Trump’s Plan To Bring the Hammer Down on the Deep State’s Foreign Aid,
By David Stockman
Hot damn!
Not only has Elon Musk brought the hammer down on the entirety of the Deep State’s foreign aid boondoggles, but his sleuths have apparently also uncovered one of the Swamp’s most pernicious artifices. To wit, numerous Federal agencies, including USAID, purchase a shit-ton of expensive subscriptions from beltway megaphones like Politico, which by pure happenstance, of course, favor their agency subscribers with a steady patter of “news” that tracks right down the UniParty fairway.
And we aren’t talking chump change. These “subscriptions” for the “pro” version of various Politico newsletters, for instance, come at $3,000 to $24,000 a pop. Since two of the latter were purchased by the climate crisis bureau over at USAID you have to wonder what that had to do with feeding the world’s starving masses or why USAID bureaucrats needed high-priced climate policy gossip when their inboxes were already flooded with free climate change propaganda from dozens of other Federal agencies, Federally-funded think tanks, NGOs and anti-fossil fuel activists.
As it happened, the tab across all Federal agencies just for the various Politico publications accumulated to $8.2 million over the past nine years according to USASpending.gov. Since most of that cash flow was due to purchase of the high-price “pro” versions, we can only imagine the “deep” insights that must be contained in the “Politico Pro Analysis” at $5,000 per year. Well, at least compared to the regular political gossip/news contained in the standard “Politico” subscription at $200 per year that a smattering of political junkies out in Flyover America apparently purchase.
Yes, we have a thing against Politico mainly because it almost always comes down on the side of more government, more climate crisis claptrap, more Nanny State meddling and more war. But we also recall that it was founded by two former Washington Post reporters—a fact that triggered a trip down memory lane with respect to the one and same foreign aid spending machine that Elon has now sent crashing.
To wit, shortly after the inauguration in 1981 we were finishing the first Reagan budget and had taken a pretty good 33% whack out of foreign aid in a proposal sent over to the State Department on January 27th. Yet the ink was hardly dry on OMB’s detailed and well justified plan to save what was big money back then—about $2.6 billion per year–when our confidential budget “pass-back” to the State Department found its way into a screaming front-page Washington Post headline the very next day!
The tone, of course, was that you pencil pushers at OMB don’t dare interfere with the august business of running the world from Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon on account of budgetary considerations. In fact, when we had our showdown over the matter with the Secretary of State in front of President Reagan the former had a truly goofy way of teeing up the matter.
Said former General Al (“I’m in charge here”) Haig,
“Mr. President, your bean-counting budget director wants to embarrass you before the entire world by having you rear-back and shove your head straight into a pencil sharpener!”
Honest injun. That’s what the man said, apparently on the belief that spending in service of the Empire was not a matter for green eye-shades to trifle with, as the lead paragraphs of the Washington Post story make clear
The Washington Post
Huge Cutback Proposed in Foreign Aid
Reagan’s Budget Director Proposes Huge Cutback in U.S. Foreign Aid
January 28, 1981
By John M. Goshko
President Reagan’s budget director, David A. Stockman, has proposed the biggest cutback of the U.S. foreign aid program since its inception in the aftermath of World War II. It would slice enormous chunks out of every phase of development assistance, tie it closely to American political interests and make it subsidiary to military aid
A plan completed Tuesday by Stockman’s Office of Management and Budget calls for slashing the $8 billion fiscal 1982 foreign aid proposal submitted to Congress by former president Carter by $2.6 billion to bring it down to $5.47 billion. A copy of the OMB proposal has been obtained by The Washington Post.
To accomplish the cuts, Stockman’s plan calls for drastically trimming every facet of nonmilitary aid: direct bilateral assistance to Third World countries, contributions to multilateral development banks, international organizations such as U.N. agencies, the Food for Peace program and the Peace Corps.
If pursued by the Reagan administration, the Stockman proposals are certain to trigger an outburst of fierce opposition from foreign aid supporters in Congress and the traditional U.S. foreign policy establishment, which regards the program as one of the most important tools for influencing events.
In particular, some informed sources said yesterday, it is likely to provide the first test of strength between Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr., who is surrounding himself with foreign policy moderates, and those on the far right side of the Reagan administration whose first emphasis is on draconian budget cutting and an unabashed “American First” approach to the conduct of foreign affairs.
Haig’s reaction to the Stockman plan is not known. But, the sources noted, if he accepts it in anything resembling its present form, he will be beginning his stewardship of the administration’s foreign policy effectively deprived of what all of his Republican and Democratic predecessors in the postwar period regarded as one of their most important policy tools.
As it happened, we mostly got rolled by what was already then the congealed UniParty consensus that America’s Homeland security depended upon the maintenance of an Empire abroad. Therefore massive amounts of humanitarian aid, development assistance and walking around money for foreign government allies in the developing world were part and parcel of that requirement.
To be sure, we did manage to wrestle Haig and his Deep State allies to a draw of sorts. That is, in today’s dollars of purchasing power (2024$) the foreign aid and state department operating budget posted at $33.7 billion in Jimmy Carter’s outgoing budget for FY 1980. By 1988, and despite all the internal resistance in the Reagan cabinet and end runs by the State and AID bureaucracies to the appropriations committees on Capitol Hill, the constant dollar foreign aid/state department budget had actually been reduced, albeit by a very modest 7% to $31.5 billion.
But that’s all she wrote. The same budget items today stand at $63 billion in the same constant dollars or more than double Reagan’s outgoing level. And that’s the case even though Haig’s main rationale for big spending on foreign aid—the need to counter Soviet machinations in the developing world—disappeared into the dustbin of history 34 years ago.
