Your Turn: Should the U.S. Ditch Foreign Aid?

• The Trump administration wants to kill $3 billion in foreign aid, even though it’s unlikely to succeed in the face of Congressional opposition.
• President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for 2018 originally aimed to cut about 28 percent in foreign aid spending, much of it from global health and hunger elimination programs.
• On Thursday, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction released a report finding that a $280 million U.S. program to empower Afghan women had been a “failure and waste of taxpayers’ money.”
• So how much does the U.S. actually spend in foreign aid, and what (if any) value do we get from it?

The numbers

According to our partners at USAFacts, a non-partisan, not-for-profit civic initiative aimed at making government data accessible and understandable, U.S. foreign aid obligations reached $49 billion in 2016, an increase of 71 percent since 1980 after adjusting for inflation.

While that may sound like a lot of money, it accounts for less than one percent of total government spending. That’s down from 1.5 percent in 1980.

USAFacts explains:

“37% of all foreign aid is for governance, including to promote public sector administration, democratic participation and elections, civilian peace-building, and social welfare services.”

Source: USAFacts

Health and population spending includes HIV/AIDS prevention. Humanitarian spending includes disaster relief and preparedness.

Thirty percent of all aid in 2016 went to four countries: Iraq and Afghanistan, where we remain at war, and Egypt and Israel, to which we’ve been funneling significant aid since the 1970s.

Source: USAFacts

High-profile failures

Millions of dollars worth of antimalarial drugs provided by the U.S. government are being stolen and resold on the black market in Africa, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) inspector general.

USAID’s funds have also fallen victim to money laundering. 

USAID was also the administrator of the failed women’s empowerment program in Afghanistan. The inspector general evaluating that project had some harsh words, describing it as a “classic example of hubris and mendacity.” He said USAID officials “oversold” the project, and “lied to the American and Afghan people” about what they could accomplish.

Arguments against foreign aid

Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation fellow who advised Trump’s campaign on economic policy, supports cutting the foreign aid budget:

“There’s zero evidence that any of these foreign aid programs have had any effect on development, whether it’s in the Middle East or Africa or South America. And there’s just zero evidence that any of that development aid has had any effect on raising the living standards.”

Angus Deaton, the 2015 winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, argues that foreign aid often hurts, rather than helps, poor people in poor countries. Deaton argues that, by trying to help poor people in developing countries, the rich world may actually be corrupting those nations’ governments and slowing their growth.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) argues that military aid can be and has been used against U.S. interests, and should not be allocated to our “enemies.”

The CATO Institute, a libertarian think-tank, argues that there’s no correlation between aid and growth. Further, aid that goes into a poor policy environment doesn’t work and contributed to debt, and aid conditioned on market reforms has failed, the group says. CATO wants Congress to:

• Abolish USAID
• Withdraw from the World Bank
• Not use foreign aid to promote market reforms
• “Privatize or abolish the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, and other sources of international corporate welfare”

Arguments in favor of foreign aid

A recent Foreign Policy article argues that foreign aid – particularly in support of public health – enhances stability and security, thereby making American safer:

“[H]istory demonstrates that programs from the Marshall Plan to the Peace Corps have had a deep and lasting impact. Even the Department of Defense has recognized the importance of soft power through its focus on programs aimed to 'win the hearts and minds' of U.S. adversaries."

The Brookings Institution argues that foreign aid matters:

• Since 95 percent of the world’s consumers live outside the United States, global instability threatens America’s interests.
• By investing in other countries alongside our partners, we not only fight terrorism, disease, and famine, we also build more stable markets for American goods and services. That’s good for our economy and our security.
• If we don’t compete on the global stage, other countries like China will fill the gap and shut us out of future markets. This will cost us jobs, lower wages, and threaten our children’s future.

Evidence

Part of the challenge in evaluating foreign aid’s value is a matter of measurement. The U.S. allocates funds to all sorts of projects with a wide variety of intended outcomes. For a long time, foreign aid administrators didn’t conduct studies to gauge the efficacy of their projects.

Since the early 2000s, however, social science researchers have been pressuring policymakers to assess the impact of their programs. In 2011, USAID established an evaluation policy to make evidence-based decisions about future aid programming. USAID has commissioned more than 1,000 evaluations since the policy was enforced.

Independent researchers and organizations have conducted numerous studies on various aspects of foreign aid impact. Many found positive outcomes. Many didn’t.

Bipartisan support

In the 1990s, foreign aid bills had a hard time passing through Congress, but that changed with Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Now, foreign aid generally enjoys bipartisan support.

After Trump proposed foreign aid cuts in his budget earlier this year, 43 U.S. senators signed a bipartisan letter urging against the reductions.

What do you think?

Should the U.S. ditch foreign aid? Why or why not? Hit Take Action to tell your reps what you think, then share your thoughts below.

—Sara E. Murphy

(Photo Credit: iStock.com / ugurhan)