(MintPress) – The average American believes that the U.S. spends 27 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid, when in reality, less than 1 percent goes to helping allies abroad, according to a World Public Opinion Survey. Consequently, a majority of Americans continue to support cuts to foreign aid, even for critical programs like food aid and humanitarian assistance.
A bevy of congressional candidates as well as Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney believe that the key to curbing runaway government spending is by reducing or eliminating the size of foreign aid programs. These cuts, while providing marginal debt relief, would be a pittance of the cuts required to close the deficit. Americans are led to believe that cuts to public broadcasting, foreign aid and other relatively small expenses will significantly reduce the national deficit which is now over $16 trillion.
Why foreign aid is not the problem
Romney has consistently talked about cutting and reducing foreign aid throughout the 2012 campaign season. While the budget deficit has increased more than 57 percent during Obama’s first term, slashing foreign aid will do little to reduce the size of government spending, which is now 100 percent higher than annual gross domestic product, according to a CBS news report.
In a similar Gallup poll conducted January 2011, 59 percent of respondents supported cuts to foreign aid — the only category where a majority favored making cuts. Of the list of programs — including social security, education, medicare, the military and national defense — foreign aid was one of the smallest government expenditures on the list.
However, when compared to the overall federal budget, foreign aid is actually one of the smallest areas of government spending. The problem some experts believe is that Americans have a difficult time understanding the magnitude of government spending.
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow with the 21st Century Defense Initiative and director of research for the Foreign Policy program at the at the Brookings Institute, comments on the issue in a recent MintPress interview, saying:
“People don’t have a good understanding of the federal budget overall. They hear a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, and they assume it is a major part of the federal budget. People don’t understand the magnitude of U.S. federal spending. If politicians were talking more about this issue, It would help to change the public perception.”
In fiscal year 2009, the U.S. spent $44.9 billion, or 1.28 percent of the total budget. Overall spending was $3.52 trillion, according to PolitiFact.com.
By comparison, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) legislation that bailed out the faltering U.S. financial industry in 2008 cost taxpayers $431 billion, nearly 10 times the total amount of U.S. foreign aid the following year.
For some, cutting foreign aid is less a matter of the dollars and cents and more about the principle of creating a foreign policy of non-interference and disentanglement in the affairs of sovereign countries.
The libertarian and tea party positions on foreign engagement
A major reason many Americans believe foreign aid spending is inflated stems from the positions of libertarians’ and tea party Republican groups’ promotion of a foreign policy that preaches complete non-interference and disengagement.
Ron Paul, the recently retired libertarian congressman from Texas, was consistently among the most outspoken opponents of U.S. foreign aid throughout his 24-year career. Speaking shortly after hurricane Katrina, a natural disaster that destroyed much of New Orleans, Paul said,
“With an ongoing war in Iraq that costs more than $1 billion per week, taxpayers might think Congress has better things to do with $21 billion than send it overseas. Yet that’s exactly what Congress did last Friday, approving a useless and counterproductive foreign aid spending bill.”
In a separate interview held August 2011, Paul expressed his opposition to all foreign aid, even to U.S. allies, saying: “We should be friends with Israel, and I don’t think we do a very good job at it. But I don’t think giving money to our friends is the right thing to do. I’m against all foreign aid, and if we cut out all the foreign aid today we would cut out 7 times more foreign aid from the enemies of Israel. But I wouldn’t give foreign aid to Israel. I want Israel to have their own national sovereignty.”
Similarly, tea party groups espousing limited government, lower taxes and lower government spending have expressed opposition to U.S. foreign aid, some suggesting the elimination of USAID. While there has been wasteful, unproductive spending within USAID, the agency has invested in critical development programs to help with food assistance and poverty eradication in developing countries.
According to the USAID website, “Our emergency food assistance and multi-year development programs: Monitor food insecurity throughout the world; Save lives in times of crisis; Tackle chronic undernutrition”
While it may be convenient to single out the tea party, a relatively new political movement that emerged in late 2008, the idea of cutting foreign policy is nothing new as many legislators have engaged in similar debate for years.
O’Hanlon believes that while the tea party and certain libertarians have pushed the idea in Washington, conservatives have floated similar proposals in the past.
“In the 1990’s it was the Gingrich revolution. I think the tea party is the latest incarnation of this discussion. While they might be entrenching this belief in parts of America, similar polling has reflected this public perception for years,” said O’Hanlon in a recent MintPress statement.