At a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO) questioned Sec. Marco Rubio about foreign aid cuts.
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00:00Secretary, these are the programs that are being cut in the USAID program.
00:04These are the ones that we are retaining.
00:07There are five columns on these sheets.
00:09I've reviewed a lot of these.
00:10I'm trying to make heads or tails of why these programs would be eliminated.
00:14I know that we are refocusing.
00:15That is great.
00:16National Security Investment Projects.
00:18I'm with you on that.
00:19There are five columns.
00:20Contract number, vendor name, contract title, description, estimated life, contract value, and obligations to date.
00:25Would it be possible to go through here and add a sixth column to let us know as a committee why programs are being terminated and why specifically some programs are being retained?
00:39Yeah, I mean, in some cases, programs are being canceled simply because we just don't view why that's in the national interest.
00:44Why are we funding some cultural program in some part of the world?
00:47We just don't think that's a core mission of the United States.
00:50So, I mean, we could elaborate more in a sixth column in that regard.
00:54Some of them we're not claiming fraud.
00:55We're just saying we shouldn't be spending money on that.
00:57I mean, I was reading the list here a moment ago.
01:00I probably put it away, but there are a bunch of programs here that I would ask myself.
01:03I mean, do we really need to spend – I'll give you one example here.
01:06Do we need $7 million for the American Bar Association to promote the resilience of the Eurasian legal sector and civic society?
01:14So, I would say that's – I don't know why that's in our national interest.
01:17I can put a column that –
01:18I'm in total agreement with you.
01:20We are.
01:21We want to work with you.
01:22We want to fund the programs that need to be funded.
01:27We want to fund the State Department.
01:28We want to help you.
01:29But we need help from you.
01:31Would you commit to having your senior official staff spend some time with us and our staff
01:37and our committee staff going through these spreadsheets so that we can more in detail understand where you're coming from?
01:43Yeah, absolutely.
01:44Thank you, sir.
01:45Appreciate you.
01:46Mr. Torres, you're the one between the secretary and the last –