When people think of foreign aid, we tend to think of food and shelter for the world’s war-abandoned people, medical care after a disaster and this kind of thing. When we do, we tend to support it because we know that many countries are much poorer than we are. I don’t think we ever planned on nation-building or achieving political goals. But it gets much worse than that. Almost all foreign aid now is misallocated, misappropriated and misused—a great track record.
It began with the post-WWII Marshall Plan which was supposed to help Europe rebuild, with the idea that it was a loan. Before, we were very much an isolationist country. The idea was always to fund the “interests” of the American people which included charity, except that actual voters’ interests were ignored. A lot was spent to try to stop communism, even as the best way to stop it is to compare countries trying it to the success of those who abandoned it. Much was spent on the “drug war,” to little effect, except where it hurt the people living in the cartel countries. Getting Colombia to crack down on drugs hurt the farmers who eked out a living farming lucrative crops, such as coca. Many impoverished farmers have come here as illegals, as we killed their revenue source.
The Reality
The US is the largest giver in the world by far, not just to the UN. Far too many federal departments are able to get money to distribute. As an example, $60BB has been sent to other countries to: prop up dictators who are NOT helping their people and funding wars in which we have no real interest and even more egregious, we send money to countries that hate us. Much money is simply taken by the country’s leaders to enrich their own purses.
Matt Kibbe recently put out another CIVL video and told us that most of the money distributed isn’t even authorized by Congress. We probably have very little visibility into it, except as DOGE has shown, beginning with US Aid, a corrupt agency. Started in 1961, it became a huge slush fund, especially for the CIA. Some of the funding for the dangerous research at the Wuhan Institute for Virology probably also came from this fund. Sadly, a lot of the foreign aid not coming from US Aid IS furnished by Congress, but we generally have no visibility in how it is being spent.
Look at Afghanistan. How many billions have been spent only to have our money and war machines wind up with the Taliban? The answer is at least $75BB over 20 years. Did it help the people there? Of that, $85MM went to a luxury hotel that never opened, just as one example. We also funded $6MM to bring in cashmere goats as a revenue source for the people. That didn’t work out either. Just as in Africa, when we sent money, bad people pocket it, such as the Taliban.
We have often funded both sides of a war, such as Gaza and Israel. Even if the money is supposed to go for food and medicine, we don’t control that. In other cases, we interfere with a country’s right to self-govern, such as in Bangladesh, where US Aid attempted to topple the existing government because they weren’t on the side of US “interests,” whatever that meant. The reports show the money went to support opposition groups, train youth to protest and even funded protest music.
In India, DOGE has revealed that $21MM went in 2022 to oppose the current Prime Minister by encouraging more voter turnout; the good news is that some of this money has been cancelled by DOGE. We are not supposed to interfere in the elections of other countries. The subtle approach often works, when the overt approach fails (Obama trying to get the people of Great Britain to oppose Brexit). It is simply none of our business.
Why We Should Agree to End It
The money shell game these unelected bureaucrats are playing doesn’t meet anyone’s idea of humanitarian aid. What they have done doesn’t reduce poverty or promote economic growth. One program that did work (funded by a charity, not our foreign aid) was micro-grants to African women to jumpstart their craft businesses. For a tiny amount of money, many were able to build a successful business and begin to employ other members of their tribe. If government doesn’t work in trying to fix a problem, get it out of the business and let non-profits (not NGOs, which are funded by our government) and individuals do their thing. We’re far better at it.
Let’s not forget that there are many poor people in America who are beginning to recognize and resent the outpouring of their wealth to others. It simply isn’t fair, which is why more and more people oppose our taxation system.
And the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative is beginning to show how a country can usurp the power of another by usurious loans. We aren’t the CCP.
The only thing foreign aid or our government should promote are immediate humanitarian aid and things that lead to economic freedom for the individuals in a country, not their government. And it shouldn’t just be handouts, making them dependents. We don’t have the right to try to make a country be laissez-faire capitalist. But we can support them a bit when they go in that direction. To our enemies, zilch, nada, nothing. Until we no longer have problems in this country, we should stop giving our tax money to other countries.
There’s so much waste. Let’s get rid of these departments and focus on ourselves for a while.
And this is such obvious common sense. The government isn’t stupid so how can you help but think there is some really nefarious agenda actually in play? We hand over a wheelbarrow full of money but don’t get receipts? Who agrees to that?