After being denied debate and a U.S. Senate floor vote by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) this week on whether to end foreign aid to Pakistan, Egypt, and Libya, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) released a YouTube video titled "Our System of Foreign Aid is Broken."
Initially, Paul had requested to end U.S. aid to the government of Pakistan for
their detainment of Dr. Shakil Afridi who reportedly helped the U.S. find and kill Osama bin Laden. But the amendment was later changed to strip foreign aid from Egypt and Libya in light of recent
aggression toward American consulates and embassies in those countries.
Following a
discussion on the Senate floor last Wednesday night with Senate Democrat Leader
Harry Reid (Nev.), during which Sen. Reid expressed his desire to
quickly pass the $1 billion jobs bill for veterans, Sen. Paul then
decided to alter his amendment to offer additional funding to the
veterans job bill.
Total
U.S. foreign aid to Pakistan, Libya and Egypt totals roughly $4 billion
per year. Sen. Paul's new amendment would strike all aid to those
countries, and send an additional $2 billion toward the veterans jobs
bill, tripling the size of the program. The remaining $2 billion would
go to deficit reduction.
"I urge
Sen. Reid to do the right thing for taxpayers and veterans: To send a
message to countries that our aid can't be taken for granted, and to
stand up for our troops abroad now, and those who have returned home
after serving'" Paul said. "He can do all of this by allowing a vote on my amendment.
My amendment would halt all foreign aid to Pakistan, Egypt, and Libya,
and would use those funds to triple the size of the veterans jobs bill.
The only thing now standing in the way of this is the Democratic Senate
Leadership."
"Each year 200,000 service members reenter the civilian workforce. The Veterans Jobs Corps Act would invest in those returning veterans – easing the transition back to civilian life with job training programs and priority hiring for first responder positions," Reid said in a release. "Not only has this bill faced a string of procedural hurdles, Republicans have larded it up with unrelated, ideological amendments. And while some of those amendments are certainly important, they don’t belong on any jobs measure, let alone a jobs measure that would assist returning veterans."
"Each year 200,000 service members reenter the civilian workforce. The Veterans Jobs Corps Act would invest in those returning veterans – easing the transition back to civilian life with job training programs and priority hiring for first responder positions," Reid said in a release. "Not only has this bill faced a string of procedural hurdles, Republicans have larded it up with unrelated, ideological amendments. And while some of those amendments are certainly important, they don’t belong on any jobs measure, let alone a jobs measure that would assist returning veterans."
Although falling short of calling for an end to foreign aid to Pakistan, Libya and Egypt, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) expressed concern over the Egyptian response when asked by a Florida constituent whether Rubio would call for an end to foreign aid to those countries.
“What really troubled me is that for 24
hours after that attack, and the murder of Ambassador Stevens in Libya,
we heard virtually nothing from the president, President Morsi of Egypt.
Instead he focused on condemning a YouTube video, a YouTube video that
anyone can make. At the end of the day, the response to a YouTube video
that someone is offended by is not to burn down an embassy or murder an
ambassador," Rubio said in a YouTube video.
"And the response of President Morsi was not to express outrage about
that, but instead to ask his embassy here in the United States of
America to sue the makers of the YouTube video. It is very troubling,
quite frankly unacceptable, that the leader of a country that receives
as much aid as Egypt receives from us would take so long to express any
sort of outrage or condemnation on what’s occurred and focused the
almost entire majority of his attention on a YouTube video instead of
condemning violence that ultimately led to the death of four American
diplomats overseas."
Our system of foreign aid is, indeed, broken, but not because the citizens of countries we help don't dance to our tune. We can't rule or control the world. Instead of determining aid based on a "them vs. us" foreign policy, which changes daily, and using most of our resources to fund other countries' arms purchases, how about using aid to help people in poor countries become more economically self-sufficent? Or, we could use the China business model: " You have something we want (e.g., oil); we have something you need (road construction know-how). Let's deal."
ReplyDeleteYou honestly think the Chinese model is any less selfish? You really think their aid, just because it's no-strings attached (read: happy to fund/enable the worst regimes in the world without any pesky moralistic human rights advocates in their government to snoop around and ask tough ethical questions) doesn't mean it doesn't have a negative impact.
DeleteAs for citizens of other countries dancing to "our" tune - think again. The powerful players, just as often as not, take the money and do *not* dance to our tune, but take development aid, money meant to benefit poor people, to enrich themselves (unless your tune is enabling corruption and wasting money instead helping those who need, I suspect that's not what you had in mind).
Pakistan in particular knows how to play the double-game, has been doing it for decades, and even when caught red-handed, lying and stabbing in the back, and the rest of the world see its, it continues to whine and blame everyone but itself (and can count on well-meaning, but gullible and overly guilty-feeling Americans to back it up).
If you want to clean up the US foreign aid system Paulette, I'm with you. And if you want to stop weapons purchases to countries that don't need it, I'm with you on that too. But if you think that the despots, thiefs, and thugs who hoard over our money are not at all at fault for the "resource-curse" of developing countries, I beg to differ.