U.S. financial assistance to other countries during the Obama administration has, like government spending and the federal debt, exploded.
In 2008 the federal government handed out $11.4 billion. In 2011 it was $20.6 billion—an increase of 80 percent. So what have taxpayers gotten for all that money? Just turn on the television.
There has been a long-running debate about whether foreign aid helps or hurts us with other countries. Many proponents point out that isn’t much money considering the government will spend about $3.7 trillion in 2012. (I would say a $3.7 trillion federal budget, but Senate Democrats haven’t seen fit to pass a budget in more than three years.)
But if that foreign aid does nothing to improve U.S. foreign relations, it’s wasted—at a time when we have no money to waste. And given the anti-U.S. sentiment in so much of the Middle East, it would be hard to make the case that money has bought us many friends. Would that resentment be much worse if we hadn’t handed out a dime?
Of course, there are a few U.S. stalwarts receiving aid, such as Israel. Ironically, Israel has been a better friend to the U.S. over the past four years than the U.S. has been to Israel.
The question is important because of a battle brewing in Congress over foreign aid to Egypt and Libya. The State Department wants to give an additional $450 million to Egypt. Several Republicans have raised concerns about that plan. That creates an opportunity to rethink our foreign aid goals and achievements—or lack thereof.
In 1978 Ronald Reagan warned of the Carter administration’s proclivity to combine “heavy-handed moves against allied countries, on the one hand, and making ‘pre-emptive concessions’ toward unfriendly or potentially unfriendly countries on the other …”
That sounds a lot like the Obama foreign policy. It didn’t work for Carter and it’s unlikely to work for Obama.
October 2, 2012