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Senator Ernst touts cuts to USAID in $9 billion recissions package
The U.S. Senate is debating a package of $9 billion in federal budget cuts, carrying out many of the cuts identified by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. Iowa Republican Joni Ernst has been leading the Senate’s DOGE Caucus.
“Overseas projects without merit are being ended and the tax dollars that were paying for them will be refunded,” Ernst said, “if the Senate passes the recissions bill.”
During remarks on the Senate floor, Ernst called the U.S. Agency for International Development a “rogue bureaucracy,” that operated with little accountability. The Trump Administration took moves in March to shut down the agency, and USAID officially closed its doors at the beginning of this month.
“Money intended to alleviate economic distress in war-torn Ukraine was spent sending models and designers on junkets to New York City and ‘Fashion Weeks’ in Paris and London,” Ernst said, “at a cost of more than $203,000.”
Ernst pointed to other USAID spending in Ukraine, including $2 million for a custom carpet maker and $300,000 to a dog collar manufacturer. “Two million dollars went toward, get this folks, promoting tourism to Lebanon — a nation our very own State Department warns against traveling to,” Ernst said.
Ernst said there’s “no shortage of questionable spending” by USAID. “President Trump is putting an end to this ‘Deep State’ operation,” Ernst said. “The foreign assistance programs that do advance American interests are now being administered under the watchful eye of Secretary (of State) Marco Rubio.”
Ernst also cites the recission bill’s cancellation of $1.1 billion in taxpayer support of public broadcasting networks. “NPR and PBS have a right to say whatever the heck they want,” Ernst said, “but they don’t have a right to force hard-working Americans to pay for their political propaganda being masked as a public service.”
Once Senate debate ends, the bill appears poised to pass, with Vice President J.D. Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. There were some procedural votes leading up to today, and Vance’s vote was necessary after three Republican senators joined Democrats in seeking to block debate of the bill.
