Foreign Aid: Ever With Us
By Patrick J. Buchanan
December 21, 1994
For the foreign-aid lobbies, the good times will continue to
roll…
If one were to conduct a national opinion survey to discover which
federal program a stressed-out Middle America most wanted to abolish,
the runaway winner would be: foreign aid.
The idea that we should send endless streams of tax dollars all
over the world, while our own country sinks slowly in an ocean of
debt is, well, ludicrous. Almost every American knows it, feels it,
believes it.
But the foreign-aid lobby need not worry. With the Democrats
routed, the Republicans are mounting up and riding to the rescue.
Last week Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky introduced the new
Republican foreign-aid bill. The rhetoric was tough. In all my years
on the Foreign Relations Committee, McConnell declared, “I
can’t think of a single country, not one, that has graduated
from foreign aid. Not a single country.” But after the hot
rhetoric came the soothing reassurances. For the foreign-aid lobbies,
the good times will continue to roll.
In McConnell’s bill, all big foreign-aid beneficiaries –
Israel, Egypt and Russia – are home free. Not one dime is cut.
Not once, but a dozen times, McConnell insisted in his press
conference that “Europe and the Middle East” must be off
limits to any aid cuts. Reason: “National security
interest.”
But, on its face, this seems preposterous. What, exactly, is the
external threat to Egypt? Or from Egypt to the United States?
If President Hosni Mubarak is brought down, it will be by Islamic
extremists. That movement is driven in part by an oversized U.S.
presence in Cairo, and corruption of Cairo’s bureaucratic elite
by U.S. aid dollars. If Egypt becomes a second Iran, foreign aid will
be a primary cause.
As for Israel, this is 1995, not 1967. She has made peace with
Egypt, Jordan, the PLO. Iraq’s military was smashed in the Gulf
War. Syria has lost her soviet arms supplier. Saudi Arabia has come
down with the fundamentalist fever.
As for that $5 billion we send Israel and Egypt every year, it is
more money than Ronald Reagan ever spent, in any single year, for
SDI, a missile defense for the U.S. If national security is our
concern, would it not make more sense to shift that $5 billion into a
land-and-space-based missile defense for our own country, and all our
allies?
Foreign aid “can only be spent in countries committed, I
repeat, committed, to the road to free-market reform,” declared
McConnell. But, according to the excellent Index of Economic Freedom
— just released by the Heritage Foundation — neither Israel
nor Egypt really qualifies. Economically, both nations are ranked in
the Index as, “Mostly Not Free.”
With a 50 percent personal tax rate, a 45 percent corporate rate,
a value-added tax of 17 percent, and the state controlling 52 percent
of the economy, Israel is a deeply socialized country. And Egypt
makes Israel look like Hong Kong according to the Heritage index,
Egypt’s public sector is “massive and inefficient”;
the personal income tax hits 65 percent, and the corporate and
capital-gains taxes top out at 40 percent. Aid dollars from Middle
America are sustaining socialism in the Middle East.
Now, Egypt and Israel are friends. But we do friends no favor by
putting them on the welfare rolls, which is what foreign aid is. It
creates dependency, breeds corruption, corrodes honest relations, and
bloats government at the expense of the private sector.
The way to convince Israel and Egypt to set out McConnell’s
“road to market reform” is to end their foreign aid. Force
Jerusalem and Cairo to downsize their regimes, sell off state
enterprises, lay off bureaucrats. If Republicans believe the path to
prosperity is through defunding, downsizing, and disempowering
government, why are they doing the exact opposite in Israel and
Egypt?
And Russia? Right now, the International Monetary Fund is working
up a mammoth $6.5 billion loan, largest in IMF history, to finance a
quarter of Russia’s deficit, and cobbling together another $6
billion fund to back the ruble. When these immense loans go into
default, as they shall, who do you think will end up paying them off?
Yep, your grandkids. One-fourth of America’s national debt is
traceable to foreign aid.
“This is a new lease on life for foreign aid,” Sen.
McConnell exulted at his press conference. Indeed, it is. It means
foreign aid forever. But is that why America voted for the Republican
Party in November?
Fascinating: The U.S.A., now greatest debtor nation in history, is
out borrowing tens of billions yearly — going ever deeper in
debt — to help other countries reduce their debts. Greater love
than this has no nation, that it should lay down its life for its
“friends.”
