Secretary of State Marco Rubio dropped a bombshell during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that has Washington insiders reeling.
Conservatives have long suspected it.
But Marco Rubio just left jaws on the floor when he confirmed this shocking foreign aid truth.
Rubio reveals the truth about foreign aid waste
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the Trump administration’s overhaul of what he accurately labeled the “foreign aid industrial complex” during a contentious Senate hearing.
In his testimony, Rubio revealed an absolutely staggering statistic about the efficiency of U.S. foreign aid under previous administrations.
“At USAID, 12 cents of every dollar was reaching the recipient,” Rubio told the committee. “That means that in order for us to get aid to somebody, we had to spend all this other money supporting this foreign aid industrial complex.”
Let that sink in for a moment. For every tax dollar Americans sent abroad in foreign aid, only 12 cents actually reached people in need. The rest – a whopping 88 cents – was consumed by bureaucracy, contractors, and administrative overhead.
This revelation confirms what the Trump administration has been saying all along – the bloated foreign policy establishment has been wasting billions in taxpayer dollars for decades.
Democrats on the committee appeared visibly uncomfortable as Rubio methodically laid out the case for reform.
Trump administration leading historic reforms
Rubio emphasized that despite necessary reforms, the United States would continue to be the world’s leading provider of humanitarian assistance.
“Even with the reforms we put in place, and what we’re suggesting as changes to our foreign aid, we still will provide more foreign aid, more humanitarian support, than the next 10 countries combined, than the entire OECD. And far more than China,” Rubio stated.
The Secretary also dismantled the Democrat talking point that reducing foreign aid spending would somehow cede influence to China.
“China doesn’t do humanitarian aid. China does predatory lending. That’s what the Belt and Road Initiative is. That’s what all of their ‘aid’ is,” Rubio explained. “They have zero record of doing humanitarian aid in the world. And frankly, they don’t know how to do it. They have no interest in doing it.”
The former Florida Senator turned Secretary of State didn’t hold back in describing Chinese tactics: “What they’re very good at is going into some country, making you a loan, and then holding that debt over your head.”
State Department bureaucracy exposed
Rubio also revealed the absurd bureaucratic hurdles that had plagued the State Department for years.
“When I got a decision memo early on at the State Department, they would hand me these memos—there were 40 boxes on this piece of paper. That means 40 people had to check off ‘yes’ before it even got to me,” Rubio explained in frustration.
“That’s ridiculous. That takes too long,” he continued. “That’s why people said, ‘Don’t use the State Department. They take too long, and it’s too cumbersome.’ And if any one of those little boxes didn’t get checked, the memo didn’t move up the chain.”
This level of bureaucratic inertia explains why the State Department had become increasingly irrelevant in American foreign policy, with the National Security Council and other agencies taking the lead.
“The State Department had to change,” Rubio insisted. “It was no longer at the center of American foreign policy. It had often been replaced by the National Security Council or by some other agency of government.”
Reforms coming from within
Perhaps the most revealing part of Rubio’s testimony was his assertion that many of the proposed reforms are actually being driven by career officials within the State Department and USAID.
“Many of the reforms we’ve made were driven by people inside the building—many of whom have worked there for 20 or 30 years,” Rubio stated.
This undermines the media narrative that the Trump administration is somehow at war with the diplomatic corps. The truth is that many longtime public servants recognize the need for significant reforms.
Rubio emphasized that the administration’s reforms are not about isolationism or cutting America off from the world.
“It is not to dismantle American foreign policy. It is not to withdraw us from the world,” Rubio said. “I just hit 18 countries in 18 weeks. That doesn’t sound like much of a withdrawal.”
Rubio concluded with a powerful statement of the administration’s vision: “We are engaged in the world. But we’re going to be engaged in a way that makes sense, and that’s smart. And that isn’t about saving money. It is about ensuring that we are delivering to our people what they deserve—a foreign policy that makes America stronger, safer, and more prosperous.”
The Secretary’s testimony makes it clear that the Trump administration is committed to delivering results for the American people, not feeding the bloated foreign policy establishment that has squandered taxpayer dollars for decades.
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