Chicago Tribune: Charles Krauthammer- 'Why We Give Foreign Aid'

Source:The Washington Post- U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Muhammad Morsi: President of the Arab Republic of Egypt.

"Sequestration is not the best time to be doling out foreign aid, surely the most unpopular item in the federal budget. Especially when the recipient is President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt.

Morsi is intent on getting the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman (the blind sheik), serving a life sentence for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center attack that killed six and wounded more than a thousand. Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood is openly anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and otherwise prolifically intolerant. Just three years ago, Morsi called on Egyptians to nurse their children and grandchildren on hatred for Jews, whom he has called "the descendants of apes and pigs."

From the Chicago Tribune

As Charles Krauthammer argued in his column this is probably not the best time to be blogging about foreign aid, because it's the most unpopular part of the Federal budget, perhaps more unpopular than corporate welfare or pork barrel projects, money for favors, bridges to nowhere, that sort of thing. But foreign aid is important and it only represents around 2% of the entire Federal budget (or twenty billion dollars a year for all of you non- math wizards) and is not something that should be cut to shrink the Federal budget. Because there's not a lot of money there and it would cost us more in the future had we not cut it at all.

I look at foreign aid as I look at public assistance, as an investment in people and in human capital. Not charity which is completely something else, but when done and invested right foreign aid benefits American taxpayers because it prevents authoritarians from taking over third world countries. And builds a larger middle class in those countries so they have the resources to not only buy domestic products in their countries, but also able to purchase American products. Which is good for American companies as well as consumers.

If foreign aid is invested in things like infrastructure, education, health care, things that all countries need to be successful economically, as well as security and not invested in things like crony capitalists or funding terrorists or funding authoritarian regimes that have no interest in developing their countries, but simply use that money to stay in power, foreign aid should be looked at as loans or investments. And when invested well they payoff for the countries giving it.