Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon reports on a disturbing new audit.
Just 40 percent of the $110 billion the United States has invested into global HIV/AIDS prevention since 2003 actually went toward on-the-ground deliveries of life-saving medical supplies, with at least two recipients using more than $30 billion in taxpayer money to pay “exorbitant” executive salaries and push “leftwing ideology,” a State Department audit found.
When the Trump administration unveiled its “America First Global Health Strategy” earlier this month, it contended the nation’s “foreign assistance programs are deeply broken” and often plagued by fraud, mismanagement, and waste. An internal State Department review of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) found around 60 percent of America’s investment is lost to overhead costs, steep executive salaries, and in some cases, radical programming that has included a “Transgender Day of Remembrance” and a “decolonizing development series,” according to internal documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
“The United States’ health foreign assistance programs are inefficient,” the State Department said in its publicly available review of U.S. foreign assistance. “Data shows that only about 40% of PEPFAR’s budget goes directly to finance on-the-ground service delivery, specifically health commodities and health workers. Of PEPFAR’s $4.7 billion bilateral budget, only approximately $1.0 billion goes to support medical commodity purchases and their related transport and delivery.”
The Trump administration temporarily froze the $6 billion Congress authorized for PEPFAR’s fiscal year 2025 budget during its halt on foreign aid earlier this year before releasing $2.9 billion last month. While mainstream media outlets like CNN and the New York Times have published dire warnings about the State Department’s effort to rein in spending on foreign assistance programs, citing those who work for organizations that receive PEPFAR aid to claim the cuts will hamper their ability to deliver life-saving services, those stories do not yet account for the administration’s recent findings.
