The allocation of US AID funds

According to Marco Rubio only 12 cents of every dollar spent from USAID went to recipients, the other 88 cents went to NGOs who pocketed the money.

I tried to fact check that with o3:

However you draw the line, before 2017 well over half—and usually more like 75-90 percent—of USAID money was channelled through third-party NGOs, contractors, and multilateral agencies rather than handed straight to the governments or other local actors in the partner country.

I do support PEPFAR and the earlier vaccine programs, but perhaps those estimates have been underreported as of late?  I do understand that not all third party allocations are wasteful, nonetheless something seems badly off here.  Nor were many US AID defenders keen to deal with such estimates when the major debate was going on.