January 1, USAID Shakeup Sends Bureaucrats Scrambling for Work

Wyatt’s Take

• The Trump administration cut deep into USAID’s bloated bureaucracy.
• Formerly well-paid managers are now facing a harsh private-sector reality.
• Taxpayers spent years funding salaries and programs that offered little value at home.

A year after being fired, these overpaid managers are discovering that their paper-pushing skills have zero value in the private sector.

It turns out the heartland was subsidizing a class of people who only know how to spend other people’s money.

One former senior VP making $272,000 is now interviewing for a $19-per-hour retail job.

Taxpayers funded these massive salaries for years while the national debt ballooned to record highs.

Bureaucrats are now being told to hide their years of government experience because it makes them unemployable.

“Sheryl Cowan, 57, was making $272,000 a year as a senior VP at a U.S.A.I.D.-funded nonprofit when she was let go at the end of March 2025.”

“Last month she had an online interview for a $19-an-hour job managing a Penzeys Spices store in Falls Church, Va.”

This individual was earning six times the median income of hard-working Americans.

Now she has reportedly applied for 60 jobs and is trying to hide her graduation year to avoid sounding old.

“In reality, this tells a darker story—we spent half-a-century debt-financing a managerial class of Leftists whose only qualifications were ideological.”

Working families in Middle America have faced layoffs and inflation while these DC insiders lived on the taxpayer dime.

Seeing the swamp drained is the first step toward restoring common sense to our national budget.

Wyatt Matters

Middle America knows that real work should be rewarded, not endless bureaucratic waste.

USAID Layoffs Reveal Massive Managerial Waste