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This political cartoon is showing how Donald Trump feels towards foreign relations. President Trump wants limited foreign relations no matter how much he cuts foreign aid.

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Dorian de Wind, Military Affairs Columnist

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See great cartoons by all the top political cartoonists at http://cagle.com. To license this cartoon for your own site, visit http://politicalcartoons.com

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This political cartoon explains how trump wants to cut support for other countries but he is using their products. The united States trades with many of the countries that need foreign aid which he is trying to reduce. The united States needs them as well.

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Trump doesn't buy American, in Dave Granlund's latest political cartoon

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Click here to view this article from http://host.madison.com.

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"Actual Trump Quotes Read By Cartoon Donald Trump" 

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"Actual Trump Quotes Read By Cartoon Donald Trump" 

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This cartoon of Donald Trump expresses the way trump thinks about foreign countries and the aid for them. He does not really seem to care that much about other countries. As long as america comes first he is going to do everything surrounding that.

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Actual Trump Quotes Read By Cartoon Donald Trump

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He is taking about how foreign aid has helps so many even through multiple presidents. He takes about people who suffer and die from sicknesses for starvation all over the world. He also says the world should help each other when they are in need.

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"Trump faces stiff resistance to proposed foreign aid cuts" 

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"Trump faces stiff resistance to proposed foreign aid cuts" 

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Trump wants to increase the defense budget and cutting the state budget. To help defense he is also cutting foreign aid. He has to wait for approval which he might get.

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Trump faces stiff resistance to proposed foreign aid cuts

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"What Trump's Foreign- Aid Budget Means to the Rest of the World"

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"What Trump's Foreign- Aid Budget Means to the Rest of the World"

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This articles explains how Trumps foreign aid budget cut does not only affect foreign countries but also the United States. It will be affecting foreign aid accounts, the world bank etc. The Budget is being cut because Trump and many other thinks that foreign aid takes up to much money from the U.S.

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The Trump administration's budget proposal for 2018 sent shockwaves across the country, but when it came to one slice of the funding, the international-affairs budget, those waves extended across the globe.

The proposed 31 percent cut affects the U.S. bilateral foreign-aid accounts; funding for the United Nations, World Bank, and other international institutions; and the State Department's diplomatic duties. The United States' friends and allies in the developing world now have tangible evidence, in place of vague speculation, of what they had most feared since Donald Trump's election in November: the withdrawal of the United States from active international leadership in the world.

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President Trump's 'Hard Power' Budget
At current levels, the $30 billion U.S. foreign-aid budget is less than 1 percent of the $3.8 trillion federal budget, though polls show Americans believe it takes up a much larger share. Trump's proposal, which functions as a blueprint of his vision for the government, would cut U.S. aid funding to a level not seen since the 1970s and 1990s. As such, his budget echoes a mistake that other presidents have made: diminishing the power of U.S. foreign aid at a time when it's crucial to American interests.

The 1970s and 1990s marked the end of two cycles of war: The Vietnam War ended in 1973 and the Cold War ended as the Soviet Empire collapsed in 1991. In both cases, the national-security imperatives facing the United States changed dramatically overnight, and so did the resources for foreign aid. This follows a well-worn pattern: Whenever foreign threats to America's vital interests rise, so does foreign spending, and whenever those threats appear to diminish, so do aid budgets.

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Why Trump's Proposed Cuts to the Foreign-Aid Budget Are Rattling U.S. Allies

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The Trump administration's budget proposal for 2018 sent shockwaves across the country, but when it came to one slice of the funding, the international-affairs budget, those waves extended across the globe. The proposed 31 percent cut affects the U.S. bilateral foreign-aid accounts; funding for the United Nations, World Bank, and other international institutions; and the State Department's diplomatic duties.

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This article is saying how Trumps plan to make america first is to cut the Foreign Aid budget drastically. he is trying to be rid of direct foreign assistance. He also wants to merge make the state department USAID.

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President Donald Trump's vow to put "America first" includes a plan to drastically cut assistance to developing countries and merge the State Department with USAID, according to an internal budget document and sources.

