Do Democrats even want to save money?
BY: JACK JURSNICH
Opinions Editor
The recent spending cuts to USAID have made a lot of Democrats mad. Senators and protestors were at the capitol the other day protesting against Trump’s decision to shut down the agency, and while they had a lot to say about people losing jobs and foreign aid being lost, they didn’t comment on why these cuts were made.
A list of cuts was published on the White House website. Here are a few examples: $1.5 million to “advance DEI in Serbia’s workplaces”; $2 million for sex changes in Guatemala; $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt; Hundreds of millions to “support heroin production in Afghanistan”; $2.5 million for electric cars in Vietnam. The list goes on and on.
Although I find it strange that none of these protesters and congress members want to comment on these cuts, I find their justification for other foreign aid to be beyond naive. According to NPR, one USAID employee was concerned that “it’s only a matter of time before Ebola breaks out of Uganda because USAID is not there.” Why is it America’s job to control Ebola in Uganda? Why can’t Uganda get it under control themselves?
I’m not saying that we should do away with all foreign aid, and neither is Trump according to Marco Rubio and Ro Khanna, but why are we taking over the duties of other countries while we have a debt to pay. Wouldn’t it make sense to get our own country under control first before lending a hand to others? Moreso, if we are to help another country, shouldn’t it be to get them on their own feet instead of being a leech to the US?
The decision to shut down USAID isn’t because we don’t want to help other countries, it’s because these countries are taking advantage of us, and all that money can be used to pay off our debt instead of funding terrorist groups and sex changes. If these countries want these things, then they either offer compensation or get it themselves, not piggyback off American tax dollars.
But I’m still not done with these protestors. Many of them are upset with Elon Musk being in charge of allocating federal funding, chanting things like “Nobody Elected Elon.” Sure, they may not have elected Elon, but it seems over half the country made a mandate for this kind of change. On that point, did anyone elect the people managing these funds? Did anyone vote for sex changes in Guatemala? Or electric cars in Vietnam? Yeah, I thought not, so what the hell are these Democrats talking about?
These senators and congress members do their best MLK impression to try to emotionally blackmail people into thinking that these funds actually went to something important. They yap about federal employees losing jobs, but unfortunately, that’s what happens when there’s debt to be paid. Congressman Maxwell Frost said that “Americans deserve transparency” but it’s funny, if Americans didn’t vote for Trump – along with Elon Musk – then I bet no one would have seen these funds in the first place.
So it strikes me as either ignorant or willfully naive for all these senators and protestors to act like Karens and get worked up over something that never benefited them. They can be upset by any withdrawal in foreign aid, but what they just don’t seem to understand is that all that aid could’ve gone to help them. The people have a right to decide where their tax dollars go, so why is our government quietly making that decision for us? Our country could be the most prosperous in the world, with the abundance to help others, but it will never happen if we continue to prioritize others over America first.
