What was the purpose of USAID?

USAID has saved tens of millions of lives across the globe since its inception. But those days are over. Learn all about this soon-to-be-gone program. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:05Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:15Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, another timely topical edition of Stuff You Should Know, like I just said.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  That's right. As it turns out, weirdly, super timely, because as of this recording date, yesterday, this is July 1st, yesterday, June 30th, will have been the, kind of the final day for most USAID employees.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  I saw a headline yesterday in the New York Times where-

• 1:48Josh Clark?

  Bono cries.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, Bono kind of probably did cry. But people like President George W. Bush and President Obama and Bono all got together and said, hey, you know, USAID did so much good work. We're very proud of the work we did. George W. Bush in particular was, was proud of the program that started under his watch, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, that he initiated that saved 25 million people's lives.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  President Obama said, I wish I could do a good Obama. He said, ending USAID would go down as a colossal mistake. Ending your presence in your programs out in the world, and this was directly to employees. They did like video messages. That's why it's in that, you know, person.

• 2:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think they actually had a video call too for them.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Ending your presence in your programs out in the world hurts the most vulnerable and it hurts the United States. To many people around the world, USAID is the United States. And then I got to read Bono's quote, because, you know, why not?

• 2:49Josh Clark?

  Before you do, I just want to say, like, you nailed the Obama with the, uh, in the middle of it.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Bono said, "It's not left-wing rhetoric to feel hungry, heal the sick. If this isn't murder, I don't know what is."

• 3:03Josh Clark?

  That was a pretty good Bono.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was more of a Larry Mullen Jr., but we say all that because, you know, I'm not really sure whether or not we should speak in the past tense on this with a lot of this stuff.

• 3:13Josh Clark?

  Well, today's the day. So like you said, yesterday was the last day that USAID existed as an independent agency in the US federal government. Today's the day that it got absorbed into the State Department. And I believe also today, the State Department Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the former senator from Florida, announced that there is going to be some sort of new foreign aid agency called America First, which is a mind bender.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Is it really?

• 3:45Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Oh, that's funny.

• 3:47Josh Clark?

  So that it's not fully going away. It's just going to be restructured. They're going to be doing it differently. And it's really hard to say, it's really hard to get across how big of a deal it is that something like USAID specifically is being done away with wholesale. Just rolled up mothballed, done, really abruptly, really quickly. It's not being kind of slowly rolled back or anything like that. It just got its head cut off, right?

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Oh, right, yeah.

• 4:13Josh Clark?

  Within six months after it being announced, it was just... Done. And it's, it's of course, because we're talking about the United States, it's a political hot button issue. Everything is a political hot button issue. But this one should not be divided between the left and the right. Like, this is how America influenced the entire world for decades. Some of it was really bad. Some of it was really good. But I feel like me personally, it needed a lot of restructuring. But I think it was a good infrastructure, a good apparatus that just needed to be retooled. I think it was a little hamfisted, to say the least, to just stop it immediately.

• 4:57Josh Clark?

  That's my take on it.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. And for a second there, a few minutes ago, I thought you were gonna say, Marco Rubio said it was now called America, yeah.

• 5:08Josh Clark?

  Is that a Team America reference?

• 5:10Speaker 02

  I think, yeah, that was from that movie, right?

• 5:12Josh Clark?

  I think so. I hope so.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it was too. I saw there was a, who was it? There was a Democratic House member or senator the other day that was, as far as what you were talking about, and we're gonna get into the numbers here and the history of everything. But he was talking about, kind of what you were saying, was like, just kind of shuddering this, guys. If the, if the budget of the United States is the height of the ceiling of this room, and it was a big room, he said, the budget for USAID is these two credit cards stacked on each other.

• 5:42Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  And he said, you know, to, there has been waste in there, and there has been some fraud, and we're, we're gonna cover that stuff, because we like to be even-handed.

• 5:51Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  He said, and that's it at its worst, but at its best, you're shuddering something that costs so little money for us, that has saved tens of dozens of millions of lives of people. And not only just life-saving, but as you'll see, just influence for people around the world to, like Bono said, like, to some people around the world, USAID is America. And that's, like, they're the people that came in and helped us when we were at our most dire. That's the United States.

