Total Humanitarian Aid to the 3 Countries in 2017 Less Than Taxpayers Have Spent on Trump’s Golfing Trips
Just days after Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen signed a “historic” agreement with Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to combat illegal immigration into the United States, President Donald Trump has announced he is cutting all foreign humanitarian aid to those three countries.
Citing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the State Dept. on Saturday announced, “we are carrying out the President’s direction and ending FY 2017 and FY 2018 foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle,” the statement said, as The Hill reported. “We will be engaging Congress as part of this process.”
It appears there are divergent forces at work within the U.S. government.
“I would like to extend my profound gratitude to our Central American allies Honduras, Guatemala & El Salvador,” Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen said via Twitter on Thursday, “for their commitment to our common cause of secure borders & more orderly migration flows.”
Hours earlier on Thursday, apparently unaware that the DHS Security was in the Honduran capitol working on an agreement, Trump had tweeted: “Mexico is doing NOTHING to help stop the flow of illegal immigrants to our Country. They are all talk and no action. Likewise, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have taken our money for years, and do Nothing. The Dems don’t care, such BAD laws. May close the Southern Border!”
On Friday, ignoring the “historic” agreement Sec. Nielsen had signed with the three Central American nations, Trump, from Mar-a-Lago said, “We were paying them tremendous amounts of money. And we’re not paying them anymore. Because they haven’t done a thing for us. They set up these caravans,” CNN reports the President charged.
The amount of U.S. foreign aid to the three nations is a paltry sum.
According to the federal government’s own USAID website, total aid from the U.S. to Guatemala was just $257 million. The current projection for U.S. aid to Guatemala is just $67 million.
Honduras in 2017 received a mere $181 million. The current projection for 2018 is only $31 million.
El Salvator received even less, just $118 million, with the 2018 projection coming in at $46 million.
In total, the U.S. gave those three countries just $556 million.
To put that in terms the President can understand, as of today President Trump has spent 176 days at s Trump golf course. While the costs for his trips to his New Jersey golf course, Bedminster, are not known, last month the Government Accountability Office, an official federal government agency, revealed each of Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago cost taxpayers $3.4 million.
176 golf club trips at that rate would total $598 million – far less than what the American taxpayers are spending to support the President’s lavish golf outings.