DOGE Subcommittee Chairwoman Greene Opens Hearing on NGOs’ Use of Federal Funds to Advance Radical Agenda

WASHINGTON—Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) today delivered opening remarks at a hearing on “Public Funds, Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild.” She outlined the corrupt ties that bind left-wing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Democrat elected officials and appointees, and deep state bureaucrats who write grants and contracts to advance a radical agenda that most Americans oppose. She concluded that this waste and abuse of taxpayer resources used to fund the NGO slush fund must end.

Below are Subcommittee Chairwoman Greene’s remarks as prepared for delivery.

Good morning and welcome to another DOGE subcommittee hearing where we will highlight more disgusting abuses of YOUR tax dollars.

The Left has funneled hundreds of billions of federal tax dollars through Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to push destructive policies and line the pockets of their friends and allies. This NGO scheme demonstrates massive waste and abuse of federal resources. 

Today’s hearing will bring transparency for the American people. We will expose the corrupt ties that bind Left-wing NGOs, Democrat elected officials, Democrat political appointees, and the deep state bureaucrats who write grants and contracts. Corrupt back door dealmaking has exploited the taxpayer purse to achieve policy ends opposed by the very Americans forced to fund them. Whether by pushing green energy scams or facilitating the resettlement of millions of illegal aliens into American towns and cities, the alliance between big government and allied NGOs has been highly effective and has been flying under the public’s radar for far too long.

But today, we are going to draw back the curtain. 

This scheme works in a cycle. Democrat Administration officials work with leftist NGOs to implement programs in a manner that ensures those NGOs receive massive grants and contracts. The leaders of those recipient groups then turn around and donate to Democrat political campaigns.

This intricate web of connections is how elected and appointed Democrat officials and allied NGOs work together. Federal agencies fund the NGOs and the NGOs shape the agencies’ behavior. It can be hard to tell where the Government ends and the NGO begins. The non-profits essentially serve as an arm of the government. To put it another way, if the permanent bureaucracy is the de-facto fourth branch of government, then these leftist NGOs are the fifth. 

Our witnesses today will describe how the Left has funneled hundreds of billions of U.S. tax dollars through NGOs, discuss the destructive policies this has enabled, and detail the damage done to our country.

So-called green energy NGOs are among the worst offenders. They have used federal dollars to destabilize the U.S. power grid and energy dominance—while raising energy costs for Americans. 

The Biden EPA steered billions in U.S. tax dollars to leftist climate NGOs via a $20 billion dollar slush fund known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). Like-minded nonprofits were enlisted to implement President Biden’s Green New Deal scam.

While we are grateful to the Trump Administration and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin for shutting it down and quickly terminating these grants, further accountability is necessary. 

The full Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating Biden’s GGRF. We know that all the awardees are connected to both the Biden Administration and Democratic donors — and that they sit on each other’s boards, in an incestuous circle. Today, we will shine light on this dynamic. 

Take for example who the Democrats chose to bring in as their witness…someone so entrenched into the system that she was a director at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a leader of a housing organization that lobbied for more federal spending, and now “a nationally renowned nonprofit leader” who donates to Democrat campaigns. 

Other examples include many green NGOs that employ former Biden Administration officials. These people wrote the rules for this climate grift in which they now partake. As government officials, they were paid by taxpayers to conduct the grift. Now, taxpayers are funding the grant awards that pay their salaries.  

This cash grab was so large that some nonprofits were birthed solely to get in on the game. One newly created nonprofit, Power Forward, received an astonishing $2 billion from Biden’s EPA despite having just been formed. Power Forward is now part of a network tied to Rewiring America, which employs Stacey Abrams—the twice failed Democrat candidate for governor in Georgia and “voting rights” activist. After all however, she would have been a good hire given her history of running her own nonprofit, which spent $3.2 million on campaign resources instructing voters to support her campaign—all of which are prohibited actions for nonprofits. Consequently, her nonprofit was levied the largest penalty ever imposed in Georgia’s history for violating state campaign finance laws. 

Climate and green energy is just one area where the entrenched bureaucrats and political appointees have partnered with NGOs to do the Left’s bidding. Illegal immigration is another. 

Federally funded NGOs have egregiously abused tax dollars to fund the invasion at our southern border. By providing housing, transportation, legal services, and more to shepherd illegal aliens across our border and settle them in our country, these NGOs support the cartels in their mission to invade our country. Under the guise of “assisting” ‘migrants’,” these groups have placed criminal networks, dangerous gangs, and human traffickers into American towns and cities. 

Think about this: the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars have been used to literally import rapists, murderers, and terrorists from around the world into our communities.

Where were these NGOs when 22-year-old Laken Riley was violently murdered by an illegal? Where were these NGOs when 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray was brutally raped and murdered by one of these illegals? Where were these NGOs when 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton was raped and strangled to death by an illegal? Where were the NGOs over the weekend when an illegal alien launched Molotov Cocktails into a crowd in Boulder, Colorado, intentionally injuring a dozen Americans?

I’ll tell you. They were continuing to receive taxpayer dollars to import more of these illegal alien monsters to commit more heinous crimes against our people. 

Many Americans are familiar with the more egregious offenders. These include Catholic Charities, which raked in over $2 billion during Biden’s four years, and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which received over $221 million in government grants in FY2023 alone. But many American taxpayers are still unwittingly funding this sort of illegal activity through the United Nations, which is the conduit for much of the funding NGOs use to resettle our country.

Americans are likely unaware that their tax dollars are funding UN efforts such as the cash and voucher program involving 624,000 illegal aliens crossing the border just last year. This $372 million dollar program provides prepaid debit cards and cash in envelopes to illegal aliens to facilitate their movement to—and through—the U.S. border.

The American taxpayer is funding groups that start the “migration”—the groups that show people how to cross the border by evading U.S. immigration laws. These are groups that have bused and flown illegal aliens – many of them dangerous – into America.

Whether exploiting taxpayers to push illegal immigration or fake environmental justice, the Left’s NGO scheme seeks to destroy our country and fundamentally alter the American way of life. 

This ongoing waste and abuse of taxpayer resources must end. The Trump Administration is turning the tide, and today’s hearing is intended to expedite the effort to drain these slush funds dry. If we don’t, Democrats can’t wait to return to power and continue funding their NGO friends through these slush funds to stop deportations, keep these illegal alien criminals in our country, and fund the Green New Deal scam.