• 6:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. So hopefully, we'll kind of get it across. If you're already mad, you know, politically speaking, just settle down and listen, because we're not. We're not approaching this from like a no Obama's right kind of thing. It's like, like, just listen to this and make up your own mind. We're not going to try to steer you. We were just sharing our own opinions on it. We're allowed to have those because we're thinking, feeling human beings.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  That's right. All right. So, um, the US historically is the single humanitarian, the, the largest single humanitarian aid donor in the world. We supplied about 40% of humanitarian aid in 2024. As either the wealthiest or one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Foreign assistance falls into these broad categories when it, and again, this is all foreign assistance. USAID is within that, as we'll see, but humanitarian assistance is about 25% of it. And this is like, you know, medicine, uh, food and shelter to save people after epidemics and disasters and famine.

• 7:18Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Uh, development assistance is 60%. Those are programs installed to develop, um, democratic nations economically, politically, socially. And then the last smaller piece, smallest piece is security funding, 15%. It's not a part of the US military. There are programs to help strengthen, uh, foreign militaries and foreign police to, you know, get their act together and instill some sort of rule of law where there might not be any.

• 7:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and we don't want to be Pollyannaish about this. Like USAID identified the police and training and outfitting and helping financially the police in, uh, different countries is like the best way to tap into that local, um, that nation's like the pulse, keeping your pulse on that nation's local stuff, right? To, because the police are the ones who like suppress riots and suppress demonstrations. They're the ones who, um, arrest people, like bringing in the military is way too big of a deal. You could, the, the police can do it. So USAID definitely focused on training police. That was a big one, too. And that just kind of peels back the layer because right now, Chuck, let me just say this and I'll stop.

• 8:29Josh Clark?

  Um, there's a lot of really like sunny, glowing, like really, um,

• 8:37Josh Clark?

  Fairly, not fully realistic talk about USAID and what it does. It does a lot of this stuff, but it leaves out a lot of the darker side. And I think you, you have to take it as the whole thing to fully understand its value in the world.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And that's our aim here. But if you're talking about since World War II, we've distributed about $4 trillion in today dollars to foreign assistance, which is a lot of money. But like I mentioned earlier, with a little credit card metaphor that I ganked from that senator.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  As a percentage of our federal budget, foreign aid accounts for 1% of our total government spending.

• 9:16Josh Clark?

  And that's all foreign aid. The, the USAID's portion is 0.5%. So like just, just USAID has less than a percent of the federal budget.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's two, two credit cards laying on the floor.

• 9:31Josh Clark?

  You're right.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Maybe credit card wasn't the best thing to use.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Like insurance card or something, or that probably wouldn't have been good either. Library card, how about that?

• 9:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, don't talk about insurance.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, library cards are not controversial, right?

• 9:45Josh Clark?

  Um, yeah, a little bit controversial, sure.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  All right.

• 9:48Josh Clark?

  Especially school libraries.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Since 1961, most of this foreign aid has come through the US Aid Office, because that's when it was established, the US Agency for International Development, created by John F. Kennedy. And the idea was, as we'll see, was to create what he called, or what everybody calls, soft power around the world. Because it was a time during, you know, as you'll see during the Cold War, when the influences of the Soviet Union and China were, were worrisome. And Kennedy saw the writing on the wall and was like, hey, I think like we need to get in there before other countries get in there with their communism and spread our message of democracy by helping assist them.

• 10:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which is like totally in step with the containment policy of keeping communism in check and keeping it from spreading. Rather than using the military every time, you could also basically, you know, grease some palms around the world. And in these countries that were hanging in the balance in the Third World, you could sway them over the democracy side and they could become an ally and trading partner of the US. Why not?

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you can trace the roots of this back to the Marshall Plan, when in 1947, post-World War II, Secretary of State George Marshall said, hey, we gotta rebuild Europe and put a lot of money into that. I think it was about 175 billion in today dollars. And he claimed at the time that it was, quote, "not directed against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos," which is partly true. But what was also true was the Marshall Plan was to stop the Soviets and stop Stalin from going in further to Europe. And like we said, sort of plant the American flag over there in a way. And this was one of the tools. USAID was one of the tools, one of the bigger tools during the Cold War to establish our influence as like a country that's trying to do good.

• 11:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, this was helped along, I think the Marshall Plan was 1947, did you say that?

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:47Josh Clark?