The administration's March budget proposal vowed to slash aid to developing countries by over one-third, but contained few details. According to a detailed 15-page State Department budget document obtained by Foreign Policy, the overhaul also includes rechanneling funding from development assistance into a program that is tied closely to national security objectives.

The document details how the Trump administration's plans to reduce direct foreign assistance would take place in fiscal year 2018.

Acting USAID Administrator Wade Warren told employees at a recent staff meeting that administration officials are considering folding the agency into the State Department as part of a review mandated by President Trump's March 13 executive order on streamlining the executive branch, according to a source within USAID. The order instructs the head of each agency to submit a plan to the Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney, "to reorganize the agency, if appropriate, in order to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of that agency."

While the order appears to give USAID's administrator some discretion in the reorganization plan, the White House's 2018 budget proposal points to a preference for consolidating the two entities, stating "the need for State and USAID to pursue greater efficiencies through reorganization and consolidation in order to enable effective diplomacy and development."

Such a move would not be unprecedented. In 1999, the U.S. Information Agency, which funded information and cultural programs abroad, was closed down and many of its programs folded in the State Department. But shutting down, or even just scaling back, an agency dedicated to issues like disease prevention and food security could prove far more polarizing.

"That will end the technical expertise of USAID, and in my view, it will be an unmitigated disaster for the longer term," said Andrew Natsios, the former USAID Administrator under President George W. Bush. "I predict we will pay the price. We will pay the price for the poorly thought out and ill-considered organization changes that we're making, and cuts in spending as well."

Given the steep bipartisan opposition to slashing foreign assistance, Congress likely will not consent to the entire proposed reduction. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham went as far as to declare Trump's budget "dead on arrival."

Nonetheless, aid experts still expect the final budget passed by Congress to lower spending levels on assistance.

The State Department and USAID declined to comment on potentially merging the two entities, and noted that the White House will release a more detailed budget later this spring. Nonetheless, a USAID spokesperson said "we intend to make the best use of U.S. taxpayer dollars by eliminating programs and prioritizing resources that most advance America's interests."

Senior USAID officials have told staff that the agency is attempting to cope with the steep cuts by prioritizing its field offices abroad over its offices in Washington. Nonetheless, the agency still anticipates that the budget proposal will necessitate eliminating 30 to 35 of its field missions while cutting its regional bureaus by roughly 65 percent. USAID currently operates in about 100 countries.

"What you're basically doing is eviscerating the most important tool of American influence in the developing world, which is our development program," said Natsios. "I don't think they understand what the role of USAID is, what USAID's mission directors are. USAID's mission directors are among the most influential foreigners in the country."

In addition to closing missions, global health funding is also targeted, with 41 countries facing cuts. While the Trump budget has committed to maintaining funding for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the U.S. initiative that combats HIV/AIDS internationally, the State Department's budget indicates that health programs abroad are set to take an approximately 25 percent hit in funding.

"I've seen firsthand how U.S. development money saves millions of lives" said Tom Kenyon, the CEO of Project Hope, a global health nonprofit. "There's just no question people would die from this."

The administration's cut to global health funding could also put Americans at risk in the event of a major epidemic.

"We're going to see a lot of deaths that will be easily preventable actually come to fruition," warned John Norris, a former USAID employee who now serves as the executive director for the Sustainable Security and Peacebuilding Initiative at the Center for American Progress. "We're going to see our own country much more vulnerable to the spread of infectious diseases as we saw with the Ebola crisis. Things that start abroad can quickly erupt here."

Likewise, the Bureau for Food Security is slated to lose 68 percent of its funding. This would reduce development aid geared toward preventing food shortages and may instead force the United States and other donor countries to spend more resources on emergency food assistance.

On top of health and food security, the administration has also made good on its promise to cut assistance that helps vulnerable countries cope with the effects of climate change. The budget would enact a sweeping 94.5 percent cut in funding for the State Department's Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, the roughly $1 billion the U.S. draws on for contributions to the Green Climate Fund, which is dedicated to curbing carbon emissions. The Green Climate Fund contribution is also a U.S. commitment made under the 2016 Paris climate agreement that aims to keep global temperatures from rising beyond an environmentally disastrous two degrees Celsius.

