Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a critic of wasteful spending, led the hearing on Eliminating Waste by the Foreign Aid Bureaucracy on Thursday, probing the government’s funding programs.
Paul, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is responsible for “prudent oversight of the entire government, including its spending of taxpayer dollars,” highlighted specific instances of foreign spending that he deemed “reckless.”
“Our country is $36 trillion in debt, yet we continue to send billions of dollars overseas, often funding projects that are not just useless but, in many cases, actively harmful,” Paul said in his opening remarks. “Taking the path to fiscal responsibility is often a lonely journey, but thanks to Elon Musk and DOGE, they’ve brought to light the waste I’ve been highlighting over the last decade.”
For years, Paul has been the preeminent tracker of wasteful government spending. He releases his findings annually in his Festivus Report, which typically notes some of the most outlandish programs the U.S. government funds. This year’s revelations featured the ominous fiscal reality that the government will add “over $6.4 billion of debt every single day for the next 10 years, borrowing over $268 million every hour, $4.5 million every minute, and over $74,401 every second.”
Some of the spending involved foreign aid programs, which Paul noted in his remarks. He then provided a list of the millions of dollars the U.S. government spent in foreign countries.
“Let me give you just a few examples of what these unelected bureaucrats are spending your hard-earned money on,” Paul said.
Among the expenditures were $4.8 million for Ukraine’s public affairs office, funding social media influencers, $2.1 million for border security enhancements in Paraguay, $2 million spent by the U.S. Agency for International Development on transgender surgeries, hormone therapy, and gender-affirming care in Guatemala, an unspecified amount to send Ukrainian women-led designers to the Paris Fashion Show, $3 million on promoting “girl-centered climate action” in Brazil, $20 million to produce a “Sesame Street show” in Iraq, $6 million spent by USAID on promoting sustainable tourism in Egypt, and another $87.9 million “to help Afghans farm poppy.”
“We need to ask a simple question: Why are we borrowing to send money overseas?” Paul asked.
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The senator hypothesized that the country could save billions by auditing its spending on other countries. Furthermore, he suggested that doing so could significantly decrease the national debt and “take care of the American people — the very people who actually pay these taxes in the first place.”
“It is time for real change,” Paul said. “America should not continue to be the world’s piggy bank. It is time to end the waste of the foreign aid bureaucracy.”