  Like later on in the 50s, it was helped along by a couple of MIT economists, Walt Rostow and Max Miliken. And they, they basically said, this Marshall Plan that we use to rebuild Europe and, and keep countries from falling into the hands of the Soviets and communism, this is a good idea even outside of the context of rebuilding after a World War. This should just be part of American policy.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Kennedy liked this idea eventually so much. Senator Kennedy at the time would hire Walt Rostow as a policy advisor on his staff. And when he was elected president, he appointed him as his deputy national security advisor. And Kennedy, before, you know, when he was a young congressman, he was, he was not into foreign assistance. He was like, America first, we gotta help ourselves first. But then he went on a seven-week congressional trip in 1951 to Pakistan, Israel, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Korea, Japan, and what is now Vietnam, French Indochina at the time. And he was like, you know what, it's, I'm all for the military, but it can't just be a military exercise. We gotta have an economic

• 12:55Speaker 02

  stake in this. And we gotta do that through foreign aid.

• 13:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there was also a book that helped change his mind a few years later, The Ugly American. It was published in 1958. It was a bestseller and essentially it was a fictionalized version of the experiences of the authors as diplomats in pre-war Vietnam. And it almost satirizes American diplomacy at the time, which was you had diplomats who were at parties with other diplomats in gated communities way far away from the people of the country they were trying to serve. And these guys argued, no, you need to immerse yourself in it. You need to learn the language. Like, you have to, like, find out what these people really need, or else all you're doing is patronizing them and wasting money. And it

• 13:45Josh Clark?

  had a huge impact on America in general, but also Kennedy, who was like, this is my north star here in guiding how foreign policy in America should go. And even took out a page in the New York Times, a full-page ad saying, "This is a great book."

• 14:06Josh Clark?

  How was that?

• 14:07Speaker 02

  It was pretty good. This, you know, shortly thereafter in 1959, when Cuba falls to Castro, all of a sudden, it's like, hey, this is literally happening right outside our back door. So, the time is now. He didn't create the idea for foreign aid. We had programs at the time, Food for Peace, the Development Loan Fund, and others. But Kennedy was the one in March of 1961 to wrap that all up, tie a bow on it, and say, "Here, Congress, this is USAID, and this is a new program, along with the Peace Corps, that we're creating, that, like, the great ambitions that America should pursue." And Congress got on board.

• 14:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and one of the big things that he pushed for with the creation of USAID in particular was five-year budgets.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  Ha, good luck.

• 14:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so foreign aid up to that point and then after that point, because he didn't get the five-year budgets he was looking for. The USAID budget was tied to annual federal budgets. And so it was, you know, it suffered the vagaries of congressional fights over budgets that happened every year. But the point was, the reason Kennedy wanted a five-year budget was because if his USAID people were going to these countries that were like, should we go communist or democratic? They needed to come to them and say, hey, you're sympathetic to democracy. You're running for president. Here's what we can do for you that you can actually build a platform around because

• 15:44Josh Clark?

  we're going to guarantee that you're going to get this funding X number of dollars for five years because we want this country to be a democracy and we want to make you the leader of the democracy any way we can. And Congress was still like, no, we're not going to do that.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like that's a good time for a break and we'll come back and talk about some successes of USAID over the years, right after this.

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• 19:35Speaker 02

  All right, so we're back. And as promised, we're going to talk about some of the success stories of USAID over the years. More than half of our funding for USAID in the 1960s went towards something we talked about quite a bit over the years here and there called the Green Revolution, which was a campaign led by Dr. Norman Borlaug, a hero to many in history, to fight hunger in Asia by saying, hey, let's modernize your agricultural practices. Let's bring them into the new age with your irrigation techniques, fertilization techniques, how to rotate crops, getting you better crop yields, even when it's a drought going on.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  And he was very, very successful at this and changed the world. And this ran through USAID.

• 20:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So today's estimates put the number of lives that Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution and USAID for overseeing this program saved was probably about a quarter of a billion people. So right out of the gate, one of the first things USAID does is save a quarter of a billion lives from starvation.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:40Josh Clark?

  That's good enough. But at the same time, Chairman Mao is pushing the great leap forward in China, where he's completely restructuring the agricultural industry, taking a ton of peasant farmers, putting them in iron and steel factories, and drastically limiting the food supply. So that 45 million Chinese citizens die

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:05Josh Clark?

  in three years. So people were able to look around and be like, wow, this communist idea really didn't work. This USAID idea worked really well. Tell me a little more about USAID. And Chuck, I feel like I should also say, it's just come to me, Yumi used to work for Peace Corps, not as a Peace Corps volunteer, but as like, one of the people in the Home Office. And I told her we were recording on USAID, and she pointed out very quickly, it's USAID.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Well,

• 21:34Josh Clark?

