The cleanup of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), after the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) exposed massive amounts of wasteful and objectionable spending, appears to be nearing its end.

Following a review of USAID undertaken by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, roughly 1,000 programs, or just 18% of USAID’s work, will continue. Which means that nearly 83% of USAID programs will be eliminated.

As Rubio explained, “The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.” Rubio further thanked members of DOGE for working hard to help “to achieve this overdue and historic reform.”

DOGE chief Elon Musk observed that the cuts to USAID were “tough, but necessary,” noting that “the important parts of USAID should always have been with the Dept of State.”

An internal State Department memo noted that some 5,800 multi-year USAID projects costing an estimated $54 billion were being cut.

As noted, these cuts amount to a pittance in the grand scheme of the federal government’s annual spending. However, despite some objecting to eliminating them because of their small financial impact on the national debt, it’s the principle that matters.

Unfortunately, the federal government has long embraced the idea that spending is better than saving. This attitude is fed by the unfortunate truth that it’s easier to buy votes with spending than tell people what you didn’t do. It’s also based on the false notion that it doesn’t matter because it’s the government’s money. In reality, all government money is taxpayer money. Government employees work for the people, not the people for the government. In other words, how the federal government spends Americans’ tax dollars matters.

This is why USAID expenditures were so objectionable. In certain instances, they were literally funding anti-American ideology. The political Left effectively used the lack of financial accountability as a piggy bank to fund the promulgation of leftist ideology across the globe. Indeed, much of this ideology promoted globalism over and against Americanism.

Predictably, Democrats and the Leftmedia have cried foul over the Trump administration’s shutdown of much of USAID, dubiously suggesting it represents a constitutional crisis for the chief executive to control the executive branch.

Furthermore, USAID lost its semiautonomous position, as Rubio noted that the remaining programs would be absorbed into the State Department. Democrats will be hard-pressed to argue against this given the ridiculous and obviously political programs into which USAID was pumping taxpayer money.

The question is whether the rogue agency is effectively dead or whether it will lie around waiting for another Democrat administration to come to power and once again be resurrected as an outfit pushing more leftist ideological propaganda. Time will tell.