America First: Cut Foreign Aid
Foreign aid given by the United States usually consists of economic, technical, or military aid. It is given to countries that are considered developing, recovering from disaster, or are strategically important. It is meant to help prevent and fight the spread of disease, educate the populace, stimulate the economy by bringing trade, and help the countries government with a military force. There are an estimated fifty million Americans living below the poverty line. The current United States deficit is $640 billion. In 2014, the United States government gave close to $52 billion in foreign aid that should have been spent in America.
Corruption in governments receiving foreign aid is one of the main reasons that continued financial assistance is not achieving the desired goals of the United States Agency for International Development. Mary O’Grady of the Wall Street Journal reported: “In the midst of the financial turmoil that rocked the international capital markets, the World Bank proudly announced a new $250 million ‘assistance package’ for El Salvador. A few months later, a scandal erupted over why a similar amount of money was never accounted for on the government’s books.” The Angolan government has a reputation for getting rich from oil revenues while the population lives in extreme poverty. The Angolan government established Sonangol, a national oil company, to manage the country's oil resources and acquire a fifty-one percent interest in the subsidiaries of every foreign oil company operating in Angola. In 2008, the United States gave Angola over $64 million in financial assistance while, Sonangol took in more than twice as much revenues from oil as all the foreign aid disbursed to the world's least developed countries. (Collier).
Giving aid to such countries is frivolous in the extreme, considering that the people that are suffering are not getting the help they need. Another downfall is that it perpetuates a country’s reliance on the United States. If our government continues to dole out aid to other countries, they come to rely more on aid packages than on development and self-sustainability. President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, said in an interview for PovertyCure.Org:
“Aid leads to more aid and more aid and more aid and less independence of the people that are receiving aid. There is bad aid and there is good aid. The bad aid is that one which creates dependencies, as we’ve known for a long time now. But good aid is that which is targeted to create capacities in people so that they are able to live on their own activities. In the long-term they have to depend on themselves rather than on aid.”
Proponents of foreign humanitarian aid believe that the United States should continue sending aid to other countries because the small amount, less than one percent of the budget, has saved millions of lives around the world. The monetary aid has gone to relieve famine, fight disease, educate the populace, and help with the recovery from natural disasters. The military aid has liberated some countries from dictators and invading forces, not only through occupation, but also, through training and equipping those citizens with skills, weapons, and equipment necessary to assist in and maintain their own defenses. The political and strategic elements are for peace and security goals, access to military bases, natural resources, strengthening diplomatic ties, and prestige which help to solidify relations with our foreign allies. Foreign aid is the right thing to do. It is our humanitarian and Christian duty to less fortunate people of the world. Making the world a better place for everyone to live in can only lead to securing a lasting peace for the United States and our allies. According to Richard