Other programs and offices that are on the chopping block include the ambassador-at-large for global women's issues, the Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues, and the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership.

The cuts are also indicative of the wider push to tie development aid with U.S. national security interests. The budget zeroes out funds for development assistance, which funds 77 countries and regional offices, and redirects much of the remaining funds to the economic support fund, which is tied to specific U.S. political or strategic objectives.

"In addition to the deeply troubling program cuts and eliminations in many areas, the shift toward the ESF and away from DA points to a structural shift that almost certainly weakens USAID in relation to the State Department," said Scott Morris, the director of the U.S. Development Policy Initiative at the Center for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank.

"Major shifts like this deserve a great deal of scrutiny and deliberation," he said.

Bolstering the economic support fund while gutting development assistance has raised fears in the development world that the Trump administration is more interested in using foreign assistance to achieve short-term political objectives than his predecessors.

"Historically, the ESF is used primarily as a means of helping political allies in ways that we want to provide funding to them but with less emphasis on development outcomes," said Steven Radelet, the former chief economist at USAID.

According to Natsios, the former USAID administrator, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger similarly diverted funds during the Cold War. Natsios pointed to the consultations that current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has had with Kissinger and believes that the elder statesman may be influencing the administration's attitude toward foreign aid restructuring.

"I think Dr. Kissinger is one of our greatest Secretaries of State. He has, however, not been one of our supporters over the long term for development assistance, said Natsios. "Dr. Kissinger's analysis, in my view, is completely wrong."

Foreign-policy and national security experts on both sides of the aisle have argued that the cuts pose concrete risks to U.S. security interests. In February, a group of 121 retired generals and admirals sent an open letter to the White House and Congress cautioning against cuts to foreign aid and diplomacy. The letter cited the State Department and USAID's role in maintaining global stability by confronting extremist groups like the Islamic State, curbing refugee flows, and combating infectious diseases like Ebola.

They expressed fear that cutting foreign aid risks ceding U.S. influence in other regions and countries.

Some of the cuts appear directed at countries that had been regarded as strategically important. For instance, foreign assistance to Ukraine, which is used to encourage political and economic reform, is facing a 68.8 percent cut.

"One of the major themes and purposes and directions of U.S. policy in Ukraine for years and years has been to encourage them to move toward European institutions," said William Taylor, the former ambassador to Ukraine under George W. Bush and now vice president at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

"It's in our interest that they don't move toward Russian institutions."
Update: This article was updated to include comments from a USAID spokesperson.
Correction, April 24, 2017: A previous version of this article included estimated budget impacts from the NGO community. Those estimates were in response to an earlier version of the budget proposal, not the detailed breakdown included in this article.

Photo credit: JAY DIRECTO/AFP/Getty Images

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President Donald Trump's vow to put "America first" includes a plan to drastically cut assistance to developing countries and merge the State Department with USAID, according to an internal budget document and sources. The administration's March budget proposal vowed to slash aid to developing countries by over one-third, but contained few details.

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This article talks about how one of the reasons the Trump is now trying cut down is to decrease some of Americas debt. Trumps biggest priority is to "Make America Great Again" and he thinks by cutting back will help. Glassman also says that America always helps other countries it is normal that every time a country is in need the U.S. is there to help.

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Faced with cutting government spending to reduce record debt, politicians have found a popular target. After reviewing respondents' reaction to a list of budget reductions -- including defense, education, food stamps and cultural programs -- ABC News-Washington Post pollsters found that "the only possible federal spending cut a majority favored was for foreign aid."

But not so fast.

Support to foreign governments has become more strategic in recent years, and much of it serves important purposes. As David Rothkopf writes in Foreign Policy, this is "just the moment when aid is most critical on initiative of vital national security from fighting terror to stabilizing the Middle East to winning support for the U.S. in regions where our rivals are spending furiously to tip the scales in their favor."

One of those regions is Africa, where China is trying to make friends and influence people. The U.S. has spent billions of dollars -- the largest single government effort to fight international disease -- to help Africans overcome epidemics of AIDS and malaria. It's the right thing to do in a moral sense, but it also advances U.S. public diplomacy and national security. Tens of millions more African orphans would add to instability on a pivotal continent.

