President Trump’s proposed reduction in funding for foreign aid has emerged as one of the most controversial elements of a budget filled with cuts that have rankled interest groups of all stripes.
Democrats and Republicans have both criticized the $10.1 billion decrease in State Department funding that the White House included in its 2018 budget blueprint. The 28 percent cut would leave intact funding for embassy security, assistance to Israel and support for HIV/AIDS and malaria treatment programs.
But other areas including climate change research, funding for United Nations initiatives and development assistance would see dramatic cuts under the president’s plan. And a handful of programs described as “duplicative,” such as the Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance account, would be eliminated entirely.
Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director, said the administration had shuffled funding around the federal government to prioritize “hard power” over soft. The $54 billion in spending increases directed mostly toward the Pentagon would boost military might, the White House has said, and accompanying cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development and State Department would dilute the role of “soft power” tactics such as diplomacy and aid.
“Foreign assistance is not charity; it is a pillar of U.S. engagement around the world,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told the Washington Examiner. “President Trump’s budget proposal fails to recognize the effectiveness of these investments and the importance of diplomacy and development.”
Coons echoed many Democrats, and even some Republicans, by arguing that slashing the foreign aid budget could have implications for national security. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has said cutting development assistance would be a “disaster.”
“As [Defense] Secretary [Jim] Mattis once said as a general, ‘If you don’t fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition,’ because the world will be a more dangerous place,” Coons said.
In Congress, Trump’s foreign aid cuts have drawn resistance from high-ranking members of his own party. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on March 21 that he does not “think these reductions at the State Department are appropriate,” hinting that the proposal would not survive the Senate.
The foreign aid cuts aren’t nearly as unpopular among voters, however. A Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted in mid-March found that 52 percent of voters supported cutting foreign military assistance and 45 percent supported cutting humanitarian assistance as well.
Peter Van Buren, a former State Department foreign service officer who penned a book about his experience working on development projects in Iraq, said most people likely perceive the aid budget as larger than it is in reality.
“I think the vast majority of Americans would be deeply shocked at how small the number really is,” Van Buren said. “Most people grossly overestimate it, and I suspect cutting it is sort of playing to that sense.”
USAID, the main distributor of American foreign aid funds, consumes less than 1 percent of the federal budget. Altogether, the U.S. government is slated to administer $36.6 billion worth of aid this year.
Van Buren said the types of programs that provide foreign aid can be roughly divided into two categories: strategic and humanitarian.
“Some of this appears [to be] a way to move money — for whatever purpose — from the U.S. to allies that are politically important to us,” Van Buren said. “Certainly that seems to be the case in Iraq and Egypt.”
The U.S. has budgeted more than $510 million for projects in Iraq and nearly $1.5 billion for projects in Egypt, and Israel, which is one of America’s strongest allies, is set to receive $3.1 billion in assistance this year.
“I think it’s worth a look and to say to ourselves, ‘What goal are we actually accomplishing here and are we dressing up something else as foreign aid?'” Van Buren said.
However, Van Buren warned that cutting humanitarian aid, which provides resources such as vaccinations and women’s healthcare services in impoverished communities, could inflict massive pain on “some of the most vulnerable people in the world” without yielding a significant financial benefit to U.S. taxpayers.
“The other side of things is just critically important, because small amounts of money can just do so much in places that need it so much,” he said of humanitarian aid projects. “They’re almost rounding errors when you look at the amount of money the American budget spends.”
Development assistance has attracted many defenders since Trump put it on the chopping block, from Bill Gates to Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
But supporters of the president’s budget cuts say decades of spending heavily on foreign aid have produced few lasting gains in recipient countries, and some economists have argued that too much assistance from the West can actually stunt the development of markets and institutions in emerging states.
“There are gargantuan sums of cash that I think would be better off being burned in a field,” said Roey Rosenblith, U.S. director of Anti-Corruption International. “Because at least if you burned the money, it wouldn’t be going to evil people.”
Rosenblith said corruption often plays a role in hampering well-intentioned aid projects, noting money allocated for such efforts can end up lining the pockets of corrupt local leaders.
“I lived in east Africa for four years and saw ridiculous foreign aid scandals that kind of boggled the mind in the waste, abuse, fraud and corruption that occurred,” he said.
Examples of failed foreign aid projects or ones that wasted funds are all too commonplace. USAID funded the construction of a hospital in an area of Pakistan so rural that it did not have a functioning sewage system, and the hospital struggled to get electricity after U.S. aid workers insisted it operate on solar energy even though the area was too dusty to receive sunshine.
In Haiti, U.S. taxpayers picked up most of the tab for a $300 million industrial park that USAID promised would create 60,000 jobs and spark economic growth; instead, the facility sits almost completely empty today, even though aid workers kicked hundreds of families off their land in order to build it.
A USAID-backed education project in Nicaragua saw computers delivered to schools without electricity and unsolicited boxes of books sent to schools whose staff left them in plastic wrap because they hadn’t asked for any books. Aid workers in South Africa used $23,000 from an AIDS relief project on a single luxury lunch in Cape Town.
“I think that there needs to be a reckoning with the facts” about where aid dollars go, Rosenblith said. “Perhaps it’s time for us to re-evaluate whether or not aid is a good idea, period.”
