On average, the United States spends $37 billion in foreign aid to other nations and to various organizations in pursuit of a favorable international environment. This money, or occasionally supplies, is cited to be spent on disease prevention (e.g., the case of the recent Ebola crisis), humanitarian efforts, for economic reasons and even to keep stable governments. This may sound like a staggeringly large amount of spending, but it, in fact, amounts to less than one percent of the current U.S. budget. As are most issues, the amount of money we send abroad is hotly debated on the hill. Some argue more should be spent at home, and others call for more active international diplomacy. Regardless, almost all politicians support some sort of spending abroad — with the exception of a few isolationists. The real problem that emerges from foreign aid spending is the lack of accountability abroad. While several strides have been made in the transparency of money management, we can only follow some of it to the hands of foreign governments. After that, there is little we can do to know exactly how other governments spend that money. Corrupt governments that receive aid marked for improving democracy or even providing economic assistance can often use the money for other purposes. On top of this, this steady flow of aid not solicited from their own tax base encourages these governments to not be accountable to their people and often leads to disenfranchised citizens.
Several solutions have been brought forth to solve this major problem. One such bill brought forth by Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) with bipartisan support required the president to set up procedures for evaluating the effectiveness of all forms of foreign aid. This failed to make the floor last year, but similar bills seem to be gaining support. Other Congressmen and women have criticized giving money to governments that are hostile to the U.S., claiming this funnels money to organizations that counter U.S. interests. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has openly supported using aid as leverage in many cases in order to get countries to respond to U.S. requests. A recent example of this being Senate Bill SB.46, which attempts to address the immigration issue by cutting aid to Mexico for failure to address illegal immigration. Surely, the U.S. can find a method of providing economic and health aid abroad without encouraging corruption or funding anything contrary to our foreign interests.
The most promising method to address this issue is to put general restrictions on direct payments to other governments. With the exception of military, counter-narcotic and other aid which only governments could effectively use, all money sent abroad for the purposes of social services, improved education or health initiatives would be more effective going to private charities. For example, many charities like Doctors Without Borders, which is highly involved in combatting health issues abroad, receive no grants from USAID. Other charities, many of which are religiously affiliated or involved in social work ,would benefit from more funding as well. A transfer of funding from government entities to already functioning international charities would help to free the U.S. funds from being heavily abused and allow more flexibility of funds across international borders. In addition, this would cut the flow of money to many hostile nations without cutting the flow to their people, fully and functionally pursuing U.S. interests and allowing other forms of diplomacy to take precedence.
