(NewsNation) — An employee laid off from USAID last week defends the mission of the embattled agency but says it has become a bureaucracy riddled with inefficiencies.
Rob Cohen, a physician and U.S. Army veteran, said he agrees Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency can find waste within the United States Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration has targeted for steep cuts.
Ex-administrators of USAID defend agency targeted by Trump
“Reform is needed, and Elon Musk and his team are not totally wrong about that,” Cohen told “NewsNation Prime” on Saturday. “But in the process, they’re throwing the baby out with the bath water, firing lots of good employees — I would add, such as myself.”
Cohen worked at USAID from 2016 as a contractor and civil servant. He said he stands behind the agency’s humanitarian work, including its successful effort to ensure millions of HIV-positive mothers gave birth to healthy babies through drug therapy.
But the agency is encumbered by regulations that can lead to delays in assistance, he said.
“A lot of the dollars were targeted at a good place. It was the delay. It was the inefficiency. A lot of time the procurements would take longer than a year.”
Musk calls USAID a ‘criminal organization’ that should ‘die’
Cohen said he was elevated to become USAID’s deputy chief of staff but faced pushback after identifying problems.
