In 2007 the United States government, you and I, gave away almost $30 billion to International Aid.
With a failing dollar and economic conditions sliding in our own country, why are we giving away tax payer dollars to shore up any other country's economy?
In 2007 Department of State and USAID Bilateral Economic Asistance gave away $17,713,444,000. Thats 17 billion with a "b". Some of those funds went to places like:
Andean Counterdrug Initiative...$569,350,000.
Assistance for the former states of the Soviet Union...$269,200,000.
Assistance to the Eastern European and Baltic states...$435,480,000.
Child Survival and Health Programs fund (CSH)........$1,518,359,000.
Economic Support Fund (ESF).......$2,603,540,000.
U.S. Emergency Refuge and Migration assistance (ERMA)...$30,000,000.
And get this; Foreign Military Financing (FMF).......$4,454,900,000.
Global HIV AIDS Innitiative (GHAI)........$1,852,525,000.
On top of that there is :
Contributions to International Organizations.....$2,144,792,000.
Embassy security, construction, and maintainance....$1,182,585,000.
To International Financial Institutions.....$1,066,198,000. International financial institutions?
And then there is the administration of foreign affairs;
Dept. of State Administration of Foreign Afairs........$6,238,058,000
Seems like it costs more to "administer" the money than any one of the single programs benefiting.
And the list goes on. For 2008 the budget request is even higher, at $36,186,518,000.
Thats thirty six billion, one hundred eighty six million, five hundred and eighteen thousand dollars.
Someday this country will not be in a position to bail the rest of the world out of their financial difficulty. If our own finaces continue in the direction they are going we won't be able to help ourselves, let alone the rest of the world. Our dollar is not as valuable to the rest of the world as it once was, with the euro becoming the currency of choice. The presidents of Iran and Venezuela have already spoken about accepting only a solid currency, such as gold or silver, or the euro for their transactions of oil. This was a move on their part to economically damage America. And it will probably work, as long as congress is unwilling to allow drilling in ANWR and offshore, and as long as we have regulations on the oil refineries that force them out of business, rather than comply to unreasonable demands for updating. But that's a subject for another column.
The whole point is, we cannot continue to do as we have been doing for so many years without positive results, and expect those actions to now achieve positive results. Like welfare at home is a failed government program, welfare abroad is a failed government program. Remember what Einstein once said "The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results".