  So we've been saying USAID this whole time. Apologies to everybody. I say we just keep saying USAID.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  I think most people say USAID, and I identify it as USAID. So I think that's fine.

• 21:44Josh Clark?

  Okay, good. It's just Yumi who calls it USAID?

• 21:47Speaker 02

  No, no, no. I'm just saying. I think we'll be forgiven because most people read that as USAID and they know what we're talking about.

• 21:54Josh Clark?

  Gotcha.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Okay. One of the ones I want to mention, well, I mentioned earlier, the initiative launched by President Bush in 2003, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and what a success that has been. But the one that really gets me is smallpox. This was a deadly disease in the 1960s that was killing kids all over the world, and we eradicated that thanks to USAID. How's that?

• 22:23Josh Clark?

  Very nice.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Partnering with the CDC to establish an anti-smallpox campaign in each country where it was a big, big problem. And they have saved, over the past 11 years, by completely eradicating smallpox, basically, millions of lives every single year.

• 22:40Josh Clark?

  Yes, and the only two places in the world where you can find smallpox on the planet today is in Siberia and Atlanta.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 22:48Josh Clark?

  Talking about saving lives, not just from, like you said, PEPFAR and from smallpox, but the US AIDS taking on tuberculosis has saved an estimated 58 million lives since 2000. And I believe that estimate was either from 2017 or 2020, so it's probably higher than that by now. And then malaria, too. I think they estimate that since 2000, the President's Malaria Initiative under USAID has saved nearly 12 million lives. And that in countries where the President's Malaria Initiative exists, there's been a 48% decline in malaria deaths on average.

• 23:32Josh Clark?

  So like, they're literally saving actual lives by going in and being like, oh, this is a real problem, let's fund the people who are working to combat this in the place that we're, that where it's a problem. And it's having these, like... Demonstrable effects, like positive effects, like saving people's lives.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they had their little American flag patch on the whole time. People know exactly where it's coming from.

• 23:54Josh Clark?

  That's right. They don't put that Canada flag on their backpack and lie to everyone.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  And that was even a thing when I traveled Europe in the mid 90s.

• 24:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Was a Canadian flag because they were like, we're not American. Please don't be fooled by my accent.

• 24:10Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly. I have no love for Bill Clinton. I don't even know who that is. Why would I even bring up Bill Clinton?

• 24:17Speaker 02

  We'd said we were going to cover this even handedly and we, you know, there had been plenty of criticisms and controversies over the years with USAID.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  I guess, which one should I talk about? How about this one? It's not a perfect program. There have been all kinds of what you call the devil's bargain over the years, trying to fight communism. One of which was, you know, we've talked in the past about CIA engineered coups across the world to topple dictatorial regimes. Foreign assistance provided by US aid was used a lot of times as a negotiating chip to basically win allies here and there. So that's, you know, maybe not the purest use of what it was set out to be.

• 25:01Josh Clark?

  No, a good example of that is Afghanistan. US aid's involvement in Afghanistan after the US invaded

• 25:11Josh Clark?

  is just widely considered a total disaster. Afghanistan received more than $100 billion in foreign aid from the United States. And something like 40% of it went directly to government officials, warlords, drug lords, insurgents who bought weapons with it and then fought the United States with it. Not a good look. And I found a statistic too, that over 15 years, USAID spent almost $1.5 billion just on helping Afghan farmers transition from opium production to anything but opium, essentially. And the opium farmers in Afghanistan said, thanks a lot for the money. Where's going to use this?

• 25:54Josh Clark?

  Instead to expand our opium production as it stands. And between 2013 and 2015, in Kandahar province alone, opium cultivation more than doubled, like 119% in two years because of USAID money, which was now going not just to insurgents, but to create the heroin supply in the United States.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, black eye on that one for sure. More recently, there was a company called Kimonyx that was awarded the single largest contract ever from USAID. It was a nine and a half billion dollar contract and the goal there was to streamline delivery worldwide of medical supplies, you know, mosquito nets, contraceptives, vaccines, stuff like that. And it was very poorly managed by USAID. And there was, Kimonyx was involved with false reporting between them and their partners. And it was just a pretty big debacle and, you know, USAID continued to pour money into it, even as it was floundering, which again, another stain on their reputation, which, you know,

• 27:01Speaker 02

  we say all this stuff to fairly report, but also to point out that like, it makes it a really easy target when you can say, you know, we spent nine and a half billion dollars on this thing that was mismanaged and, you know, fraud like that is definitely something to root out. You know, no one's, no one's saying like that stuff's okay.