Additionally, economic aid to Afghanistan makes that troubled nation -- and erstwhile terrorist launching pad -- more secure and ultimately protects U.S. military personnel. And aid to Haiti helps a neighbor in terrible distress.

Consider the work of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, launched with bipartisan support in 2004 and currently spending about $1 billion a year. The MCC's mission, according to its fiscal 2012 budget proposal, is "to reduce poverty through investments promoting growth in poor countries that create and maintain sound policy environments."

The MCC provides funding for projects in nations that demonstrate a commitment to such goals as free markets and a corruption-free bureaucracy. The program has scored major successes in such countries as Tanzania, where road, water, and sanitation projects have helped 5 million people, with an estimated economic gain of well over $1 billion.

Some foreign aid, however, is far more questionable. For instance, why should U.S. taxpayer dollars flow abroad to projects that are so distasteful at home that they can't get support here?

An example is a program to spend tens of millions of dollars in Indonesia to try to "reduce the threats of deforestation and climate change and help to conserve the country's tropical forests, wildlife, and ecosystem processes," according to a White House fact sheet. The program is backed by such aggressive Green groups as WWF and Greenpeace, and no wonder.

Cap-and-trade and similar climate change legislation could not get through the U.S. Congress for the simple reason that their potential benefits were outweighed by their significant economic costs. But the expensive experiment continues, with U.S. taxpayer funding, in Indonesia. If anything, the costs of such policies are even higher in Indonesia, where they harm the livelihoods of poor farmers, than in the United States.

Since 2006, the MCC has provided aid to help Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, strengthen its judiciary and government procurement system and to institute a nationwide immunization program for five million children. That sort of aid makes sense. Now, unfortunately, assistance to the country is being shaped by rejected ideology. This is precisely the kind of foreign aid that American taxpayers should be concerned about.

The Indonesia funding is part of a $1 billion pledge, offered in November by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, to "slow and reverse deforestation in the tropics." But in Indonesia, at least, "deforestation" is often a politically charged term that means substituting one kind of planting for another.

The bone of contention is that some Indonesia farmers are converting forested lands to productive agriculture use. That is a change that helps boost the Indonesian economy, and, as decades of history have shown, the single most important factor in an improved environment is a robust economy.

Wealth makes health. In his 2004 book The Real Environmental Crisis: Why Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environment's Number One Enemy, Jack Hollander, professor emeritus of energy and resources at the University of California at Berkeley, powerfully demonstrates the link between poverty and environmental degradation. It's obvious to anyone who sees charcoal being burned as fuel in Uganda or dried dung in rural China.

The best kind of U.S. aid, like most of the work of the MCC, seeks to build economic growth in poor countries by strengthening health care, education, and governmental and physical infrastructure. Economic growth in developing nations helps the United States by increasing stability in those countries, contributing to more vibrant trade in both directions and, in fact, producing a cleaner environment.

If, however, programs like the one for Indonesia prevail, then "poor people in the developing world will be subject to lower economic growth rates and see larger percentages of their income devoted to energy costs," wrote Niger Innis of the U.S.-based Congress of Racial Equality last month. "This means they will have less to spend on education, food, shelter, and other staples."

Washington budget cutters should not slash foreign aid mindlessly, but they would do well to target for extinction aid that harms economies and is based on a philosophy that can't pass muster among the American people.

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Faced with cutting government spending to reduce record debt, politicians have found a popular target. After reviewing respondents' reaction to a list of budget reductions -- including defense, education, food stamps and cultural programs -- ABC News-Washington Post pollsters found that "the only possible federal spending cut a majority favored [...]

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"Foreign Aid Programs Are Important For American National Security"

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"Foreign Aid Programs Are Important For American National Security"

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This article is saying how the new budget cuts are specifically targeting foreign aid. But foreign aid is not taking up all of the money so cutting its budget will not do much. Cutting foreign aid will make the U.S. national security weak.

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This article talks about how the United States gives more money to countries in need more than any other country that could do the same. The United States does have more money than the other donor countries so it is not a surprise. The U.S. is always willing to help any country that is in need.

