USAID was utterly ineffective at building or maintaining the US's position in the world order. Look at the success of the Chinese Belt and Road initiative in terms of actually accomplishing geopolitical goals through soft power actually looks like (eg fostering trade, access to resources, pulling countries into your sphere of influence).

Food stamps and welfare as currently structured literally negatively contributed to the US's position: enabling generations of Americans to sponge off the system, rather than work and contribute, incentivizing claiming disability and having children you can't afford/care for, etc.

Cutting these things would be akin to pulling out from Afghanistan. It looks messy, nobody wanted to do it, but continuing it was just sunk cost fallacy.