The House Foreign Affairs Committee is seeking to trim the fat on State Department expenditures under the incoming administration, targeting programs that push a “radical agenda” abroad.
Chairman Brian Mast (R-FL) told reporters Thursday that he is leading a thorough examination of State Department financial allocations and grants under the exiting administration.
Mast said closed-door interviews with mid-level grant writers have shown him there exists a glut of questionable expenditures funding cultural and educational programs in foreign countries that are unwanted by the recipient nations and fail to further any meaningful U.S. interests.
“We see these grants come through — provocative ones like drag shows in Ecuador, atheism in Nepal, condoms for the Taliban. These are real things,” Mast said. “And it makes you wonder ‘Okay, who signs off on that? Where in the process do you actually tie that to a broader U.S. objective that we need to be paying for contraception for the Taliban? Where do you tie that to national security interests?’ It’s informative for them to talk about that, but also good for them to realize there will be a change coming.”
His remarks to the press follow a letter he filed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power criticizing the “accelerated pace
of proposed funding for controversial […] programs in the final days of the Biden Administration.”
“I cannot, in good faith, allow you to spend millions of dollars to combat climate change in the war-torn Middle East or fund LGBTQI awareness in Zimbabwe — both of which are among your recent proposals,” he told the officials in his letter.
He informed Blinken and Power in the document that the Foreign Affairs Committee would freeze the funding for these last-minute initiatives.
Mast wrote, “The rush to fund these and other controversial programs on the eve of a new administration contradicts President Biden’s pledge to conduct a smooth transition and undermines critical Congressional oversight of taxpayer dollars spent abroad. As such, I am invoking the long-standing precedent granted to authorizing and appropriating committees to place a hold on these funds before they are obligated.”
The chairman’s posture reflects a broader change in outlook espoused by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to head the Department of State.
Rubio told members of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee at his confirmation hearing this week that commitment to fostering a “liberal world order” and “one human family” has been a disaster for U.S. foreign interests.
“Out of the triumphalism of the end of the long Cold War emerged a bipartisan consensus that we had reached ‘the end of history.’ That all the nations of Earth would become members of the democratic Western-led community,” Rubio said in his testimony. “That a foreign policy that served the national interest could now be replaced by one that served the ‘liberal world order.’ And that all mankind was now destined to abandon national identity, and we would become ‘one human family’ and ‘citizens of the world.’”
“This wasn’t just a fantasy. It was a dangerous delusion,” he added.
Rubio is aligned with Trump’s vision for foreign diplomacy conducted with a “clear objective” and rooted in American self-interest — a rejection of more globalist worldviews seeking to export cultural values and secular democratic liberalism abroad for their own sake.
“President Trump returns to office with an unmistakable mandate from the voters,” Rubio told the Senate committee. “They want a strong America. Engaged in the world. But guided by a clear objective, to promote peace abroad, and security and prosperity here at home.”
If the Trump administration indeed tightens the focus of the State Department, expenditures such as state-sponsored LGBT activism and diversity training abroad are obvious targets to be cut.
Rubio expressed a similar concern as Mast abour the responsible use of taxpayer money, stating during his hearing that “under President Trump, the dollars of hardworking American taxpayers will always be spent wisely, and our power will always be yielded prudently, and toward what is best for America and Americans above all else.”
Regarding the possibility of layoffs or widespread overturn among State Department personnel, Mast said he did not want to speak out of turn — but that government employees should expect far tighter scrutiny on the scope of government projects.
“I don’t want to speak for the secretary [Rubio] and what it is he will do, and I can’t speak for these individuals if they decide it’s time to specifically hang it up. But if you have people who are writing grants nefariously supporting a radical agenda like doing drag shows […] and not tying things to U.S. national security interests, then they should be aware that we will be looking for that,” Mast said Thursday. “And we will be looking for creating authorities to make sure that their existence doesn’t continue in the State Department.”
The chairman said one interviewee outright acknowledged that many of these U.S.-funded programs are not desired or appreciated by the recipient countries. He told reporters that ambassadors from allied nations have encouraged him to cut back ideological projects that fail to meaningfully improve conditions.
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“If we’re not doing something that makes the U.S. the partner of choice, why are we doing it? If they’re looking for fish, why are we giving them chicken? If they’re looking for chicken, why are we giving them LGBTQIA-trans?” Mast said. “They’re putting these programs in place that are not literally tied to making the U.S. the partner of choice and they’re not literally tied to U.S. national security interest.”
Trump will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, with his Cabinet appointments to be voted on in the following weeks.
