a little bit more about that and whether or not USAID is a good investment for the United States right after this.

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Speaker 3 So you said we were going to talk a little bit about a few more highs and lows.

Speaker 3 Just today, I would guess this was strategically released. the British medical journal, very respected British medical journal, The Lancet, released a report that said that since I think 2000,

Speaker 3 maybe 2002, I can't remember,

Speaker 3 an estimated 91 million

Speaker 3 preventable deaths have been prevented because of USAID funding.

Speaker 2 Pretty impressive. 91 million people?

Speaker 3 Yes. All right.
But, and this in like 20, 25 years, something like that. It's not since they started.

Speaker 3 But they also estimate that within the next five years, by 2030, about 14 million preventable deaths won't have been prevented because of the cuts to U.S. aid funding.
Right. Which is not good.

Speaker 2 No, it's not. And, you know,

Speaker 2 that kind of brings us to whether or not it's a good investment for the U.S.

Speaker 2 You know, we've kind of mentioned some of the highs and lows, and at its best, you are saving, you know, hundreds of millions of lives since its inception. At its worst,

Speaker 2 cost billions of dollars for

Speaker 2 dictators to line their pockets sometimes or criminals to get funded and arms get funded and drugs get funded.

Speaker 2 So it's a reasonable thing to put it under a microscope for sure.

Speaker 2 A little bit more about the budget.

Speaker 2 2024, the budget was $21.7 billion,

Speaker 2 which is 0.3 of the total federal spending, which is $6.8 trillion.

Speaker 2 0.3% compared to 4% for the Department of Education, also going away. And the Department of Defense at 13% compared to 0.3%.

Speaker 2 Since 1980, U.S. AID spending has increased 106%,

Speaker 2 while overall government spending has increased close to 200%.

Speaker 2 So it's not like it's even kept pace with our spending as a government overall since 1980.

Speaker 3 Right, right. And so that's the best you can do essentially when you try to talk about whether it's a good investment is point out how little we actually spend on it, right? Yeah.
You know, because

Speaker 3 it's basically impossible to calculate the return on investment because the return on investment is worldwide goodwill toward the United States.

Speaker 3 And the United States can be like, hey, you know that favor you owe me?

Speaker 3 I'm calling it in because we're putting a military alliance together or this giant American business wants to start doing business in your country, whatever it is.

Speaker 3 And that is actually something that made me curious about why Trump was so

Speaker 3 hell-bent on shutting down U.S. aid because it's not like he's not into people owing him favors.

Speaker 3 With USAID, it's an unwritten thing. Like you owe America favors now.
Like you're our friend, but it's not like we're just giving you money and it's just strictly goodwill, just strictly life-saving.

Speaker 3 That's the stated goal, but there's also an undercurrent there where like,

Speaker 3 if we call in a favor, you better, you better come to our help.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that, yeah, that is fairly perplexing. I never really thought about like that

Speaker 2 because, I don't know, kind of one of his things is leverage.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's a better way to put it.

Speaker 2 That keeps that leverage in place. So.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's very interesting. As far as what Americans think about this, this is a poll from Pew Research in 2019.
So it's a little bit bit old.

Speaker 2 It might be skewed a little bit differently now, but they thought it was kind of split, you know, 30, 30, 30. 30%

Speaker 2 or 33-ish percent thought that we should increase foreign aid spending. About 33% said we should reduce it, and about a third said we should keep it about the same.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so take that for what it's worth.

Speaker 3 Yeah, also, speaking of polls, apparently polls consistently show that Americans grossly overestimate how much the U.S. spends on foreign aid.

Speaker 3 Typically, Americans think we spend about 25% or a quarter of our national budget on foreign aid.

Speaker 2 That's staggering that people think that.

Speaker 3 Again, remember, we spend roughly 1%. I think it was 1.2% back in 2023.
So, like, just the difference in perception is nuts. I wonder how many people out there are like, wait, it's that?

Speaker 3 And we're not doing that anymore? I wonder if that's going to be an outcome of it or not.

Speaker 3 I also feel like, you know, we should wait and see what this America First Agency's policies and things are, if they reactivate some of these existing networks or infrastructure that USAID already had, or if they're just starting over from scratch.

Speaker 3 So I'm curious about that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, to insert my opinion here, because we are real humans and we have them.

Speaker 2 What frustrates me the most, I think, is that this idea, like you just said, like there are people out there that think we spend 25% of our money on other countries, which is a joke, that they will be like, you know how much better my life is going to be when we cut off funding to help these people around the world and help us instead?

Speaker 2 When that doesn't happen,

Speaker 2 and when their lives don't change at all in any way,

Speaker 2 I just wonder if anyone's going to look back and say, God, what a, what a, I mean, it might be 50 years from now.

Speaker 2 They're like, what a horrible thing that we did to not help the most vulnerable people of the world when people thought that all of a sudden their life was going to look better in the United States because we stopped saving the lives of others?