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The U.S. Government Provides More Foreign Aid than Any Other Country. Yes. The United States gives more cash to developing countries than any other nation. Of the $69 billion in development assistance given by the worlds 22 top donors in 2003, the U.S. government contributed $16.3 billion, or just under 25 percent. But these sums mainly reflect that the United States is the largest and wealthiest donor country, accounting for 40 percent of the 22 donor countries total income. So, it should come as no surprise that the United States gives substantially more than, say Canada, which has one tenth the population and a much lower average income.

When U.S. foreign aid is measured on other scales, however, a different picture emerges. For example, the United States provided about $51 per citizen in official development assistance in 200203. That ranks it in 16th place among other major donors, behind Norway ($381 per citizen), the Netherlands ($203 per citizen), France ($96 per citizen), and the United Kingdom ($89 per citizen), among others. When aid is measured as a share of national income, the United States ranks dead last at 0.15 percent. Top givers include Norway (0.92), Denmark (0.84), Belgium (0.60), and Germany (0.28).

Moreover, foreign aid constitutes only a small share of the U.S. federal budgetmuch smaller than most Americans think. Surveys show that most Americans believe the federal government devotes 15 to 20 percent of the countrys expenditures to aid. The actual figure is far less than 1 percent; thats less than one fourth of the budget share of 1965.

America Is the Most Generous Country in the World if You Include Private Donations to Charities. No. Americans certainly rise to the occasion in times of crisis, as the outpouring of charitable giving to tsunami victims demonstrated. According to U.S. government figures, private donations to low-income countries through American churches, charities, foundations, nongovernmental organizations, and college scholarships was at least $6.3 billion in 2003. And such data almost certainly understate the actual amount of private aid. Some organizations do not respond to the government survey used to collect the data, and some important forms of contribution are omitted, such as volunteer time. Alternative estimates vary, with the upper-end figure (including gifts to more developed countries such as Israel and Russia) at $17.1 billion for 2000. By this estimation, private charitable donations per American total $58 per yearor about 0.16 percent of U.S. incomeranking the United States second among major donors in private giving (the first is Ireland at 0.22 percent).

Combining public and private donations puts total U.S. development assistance in the range of $35 billion per year, or about 0.32 percent of U.S. income. In other words, for every $3 of income, the United States provides about one cent in development assistance. Even with this broader measure (and using the larger estimate of U.S. private assistance without making a similar adjustment for other countries), the United States ranks, at best, 15th among the top donors.

Americans Provide Generous Economic Aid Through the Remittances Foreign Workers Send Home to Support Their Families. No. The United States hosts many immigrant workers who send home money each month to help support their extended families by paying for school fees, food, housing, job training, and medicine. But these remittances are not aid, and they are certainly not an indicator of U.S. generosity or stinginess.

Remittances stem from market-based labor transactions, not generosity. Workers trade their time and skills for a paycheck in a mutually beneficial exchange. When those workers send the money back home, it is an intra-family transfer, not a charitable gift. Just because these flows help fight poverty does not make them aid. Private bank loans, foreign direct investment, and trade also help reduce poverty, but they are not aid, either.

Consider remittances that flow in the opposite direction. Thousands of Americans work in low-income countries around the world, and many of them send funds back to their families in the United States. But when an American working for Pertamina Oil Company in Indonesia sends money back to his or her grandmother in Florida, that money is clearly not Indonesian foreign aid to the United States.

Some argue that remittances can still substitute for aid, but this assertion is only partially true. One difference is the regional disparities in their destinations. Remittances from the United States are heavily concentrated in Latin America and much scantier in the poorer countries of Africa and South Asia. Of the $28 billion in U.S. remittances to developing countries in 2003, the majority went to middle-income countries, and more than half went to Latin America. Only about $0.5 billion went to sub-Saharan Africa, or about 75 cents per Africanhardly enough to ease poverty in a continent where income averages about $500 per year. In addition, government policy only modestly and indirectly affects remittances, so the United States cannot direct them to the neediest countries (in response to a natural disaster, for example), or use them to support U.S. foreign-policy goals. Remittances are an important complement to aid, but they are not a substitute.