As it also happened, last time around the Donald naively filled his national security apparatus with Empire Firsters at the NSC, State, DOD and the intelligence agencies. Not surprisingly, when he reluctantly vacated the Oval Office in January 2021 the State/Foreign Aid budget had clocked in at $61.4 billion in constant dollars (FY 2024 $).
So in spending double what the Gipper had grudgingly agreed to under constant pressure from the Deep State national security apparatus, Donald Trump gave no indication during his first time around that he was an actual threat to the Deep State. And that’s notwithstanding the relentless attacks and opposition of the latter and its multiple attempts to defenestrate and ultimately impeach him.
Alas, this time around the barn the Donald may have turned Elon Musk loose out of a wanna be centi-billionaire’s crush on the world’s richest man, but whatever the motivation Musk has struck the gold we stumbled upon 44 years ago nearly to this date. That is to say, the whole complex of the State and USAID funds, which flow to the World Bank, the IMF, the various UN Agencies and literally thousands of NGOs and news agencies like Reuters, AP, the BBC, Politico and countless more are the mother lode of the Empire’s base camp on the Potomac.
Route that camp on the foreign aid budget and you will soon have the whole Deep State in a broad-based retreat as the entitled apparatchiks who populate it suddenly realize that their seeming permanent and ineffable grasp on unelected power has been shaken loose.
We can only hope that this time around the Donald realizes that if you can face down the dandies who run the soft side of the Warfare State, the 2024 election might actually mean something, and for the first time in more than four decades at that.
For removal of doubt, there is one thing Trump could do to ensure that this run at the foreign aid boondoggle is more successful than the one we tried 44 years ago. To wit, he could insist than an America First national security policy must focus tightly on an invincible nuclear deterrent and a powerful conventional defense of the North American coastline and airspace. But that it does not need an Empire nor a network of globe-spanning alliances and endless meddling in the internal economic and political affairs of distant lands that have no bearing on the homeland security and liberty of the American people.
In short, foreign aid does exactly nothing for true homeland security and should be eliminated entirely—lock, stock and barrel. That would reduce the bloated Federal work force by more than 10,000 bureaucrats in one fell swoop, and save upwards of $40 billion per year.
Moreover, there is a simple way to counter the beltway bleating about the defunding of programs to combat hunger, HIV/AIDS and diseases like cholera, malaria, and measles in the developing world. To wit, proclaim that all of these worthy efforts lie in the realm of philanthropy, not national security policy or the proper remit of government.
Accordingly, he could announce the establishment of a Humanitarian Help Fund and ask Bill Gates and the rest of the billionaire liberals class to each contribute $1 billion to the fund. That would shut them up right quick, especially if a large neon billboard were set up at the former USAID headquarters in the Ronald Reagan Building indicating the level of their contributions to date against the $1 billion target for each.
After all, there is no greater example of the mendacity of the UniParty consensus than the housing of USAID in the Ronald Reagan Building. While he held his nose on the aforementioned $30 billion budget, he never gave up his personal opinion that foreign aid is a giant rat hole. And we can attest to hearing that repeatedly and unhesitatingly.
Balance of Washington Post Story From January 1981
.…….Haig tentatively is scheduled to meet with Stockman and other senior administration officials tomorrow to discuss the aid question. At a news conference yesterday he paid obeisance to the need for budgetary austerity, but noted pointedly that foreign aid “can sometimes be a very cost-effective way” of ensuring the success of American policy goals.
Entitled “Foreign Aid Retrenchment,” the OMB document sets out as its underlying assumptions that “every major program should take some reduction,” that “bilateral aid has priority over multilateral aid programs” and that “security assistance has priority over development assistance.”
It goes on to conclude, “The primary impact of this proposal would be to eliminate or reduce U.S. participation in a range of multilateral organizations which are not responsive to U.S. foreign policy concerns. . . . The reductions in aid would mainly affect the poorer countries to Africa and the Asian subcontinent.
Bilateral development aid,” it continues, “could be concentrated on a small number of countries of key importance to the United States, perhaps at the loss of influence in countries of lesser importance.”
The Stockman proposals specifically argue that the United States should curtail sharply its contributions to the International Development Association, which is managed by the World Bank and which makes low-interest loans to the world’s poorest countries. Although the United States recently pledged $3.24 billion to the IDA for the 1981-83 period, the plan calls for Reagan to revoke the pledge and reduce the U.S. contribution by half.
In regard to other multilateral development banks, Stockman proposes that in 1981 the United States revoke its three-year pledge of funds to the African Development Bank, in 1982 stop replenishing funds of the International Fund for Agricultural Development and in ensuing years phase out its support for such other institutions as the Inter-American Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
The plan advocates big cutbacks of voluntary contributions to international organizations, and refusal to pay any unreasonable increased assessments. It specifically suggests U.S. withdrawal from the U.N. Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because of its “pro-PLO[Palestine Liberation Organization] policies and its support for measures limiting the free flow of information.”
In respect to the Food for Peace program (PL 480), Stockman’s proposal would eliminate U.S. loans to needy countries to cover food purchases from America. It would continue to put U.S. surplus food into the hands of voluntary organizations such as CARE and Catholic relief agencies.
In addition to calling for cuts in bilateral assistance administered by the Agency for International Development ($686 million below the Carter-proposed budget for fiscal 1982), the plan says that the Peace Corps’ volunteer levels should be cut by 25 percent, a move that would force it to reduce its activities sharply and eliminate service in some countries where it now is represented.
Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
Former Congressman David A. Stockman was Reagan's OMB director, which he wrote about in his best-selling book, The Triumph of Politics. His latest books are The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America and Peak Trump: The Undrainable Swamp And The Fantasy Of MAGA. He's the editor and publisher of the new David Stockman's Contra Corner. He was an original partner in the Blackstone Group, and reads LRC the first thing every morning.
Copyright © David Stockman