• 27:19Josh Clark?

  And then Chuck, there's one more terrible story of USAID dropping the ball that we just have to share. Can we?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Take it away then.

• 27:29Josh Clark?

  Well, there is a guy named Alan Gross, who I guess was an IT dude, who was hired as a subcontractor for USAID to go to Cuba in 2009 and set up alternate access to the internet for the small Jewish community in Cuba there. A few things, USAID was illegal in Cuba at the time, probably still is. The government controlled access to the internet in Cuba, probably still does. And the Jewish community in Cuba did not ask for alternate internet access. It was just thrust upon them. So Alan Gross was discovered and arrested as a spy because USAID sent him in there. The guy barely even spoke Spanish from what I read.

• 28:12Josh Clark?

  And the United States had to trade three Cuban actual spies that they'd had since the 90s to get Alan Gross back from Cuba.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I remember that.

• 28:22Josh Clark?

  Do you remember that one?

• 28:23Speaker 02

  I do.

• 28:24Josh Clark?

  It's just so nuts and just so misguided that I couldn't not include it.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, agreed.

• 28:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's talk about it being an easy target because the thing is, is they have so many different things going on in so many parts of the world that inevitably, some of them are going to turn out to be crooked, or rotten, or poorly managed, or a waste of money. That's just, that's a given. Nobody's, I don't think, debating that. What, what I think is important is how the agency, or an agency, or anybody in that position responds to that kind of thing.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:00Josh Clark?

  So there, there's been like a few examples of controversies that were non controversies because USAID handled it really well. A big one was a USAID charity, or a charity that USAID funded in Kenya, the Children of God Relief Institute, ran an orphanage for children in Kenya who had been affected by AIDS. And in 2021, USAID was told by a whistleblower that this charity was covering up rampant sex abuse of children in its orphanage.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, the USAID inspector general said that the Children of God Relief Institute, quote, "knew or should have known of multiple incidents of child sex abuse." And USAID found out about this and they cut off funding in 2023 and told the Kenyan police, like, here's everything we have on this.

• 29:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's another kind of indirect service that USAID provides is they do high quality international inspections of something like a single charity in Kenya. And then they share the information, the results of their inspections, their investigations. And sometimes it can bring criminal charges against people who were doing wrong. Really, USAID is making sure that their money's not being misspent or going to bad actors. But it has this other rippling effect that I think in some ways actually provides justice that otherwise might not have been provided.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. You know, another sort of annoying way that modern politics works in this country is the, you know, sort of homing in on a single, either soundbite or just something that they know will be super grabby. And both sides do this, not like picking on any particular side here of, you know, of the way we absorb our content these days. And like, a big example of this is, you know, we spent $50 million on condoms in Gaza. And that's just not true. That's not what happened. But no one cares to know the truth, it seems like, as long as they can run that headline and tweet about it, you know?

• 31:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's just bad info all around. The $50 million is, so this group was actually getting an injection of $100 million. They were getting it in 50 and then another 50 later. So it wasn't even just $50 million. There was $100 million. It was going to a group called the International Medical Corps, working in Gaza. They provide emergency medical services. And they do have, there is some family planning that they provide, services they provide. But that includes way more than just contraception. And that's not anywhere near a focus of what they do in Gaza or anywhere else with their emergency medical services.

• 31:49Josh Clark?

  And then to top it all off, the director of the International Medical Corps said, "The money that we've already gotten, not a single dollar's been spent on condoms anyway." So this whole thing is just totally, not just blown out of proportion, it's wrong. And yet, like you said, that's the soundbite that gets reported all throughout the news on any part of the spectrum. And it's just, like, it's just such a bad time to...

• 32:14Josh Clark?

  Take in information right now.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's pretty depressing. I totally agree.

• 32:20Josh Clark?

  Thanks.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Should we take another break?

• 32:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's, because we've got much more.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we've talked about some highs and lows. We're going to talk a little bit more about that and whether or not USAID is a good investment for the United States, right after this.

