Mitt Romney To Samantha Power: 'We Don't Have Enough Money To Get Everybody Out Of Poverty'

8 months ago

At a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) questioned USAID Admin. Samantha Power about prioritization.

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript

Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00 Senator Romney.

00:04 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:05 Like Senator Menendez indicated, I am sometimes overwhelmed by the degree of starvation,

00:14 the migration as associated with climate change, and the problems in the world are so enormous.

00:22 How do you decide where to intervene and where to spend the money?

00:26 How do you prioritize all the things?

00:30 Because we don't have enough money to get everybody out of poverty, to solve all the

00:35 hunger problems of the world, to solve all the migration problems of the world, to solve

00:39 all the awful things that are going on in the world.

00:42 We're not there.

00:43 There was a time when the U.S. economy was like half that of the world.

00:46 Today, it's like 15%.

00:49 So we simply can't do everything we'd like to do.

00:51 How do you decide where to spend the resources?

00:55 What is your priority for tackling the various challenges?

01:01 Thank you.

01:02 I don't have time, I think, to do justice to the full sort of way that we do prioritization.

01:08 We are also 90% earmarked, so some of that prioritization is taken out of our hands,

01:16 but it's only really by sector, so your question is still very valid in terms of what we do.

01:21 Even if we have X amount for malaria and X amount for TB, where do you do it?

01:26 And there, I think, governance and where that dollar is likely to go further matters a great

01:32 deal, particularly if we're working with state and local government.

01:35 USAID has just, last year, launched an office of the chief economist to actually bring -- we've

01:43 done measurement evaluation learning about particular programs for a long time, but we're

01:47 now bringing a best-by mindset, literally doing cost-effectiveness studies, randomized

01:53 control trials.

01:54 For example, a programmatic intervention where we hire a contractor or give a grant to an

02:01 organization, how does that compare against giving cash in a particular community?

02:05 And seeing there's some studies that show that through cash benchmarking, that actually

02:11 giving just small amounts of cash allows, for example, somebody to start a business

02:17 or get the access to capital that they need locally.

02:21 So we want to make sure we do a cost-effectiveness filter through the work that we do everywhere.

02:26 We of course look at the nexus with U.S. security, pandemic prevention, lab surveillance, global

02:34 health security.

02:35 That's an example of investments that have really increased, although unfortunately are

02:39 down in the '24 budget that was just passed.

02:44 That's an investment in our lives.

02:46 The same with our clean energy work.

02:48 Of course, it's one thing to have the Inflation Reduction Act here and be lowering emissions

02:53 over time, but we know that there are many big players like South Africa, Indonesia,

02:58 countries in which we work, where their emissions affect Americans just as much as ours do.

03:02 Yeah, I guess I would – I actually would hope to have a more clear priority that, yes,

03:11 there has to be an enormous humanitarian need, but there also has to be a very clear U.S.

03:16 interest in intervening in that particular area.

03:21 And yeah, we don't want to waste money and so forth, and you mentioned those things,

03:25 but there has to be some prioritization.

03:27 My impression is that the Chinese, for instance, their economy is about the same size as ours,

03:33 particularly if you look at purchase power parity.

03:37 Their economy is larger than ours on that basis.

03:39 But they're not spending anywhere near what we are in the world other than to support

03:44 Chinese interests.

03:46 Hopefully we will apply the same metric to decide where we're going to be spending our

03:50 funding.

03:51 Is there – has there been work done at USAID to compare – here's what China does, and

03:58 if there is, I'd love to see a report or something – if there's work like that

04:01 that's around to say here's how they do it.

04:03 I know they do things with debt.

04:05 They loan the money.

04:06 We say no, we don't do it with debt.

04:07 We give them money, except we borrow the money from others to give the money away.

04:12 Which is smarter, us borrowing to give it away or them just loaning it?

04:17 And I think we may have something to learn from a country that says they're going to

04:22 make those investments where there's humanitarian need and where it's in their national interest,

04:27 and two, to do it in a way that's economically the most frugal.

04:31 Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a fair point there, of course, around prioritization.

04:37 But you know, the PRC does not – is not, as you're noting, is not motivated by the

04:45 humanitarian imperative that moves so many Americans.

04:50 The service impulse, the kind of compassion that we have shown, which –

04:53 The challenge is that –

04:54 No, no, I understand, but I'm just talking specifically about humanitarian –

04:57 The needs in the world are so enormous –

04:59 I understand.

05:00 – that when you look at those needs, you have to say, you know, we have more interest,

05:02 for instance, in Haiti than we might in some place far, far away, in part because it's

05:07 in our neighborhood, all right?

05:08 So we're going to show priority there.

05:10 We have interest in Ukraine –

05:11 Yeah.

05:12 – but we also know that the old Soviet Union did some really bad things that we fought

05:16 for decades, and so we want to keep that from happening again.

05:19 I mean, there are national interests that would strike me as being high in the priority.

05:24 I know my time is up, so, Mr. Chairman, I will stop.

05:28 Ambassador Power, if there's something you want to say, fine, but I'll pull back.

05:32 Thank you.

05:33 Just simply to say that I believe that that filter is applied.

05:41 I also believe that we play a long game, and had we been narrowly transactional in the

05:48 way that the Chinese are 40 years ago, many of the countries that are now huge sources

05:57 of – huge markets for U.S. goods would not be markets for U.S. goods.

06:02 Many of the diseases that have been prevented would not have been prevented had we just

06:06 gone, again, in that what matters in the here and now, and what is our national security

06:11 matrix on this particular day or this particular year.

06:14 So I think we have to have the right balance between absolutely looking for that nexus,

06:21 making sure that our dollars go where they're intended, looking out for things that are

06:26 happening in the hemisphere that have a direct bearing or things that relate to disease or

06:29 the health of Americans for sure, but we're also making investments now whose payoff may

06:36 not be evident for some years in the future.

Mitt Romney To Samantha Power: 'We Don't Have Enough Money To Get Everybody Out Of Poverty'

Category

Transcript

Recommended