The United States Helps Poor Countries in Many Ways Besides Foreign Aid. Yes. The United States helps provide security around the world by keeping sea lanes open for commerce, providing peacekeeping forces, and airlifting supplies during emergencies, as evidenced by the U.S. militarys valuable role in tsunami relief efforts. U.S. trade and investment also accelerate growth and development. In addition, U.S. firms develop technologies such as medicines and the Internet that low-income countries can use at a fraction of the cost of creating them.

Still, though the United States is one of the most open markets in the world, it imposes tough restrictions on poor countries. In fact, some analysts estimate that U.S. trade barriers inhibit growth in low-income countries much more than U.S. aid helps. Contrast the $350 million pledged in tsunami relief to the $1.8 billion in duties on imports collected from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and India in 2004.

The United States collected almost as much in import duties in 2004 from Bangladesh ($314 million) as from France ($350 million), despite importing 14 times as much from France. In addition, U.S. agricultural subsidies undermine the incomes of poor farmers around the world. Economist William Cline estimates that elimination of trade barriers by rich countries could inject $100 billion annually into the economies of developing countries.

In the most recent ranking of the Center for Global Development/Commitment to Development Indexwhich ranks 21 rich countries on how their aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology policies help poor countriesthe United States places seventh. U.S. policies toward the poorest countries are not the worst in the world as some suggest, but there is clearly ample room for improvement.

The Key to Development in Low-Income Countries Is Trade, not Aid. Actually, its both. Trade is an enormously powerful engine for development, especially trade in manufactured goods (less so for commodities). Countries that export labor-intensive, manufactured goods to the rest of the world generally experience faster economic growth and less poverty because such exports help create jobs, improve worker skills and productivity, and upgrade local technologies. Aid without tradeor, more accurately, aid without the creation of a robust private sectorcannot stimulate long-term growth and development.

But simply lowering trade barriers and opening markets is often insufficient. Many poor countries just dont have the resources to build the roads, train the teachers, and buy the medicines necessary to increase worker productivity and compete in global markets. Some of the greatest development success stories of the last 40 years have relied on a combination of trade and aid. South Korea created millions of jobs by exporting its products around the world while receiving nearly $100 per person (in todays dollars) in annual aid between 1955 and1972. Botswanas rapid expansion of diamond exports and exceptionally good governance made it the worlds fastest growing economy between 1965 and 1995, during which time it received annual aid flows averaging $127 per person. By contrast, annual assistance to sub-Saharan Africa today averages about $28 per personnot nearly enough to build a foundation for sustained growth and development.

Private Investment and Other Financial Flows to Developing Countries in the 1990s Offset the Decline in Aid. Think Again. Official aid fell sharply in the 1990s following the end of the Cold War, then rebounded slightly during the last few years. According to the World Bank, the amount of private financial flows to developing countries jumped from $55 billion to $155 billion between 1990 and 2002. With such a massive increase in private finance, why should we be concerned about the drop in aid?

Unfortunately, the increase in private cash was concentrated in a relatively small number of middle-income countries but almost completely bypassed the poorest ones. In low-income countriesdefined by the World Bank as countries with average incomes below $735 per yearlevels of aid (after accounting for loan payments) held steady between 1990 to 2002 at around $31 billion (though the real value fell after factoring in inflation and increased population of recipients). At the same time, non-aid loans from governments dropped from new loans of $3 billion to net repayments of $6 billion, meaning official financial assistance fell overall. At the same time, private capital dropped from $14 billion to $9 billion, dealing poorer countries a double whammy.

For middle-income countries such as Brazil, Turkey, and Malaysia, a different picture emerges. Official aid declined sharply between 1990 and 2002, from $29 billion to $9 billion. But private cash swelled from $42 billion to $146 billion, more than offsetting the decline in aid. This private finance was enormously beneficial to the countries that received it, but for most of the worlds poorest countries, it was in short supply. There was no privatization of capital flows to the poorest countries, only a sharp decline.