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• 35:55Josh Clark?

  So you said we were going to talk a little bit about a few more highs and lows. Just today, I would guess this was strategically released, the British Medical Journal, very respected British Medical Journal, The Lancet, released a report that said that since, I think, 2000,

• 36:14Josh Clark?

  maybe 2002, I can't remember, an estimated 91 million preventable deaths have been prevented because of USAID funding. It's pretty impressive.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  91 million people?

• 36:26Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  All right.

• 36:28Josh Clark?

  But, and this in like 20, 25 years, something like that. It's not since they started. But they also estimate that within the next five years, by 2030, about 14 million preventable deaths won't have been prevented because of the cuts to USAID funding.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:48Josh Clark?

  Which is not good.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  No, it's not. And you know, that's like, that kind of brings us to whether or not it's a good investment for the US. You know, we've kind of mentioned some of the highs and lows, and at its best, you are saving, you know, hundreds of millions of lives since its inception. At its worst, it costs billions of dollars for, you know, dictators to line their pockets sometimes, or criminals to get funded, and arms get funded, and drugs get funded. So it's a reasonable thing to put it under a microscope, for sure. A little bit more about the budget, you know, 2024, the budget was $21.7 billion, which is 0.3 of the total federal spending,

• 37:32Speaker 02

  which is $6.8 trillion. 0.3% compared to 4% for the Department of Education, also going away, and the Department of Defense at 13% compared to 0.3%. Since 1980, USAID spending has increased 106%, while overall government spending has increased close to 200%. So it's not like it's even kept pace with our spending as a government overall since 1980.

• 38:02Josh Clark?

  Right, right. And so that's the best you can do, essentially, when you try to talk about whether it's a good investment, is point out how little we actually spend on it, right? You know, because the, it's so, it's basically impossible to calculate the return on investment, because the return on investment is worldwide goodwill toward the United States, and the United States can be like, hey, you know that favor you owe me? I'm calling it in, because we're putting a military alliance together, or this giant American business wants to start doing business in your country, whatever it is. And that is actually something that made me curious about why Trump was so hell-bent on shutting

• 38:47Josh Clark?

  down USAID, because it's not like he's not into people owing him favors. With USAID, it's an unwritten thing. Like, you owe America favors now. Like, you're our friend, but it's not like we're just giving you money and it's just strictly goodwill, just strictly life-saving. That's the stated goal, but there's also an undercurrent there where, like, if we call in a favor, you better, you better come to our help.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, yeah, that is fairly perplexing. I never really thought about it like that. Because, I don't know, kind of one of his things is leverage and-

• 39:21Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah, that's a better way to put it.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  That keeps that leverage in place. So, yeah, it's very interesting. As far as what Americans think about this, this is a poll from Pew Research in 2019, so it's a little bit old. It might be skewed a little bit differently now, but they thought it was kind of split, you know, 30, 30, 30. 30% or 33-ish percent thought that we should increase foreign aid spending. About 33% said we should reduce it, and about a third said we should keep it about the same.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, so take that for what it's worth.

• 39:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, also, speaking of polls, apparently polls consistently show that Americans grossly overestimate how much the US spends on foreign aid. Typically, Americans think we spend about 25% or a quarter of our national budget on foreign aid.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  That's staggering that people think that.

• 40:15Josh Clark?

  Again, remember, we spend roughly 1%, I think it was 1.2% back in 2023. So, like, just the difference in perception is nuts. I wonder how many people out there are like, wait, it's that and we're not doing that anymore? I wonder if that's going to be an outcome of it or not? I also feel like, you know, we should wait and see what this America First Agency's policies and things are. If they reactivate some of these existing networks or infrastructure that USAID already had, or if they're just starting over from scratch. So, I'm curious about that.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, to insert my opinion here, because we are real humans and we have them.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  What frustrates me the most, I think, is that this idea, like you just said, like, there are people out there that think we spend 25% of our money on other countries, which is a joke. That they will be like, you know how much better my life is gonna be? When we cut off funding to help these people around the world? And help us instead? When that doesn't happen?

• 41:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  And when their lives don't change at all in any way? Um, I, I just wonder if anyone's gonna look back and say, God, what a, what a, I mean, it might be 50 years from now. They're like, what a horrible thing that we did. Um, to not help the most vulnerable people of the world? When people thought that all of a sudden their life was gonna look better in the United States? Because we stopped saving the lives of others?

