Ernst: Eliminating $9 Billion of Waste in Washington

Over the past decade since my fellow Iowans sent me to Washington to make the big spenders squeal, I’ve been exposing waste, fraud, and abuse almost too insane to believe.

This week, I was proud to see some of that work deliver a win for Iowa taxpayers. Both the Senate and House passed the first Trump rescissions package to claw back $9 billion in wasteful foreign aid and funding for partisan propaganda masquerading as public broadcasting.

As a result of my years of oversight, I found that the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, is a rogue bureaucracy, operating with little accountability and even, sometimes, at odds with our nation’s best interests.

I uncovered countless examples of USAID’s questionable spending, including Ukrainian “economic assistance” that spent $203,000 to send models to fashion weeks, $148,000 on a pickle maker, a dog collar manufacturer fetched $300,000, and a custom carpet manufacturer rolled up $2 million.

That was just the tip of the iceberg for USAID’s world tour of waste.

$20 million was awarded to Sesame Workshop, which produces Sesame Street, to create content for Iraq, $2 million went toward promoting tourism to Lebanon, a nation the State Department warns against traveling to due to the risks of terrorism and kidnapping, and $67,000 was being spent to feed edible insects to children in Madagascar.

Perhaps the biggest head scratcher was the over $800,000 sent to China’s notorious Wuhan Institute of Virology to collect coronaviruses.

What exactly was our international development agency developing at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology?

If the CIA, FBI, and other experts are correct that the COVID virus likely originated from a lab leak, your tax dollars may have had a hand in a once-in-a-century pandemic that claimed the lives of millions.

There’s no shortage of other questionable USAID projects, but thankfully the rescissions package is ending this deep state operation.

The foreign assistance programs that do advance American interests are now being administered under the watchful eye of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

This includes projects caring for orphans and people living with HIV.

Imagine how much more good work like this could be done with the dollars that instead financed fashion shows, supported Sesame Street programs in Iraq, or ended up in China’s Wuhan Institute.

Overseas projects without merit are being ended and the tax dollars that were paying for them will be refunded.

Taxpayer subsidies to public broadcasting will also be cancelled.

Too often, these programs are partisan propaganda.

You don’t have to take my word for it.

A National Public Radio (NPR) senior editor recently confessed “It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent.”

He admits the organization has ZERO Republicans in editorial positions.

NPR and PBS have a right to say whatever they want, but they don’t have a right to force hardworking Iowans to pay for it.

Defunding this nonsense is causing a lot of squealing from the big spenders in Congress.

Washington insiders are more upset at this effort to stop wasteful spending than at the misuse of tax dollars.

With our national debt now exceeding $37 trillion, the real question we should be asking isn’t, “why is government spending being scrutinized?”

But rather, “why did it take so long?”

If we are ever going to get serious about our debt crisis, Congress needs to pass a rescissions bill like this every week.

I will continue leading the fight to make DOGE a lifestyle in Washington and put taxpayers first.

Joni Ernst, a native of Red Oak and a combat veteran, represents Iowa in the United States Senate.

Click here for an official portrait of Senator Ernst.

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