White House national security adviser Michael Waltz on Sunday defended President Donald Trump’s plan to shut down the country’s chief foreign aid agency, contending that “all too often” it was not aligned with U.S. strategic interests and wastes money.
Waltz told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the U.S. Agency for International Development programs, often food and humanitarian assistance across the world, “are not in line with strategic U.S. interests like pushing back on China. They’re doing all kinds of other things that frankly, aren’t in line with strategic interests or the president’s vision.”
Moreover, he said, “Often, all too often, only cents on the dollar actually makes it to people in need, between the big contractors, the subcontractors, the local contractors, the dollars aren’t being used … wisely. We need to take a hard look at it. We need to move quickly, and that’s exactly what’s being done.”.”
Trump this past week ordered the 10,000-worker agency shut down with fewer than 300 of them expected to eventually be retained as the agency’s programs are either shifted to State Department control or terminated.
A federal judge in Washington on Friday ordered a temporary halt to plans to pull thousands of USAID staffers off the job.
On the same day, workers pried the name of the agency letter by letter off the entryway of its headquarters in Washington.
Democrats in Congress have been critical of the changes regarding USAID, with some pledging to stall Trump’s Cabinet nominees and leverage their votes on a new government spending bill, in protest.
The effort to shut down USAID was the most visible result of Trump dispatching billionaire Elon Musk and his aides to review programs and the legitimacy of spending at dozens of federal government agencies.
Trump offered virtually all the government’s 2.3 million civilian workers a chance to resign and continue to get paid through Sept. 30 without working, but a federal judge paused the offer until he holds a new hearing Monday afternoon on its legality.
The White House said 65,000 workers, 2.8% of the government’s civilian workforce, accepted the offer to quit and be paid not to work, far fewer than the 5- to 10% figure Musk and his cost cutters were hoping for.
Trump said all government agencies would be subject to financial reviews, including one of the biggest targets, the Defense Department, where Musk has billions of dollars of contracts.
Waltz said a review of Pentagon spending was especially necessary.
“Everything there seems to cost too much, take too long and deliver too little to the soldiers… we do need great minds, and we do need business leaders to go in there and absolutely reform the Pentagon’s acquisition process,” he said.
Waltz, a former congressman from the southern state of Florida, said, “I, as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, held up a bag of bolts that would cost 100 bucks … in a hardware store, that cost $90,000 to the United States Air Force and the American people have said enough, enough with the bloat and the waste….”
“For our barracks and our soldiers, we need all the efficiency we can get in the Pentagon, and I think the American people and the soldiers will welcome” a spending review, he said.”
On another matter, Waltz said “sensitive conversations” are occurring on how to end Russia’s nearly three-year war on Ukraine.
“We will have our secretary of state, our secretary of defense, our vice president, our special envoy in Europe this week talking through the details of how to end this war,” Waltz said. “And that means getting both sides (to) the table.”
Waltz said the discussions would include future U.S. aid to Ukraine, possibly in exchange for Kyiv supplying the U.S. with its rare earth minerals — necessary for the manufacture of high-tech goods.
“Those conversations are going to happen this week. And I think an underlying principle here is that the Europeans have to own this conflict going forward,” Waltz said. “President Trump is going to end it. And then in terms of security guarantees, that is squarely going to be with the Europeans.”