• 41:40Josh Clark?

  I, I don't know. I feel like we, as Americans have really demonstrated the ability to do all sorts of mental gymnastics to, to support our point. So who knows?

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 41:52Josh Clark?

  Um, one other thing that's a big, a big problem with just rolling back USAID, especially so abruptly? Is it, USAID is a thorn in autocrats' sides around the world. Like if, if USA, if you allow USAID to work in your country, you gotta take what you like and what you don't like. You can't, it's not a buffet. So USAID supports a lot of like pro-democracy groups and organizations in countries that are kinda short on democracy. And now those groups are gonna be left without funding. Also, very importantly, left without implicit American support for them and, um, them not being abused or their human rights being abused. And they're basically just being left out to dry.

• 42:36Josh Clark?

  And autocrats are gonna be able to do more of what they do. So it is very much a blow to global democracy as well as just lose USAID. And, and there is one more thing that is causing concern, uh, among people who are concerned about this. And that is that this is going to leave a vacuum around the world in foreign aid. That China in particular is going to be happy to step in and fill. Um, so they will be the ones growing influence around the world. And they're already at it, actually. Uh, the US spent 3.8 trillion, remember? In foreign aid over the last 80 years since World War II. China has spent 1 trillion already, just in the last 12 years.

• 43:19Josh Clark?

  So not only will we be losing our ability to make and keep friends, we'll be giving our biggest rival a chance to gain even more.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know, if you're, if you're depending on what side of the fence you're on with this, you might think, hey, guys, you didn't talk about this, this and this. And those were all bad programs. Are there other people that might say, you didn't talk about this, this, this? And those are all great programs distributed through USAID. And that, you know, we just don't have hours and hours to go over every single thing. We tried to cover a little bit of both.

• 43:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I feel like it's worth saying then, there are like you, especially if you're critical of America's influence around the world, and especially the underhanded version of it. USAID is very much involved in that. So if you're critical of that, you were probably critical of USAID, and you're probably not exactly shedding a tear for USAID being rolled back. That's definitely one point of view out there. I think if we're talking about trying to be fair here, that's, I think that's an important thing to point out.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 44:26Josh Clark?

  So USAID, I think, hopefully we've presented enough info that you can make up your own mind. We certainly respect you trying to do that. Don't just listen to us. And of course, that means it's listener mail.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, since Josh just said, don't listen to us.

• 44:45Josh Clark?

  I think that's a good rule of thumb, right?

• 44:47Speaker 02

  Great advice from a podcaster. Hey, guys, this is, this is another Chuck correction. It was kind of on both of us, I guess.

• 44:56Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Hey, guys, long time listener, really enjoy the variety of topics. For the first time in 10 plus years, I feel compelled to write in and ask for a correction. During the Sunset Boulevard episode tangent, you guys were talking about American Graffiti and surmise that it was based on the Sunset Boulevard, like cruising zone. That is not correct, guys. I never get this. American Graffiti is based on coming of age in Modesto, California.

• 45:22Josh Clark?

  That's what we said.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  This is where George Lucas grew up, guys. The movie references a number of local streets, roads in nearby cities. It was not filmed here, but it was definitely based on the car cruising culture of Modesto in the 60s. And I didn't know that Rich Ulm from Modesto Native. And I wish I had known that because I link Modesto in my mind to one of my top three modern bands of all time. Grandaddy out of Modesto.

• 45:49Josh Clark?

  Oh, Grandaddy. Yeah, they were great.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 45:53Josh Clark?

  I thought you were going to talk about Redtail or Red Hawk beer.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no. Is that a Modesto beer?

• 45:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's really good.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  I'll have to try that.

• 46:01Josh Clark?

  That's all I got. That was Rich.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  That was Rich Ulm.

• 46:05Josh Clark?

  Well, where were you when we needed you, Rich, when we were talking about it being set in LA? That's my question.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Not in Modesto because he said Modesto native, so probably not still in Modesto.

• 46:15Josh Clark?

  No, it could still be in Modesto.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I figured he would say current Modesto resident, and here's where I live.

• 46:21Josh Clark?

  Hmm, maybe. Maybe. Okay. Well, either way, Rich, maybe you can email back in and let us know which is the case. And while we're waiting for an email from Rich, we're also waiting for an email from you. You can send it to us at [email protected].

• 46:41Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, MyHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 46:57Josh Clark?

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