Speaker 3 I don't know. I feel like we've, as Americans, have really demonstrated the ability to do all sorts of mental gymnastics to support our point.
So who knows?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 3 One other thing that's

Speaker 3 a big problem with just rolling back USAID, especially so abruptly, is

Speaker 3 USAID is a thorn in autocrat sides around the world. Like if USAID, if you allow USAID to work in your country, you got to take what you like and what you don't like.
You can't, it's not a buffet.

Speaker 3 So USAID supports a lot of like pro-democracy groups and organizations in countries that are kind of short on democracy.

Speaker 3 And now those groups are going to be left without funding, also very importantly, left without implicit American support for them and

Speaker 3 them not being abused or their human rights being abused. And they're basically just being left out to dry.
And autocrats are going to be able to do more of what they do.

Speaker 3 So it is very much a blow to global democracy as well to just lose U.S. aid.
And

Speaker 3 there is one more thing that is causing concern among people who are concerned about this, and that is that this is going to leave a vacuum around the world in foreign aid that China in particular is going to be happy to step in and fill.

Speaker 3 So they will be the ones growing growing influence around the world and they're already at it actually.

Speaker 3 The U.S. spent 3.8 trillion remember in foreign aid over the last 80 years since World War II.
China has spent 1 trillion already just in the last 12 years.

Speaker 3 So not only will we be losing our ability to make and keep friends,

Speaker 3 we'll be giving our biggest rival a chance to gain even more.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 And, you know, if you're if you're, depending on what side of the, the fence you're on with this, you might think, hey, guys, you didn't talk about this, this, and this, and, and those were all bad programs.

Speaker 2 Uh, are there other people that might say, you didn't talk about this, this, this, and those are all great programs distributed through USAID.

Speaker 2 And that, you know, we just don't have hours and hours to go over every single thing.

Speaker 2 We tried to cover a little bit of both.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I feel like it's worth saying then

Speaker 3 There are like you is especially if you are critical of America's influence around the world and especially the underhanded version of it, USAID is very much involved in that.

Speaker 3 So if you're critical of that, you are probably critical of USAID and you're probably not exactly shedding a tear for USAID being rolled back.

Speaker 3 That's definitely one point of view out there.

Speaker 3 I think if we're talking about trying to be fair here,

Speaker 3 I think that's an important thing to point out. Yeah, for sure.
So USAID, I think hopefully we've presented enough info that you can make up your own mind. We certainly respect you trying to do that.

Speaker 3 Don't just listen to us. And of course, that means it's listener mail.

Speaker 2 Yeah, since Josh just said, don't listen to us.

Speaker 3 I think that's a good rule of thumb, right?

Speaker 2 Great advice from a podcaster.

Speaker 2 Hey, guys,

Speaker 2 this is another Chuck correction. It was kind of on both of us, I guess.
Okay. Hey, guys, long time listener.
Really enjoy the variety of topics.

Speaker 2 For the first time in 10 plus years, I feel compelled to write in and ask for a correction.

Speaker 2 During the Sunset Boulevard episode Tangent, you guys were talking about American Graffiti and surmised that it was based on the Sunset Boulevard

Speaker 2 cruising zone. That is not correct, guys.
I never did this. American Graffiti is based on coming of age in Modesto, California.

Speaker 3 That's what we said.

Speaker 2 This is where George Lucas grew up, guys. The movie references a number of local streets, roads, and nearby cities.

Speaker 2 It was not filmed here, but it was definitely based on the car cruising culture of Modesto in the 60s. And I didn't know that Rich Ulm from Modesto Native.

Speaker 2 And I wish I had known that because I link Modesto in my mind to one of my top three modern bands of all time.

Speaker 2 Granddaddy out of Modesto.

Speaker 3 Oh, Granddaddy, yeah, they were great.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 I thought you were going to talk about Red Tail or Red Hawk beer.

Speaker 2 Oh, no, no, no. Is that a Modesto beer? Yeah, it's really good.
I'll have to try that.

Speaker 3 That's all I got. That was Rich?

Speaker 2 That was Rich Olm.

Speaker 3 Well, where were you when we needed you, Rich, when we were talking about it being set in L.A.?

Speaker 2 That's my question. Not a Modesto, because he said Modesto native, so probably not still a Modesto.

Speaker 3 No, it could still be a Modesto.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I figured he would say current Modesto resident, and here's where I live.

Speaker 3 Maybe.

Speaker 3 Maybe. Okay, well, either way, Rich, maybe you can email back in and let us know which is the case.
And while we're waiting for an email from Rich, we're also waiting for an email from you.

Speaker 3 You can send it to us at stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com.

Speaker 1 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Speaker 2 Guardian bikes have become one of the most sought-after gifts of the season and inventory is going fast, so don't wait. Join over a half a million families who've discovered the magic of Guardian.

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