Trump Must Finish Off The National Endowment For Democracy

Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

Writing elsewhere last month, I suggested that Donald Trump end the National Endowment for Democracy once and for all. Like most so-called “non-governmental organizations,” the NED is in fact an all-governmental organization. It depends absolutely on a subsidy from the state department, i.e., from the federal government, i.e., from the taxpayer, i.e., from you.

The NED began life in the Cold War as a way of projecting “soft power” against our Communist adversaries. But as James Piereson noted in February of this year, the NED has undergone a familiar process of mission creep and moral and political entropy.

“With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union,” Piereson wrote, “the NED adjusted its mission to support democratic reforms in countries in non-communist countries with authoritarian governments, many of which were never adversaries of the United States in the first place.”

Over the years, the NED adopted a view of democracy that held that nationalist and populist leaders campaigning for office around the world were, in fact, authoritarians and a threat to democracy. Many foreign leaders were tossed into that bucket—not only Russia’s Vladimir Putin, but also Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki, and others. Many of these leaders were popularly elected but were nevertheless branded by the NED as authoritarians. It surprised no one when NED officials deemed Donald Trump, too, an authoritarian, lumping him together with these leaders.

The bottom line is that for some $315 million of taxpayer pelf, the NED has been busy fomenting a foreign policy that was not just separate from that articulated by the duly elected president of the United States but actively opposed to it.

So it was no surprise when Trump and his cost-cutters at the Department of Government Efficiency took aim at the NED. Earlier this summer, NED’s subsidy had been zeroed out in Congress’s proposed budget.

But no NGO goes gentle into that good night. When politicians get together to haggle over budgets, lobbyists tag along. Members from interest group A whisper in Congressman X’s ear about their pet—and usually lucrative—project. Words like “constituents” and “donations” are bandied about. Often as not, that line item that had been zeroed out is fully restored. The lobbyists go home happy. The Congressman feels reassured. Only the taxpayers suffer. And the voters, too, whose feelings in the matter are usually completely ignored.

So it was with the NED. What had been zero was suddenly restored to $315 million, with provision for additional contracts added in for good measure.

In olden days, that generally would have been it. A president confronted with such recalcitrance, not to say connivance, would simply have moved on. As usual, Trump’s response was something more aggressive. On Friday, the White House said, in effect, I’ll see your rescission and raise you two.

Employing a seldom-deployed, controversial maneuver called a “pocket rescission,” the White House promised to eliminate “woke, weaponized, and wasteful spending.”

Now, for the first time in 50 years, the President is using his authority under the Impoundment Control Act to deploy a pocket rescission, cancelling $5 billion in foreign aid and international organization funding that violates the President’s America First priorities.

CNN was joined by other dyspeptic chihuahuas—Senator Chuck Schumer, chief among them—to wail that “Trump bypasses Congress to cancel nearly $5 billion in foreign aid.”

Will the republic survive these cuts? Among the items to flutter to the dustbin of the unfunded are such critical enterprises as efforts to advance “inclusive democracy” in South Africa through the Democracy Works Foundation, which has published articles such as “The Problem with Whiteness” and “The Problem with White People.” That effort was done for $2.7 million, now gone.

Then there was $4 million for the New Alliance for Global Equality to advance “global LGBTQI+ awareness,” $3.9 million to promote “democracy” for LGBTQI+ populations in the Western Balkans, $2 million for “Organizing for Feminist Democratic Principles” in Africa, and $107 million for the International Labor Organization (ILO), “a group that works to unionize foreign workers and punish U.S. corporate interests abroad.” Your tax dollars at work.

Will the NED finally be cancelled if Trump’s “pocket rescission” succeeds?

From what I have read, it is not entirely clear.

Many of the cuts—totaling many hundreds of millions of dollars—are from State Department initiatives that are consanguineous, as it were, with the NED. But I have not seen the NED explicitly named in the cuts.

As I noted last month, what is needed to extinguish the NED is not some magic potion but the concerted attention of Donald Trump. Perhaps, I suggested, the President had thought he had gotten rid of the NED already. I am here to remind him once again that that essential piece of work is yet to be accomplished. It is time to finish the job.