Website Header
Issues - Global Aid Watch

Global Aid Watch

Global AIDS: for the latest breaking developments on the Global AIDS reauthorization bill, click here.

Each year, the U.S. taxpayer gives tens of billions of dollars to foreign operations and global aid. Unfortunately, a number of the programs and organizations that are given this funding receive little or no oversight, and when combined with fraud and corruption, this results in staggering waste of the taxpayer investment and limits the ability to assist vulnerable populations around the world.


U.S. multilateral assistance

U.S. multilateral assistance:

 

  • United Nations: The U.S. is the largest donor to the United Nations with an annual contribution of over $5 billion, yet the U.N. refuses to account for how it spends this money. The United Nations’ effectiveness and relevancy are undermined by corruption and scandals that include procurement fraud, graft, cash transfers to regimes of terror, and exploitation of refugees.
  • World Bank: The U.S. is the largest shareholder at the Bank, with a recent pledge of $2.85 billion to replenish the Bank’s International Development Association (the IDA, which must be periodically renewed, is the Bank’s lending and grant making facility for poverty-stricken nations). The Bank’s programs are failing, untransparent at best and corrupt at worst. Click the following link to visit the "World Bank Watch" webpage.
  • Global Fund: The Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a multilateral account housed at the World Bank, administered by the UN World Health Organization, and staffed by a Secretariat of hundreds in Geneva. It provides assistance to fight three killer diseases to countries, usually in the form of direct funding of the government. The U.S. is the largest contributor to the Fund, having provided billions since the Fund’s inception in 2002, and now almost providing a billion dollars a year. The Fund is generally more transparent and less corrupt than the UN, but scandals and poor oversight continue to plague this agency.

U.S bilateral operations:


  • Broadcasting Board of Governors: Americans pay for publicly-funded media to broadcast their values and views to international audiences in countries that include America’s enemies such as Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. The broadcasts are not translated making independent oversight impossible and leaving the content vulnerable to ulterior and sometime un-American values of unaccountable producers and reporters.
  • USAID: The US Agency for International Development is rife with management problems and lack of transparency. While a program here and there is successful and transparent, most are not.
  • State Department: The diplomacy arm of the U.S. government is a hit-or-miss operation. Unfortunately, most grant programs at State are untransparent at best and funding the nation’s enemies at worst.

 

 



Related Resources:

Examples of Government Waste:


News:



Senator Tom Coburn

Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security

340 Dirksen Senate Office Building     Washington, DC 20510

Phone: 202-224-2254     Fax: 202-228-3796

Email Alerts Signup!


Oversight Action button
Investigative Reports button
Your Tax Dollars at Work button
Submit a tip button
Legislative and Floor Action button






Pork Busters button
XML RSS 2.0 feed RSS Feed