Foreign Aid Has Actually Done Very Little to Help Development. Wrong. In 1947, U.S. Sen. Robert Taft famously described U.S. support for the International Monetary Fund as pouring money down a rathole. Former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms claimed foreign aid only lined the pockets of corrupt dictators, while funding the salaries of a growing, bloated bureaucracy. A great deal of assistance has certainly been wasted over the years, particularly aid provided for political rather than developmental purposes. Corrupt governments pocketed some of the funds, while the United States and the Soviet Union showered money on proxy states during the Cold War with little regard for how it was spent.

But aid has successfully supported development in many other countries, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Botswana, and, more recently, Uganda and Mozambique. Although economists still debate the evidence, a growing body of research links increased aid with enhanced growth. One recent study found that every dollar in growth-oriented aid added $1.64 on average to the incomes of recipient countries.

Aid has proven particularly effective in boosting health and education, which improved markedly around the world during the last four decades. In developing countries, life expectancy at birth increased from 43 to 59 years between 1960 and 2002, and infant mortality rates fell from 147 to 79 per thousand. Although aid was not the most significant contributor to these trends, many analysts believe it played a key role. The United States could unquestionably increase the effectiveness of its aid by reducing bureaucratic overhead, increasing coordination with other donors, and aiming fewer funds at corrupt or incompetent governments. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that in most cases, aid has positively contributed to the well-being of developing countries around the world.

If Rich Countries Just Doubled their Aid, Poor Countries Could Develop Quickly. No. Initiating and sustaining growth and development depends primarily on the actions of citizens and leaders of developing counties themselves. The key ingredients for sustained growth and poverty reduction are economic and political stability, investments in health and education, strong institutions for good governance, and establishing an environment for a robust and competitive private sector. Aid can do little to overcome poor governance and destructive policies. Nevertheless, it can make a crucial difference in many countries, particularly those that do not have the resources to initiate rapid growth. A country with per capita income of $200 and a 15 percent savings rate generates $30 per person per year in investable resources, hardly enough to initiate rapid growth. Even in countries with poor governance, under certain circumstances, well-targeted aid working through non-government channels such as private clinics or mission schools can help improve peoples lives.

Just providing more aid is not enough, though. How the United States provides it is equally important. The Bush administrations innovative new aid program, the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), is designed to provide large amounts of assistance to a small number of low-income countries with a proven record of reasonably good governance, investments in health and education, and sound economic policies. The program provides a big incentivelarge amounts of funding with relatively high spending flexibilityfor countries that show a strong commitment to development.

But, though the MCA is a very promising approach, it is at best only a partial solution to improving aid effectiveness. To make aid work better in a post-September 11 world, deeper changes are needed. The United States must develop a set of hard-nosed, sensible strategies for working in countries that do not qualify for the MCA, from those that just miss to those that have completely collapsed. It must restructure the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to reduce its bureaucratic costs, narrow its focus, and revamp its aid-delivery mechanisms. More fundamental, it must rewrite the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, an outdated piece of legislation that is a great millstone around USAIDs neck. Taking on these challenges will not be easy, but they are central to improving the effectiveness of U.S. aid programs, fighting poverty, and creating a more secure world.

The United States Is Doing Enough to Achieve Its Foreign-Policy Goals in Developing Countries. No. Debates about whether the United States gives more than others misses a bigger point: The key question is whether we are doing enough to achieve our own foreign-policy goals in the developing world. Sadly, our efforts are woefully inadequate.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has argued in Foreign Policy that development is a core national security issue, and that the United States cannot win the war on terrorism unless we confront the social and political roots of poverty. Unfortunately, many citizens of poor countries see economic opportunity, escape from poverty, and political freedom as distant dreams. The gap between the richest and poorest countries has widened considerably during the last 20 years, breeding bitterness and anger among people who believerightly or wronglythat the rich have rigged the international system against them. A growing number of groups are promoting radical ideologies that see the United States as the problem, not the solution. If the United States is to win the war on terrorism, it needs poor countries as well as rich ones to support the values it champions and to believe that they, too, can climb out of poverty and achieve economic and political freedom. But they need help to do it, and the assistance the United States provides is not enough to make a real difference.

The Bush administration deserves credit for increasing foreign aid both through its emergency HIV/AIDS program and the MCA. But these initiatives will touch only a few countries. Outside of these programs (and excluding aid for Iraq and Afghanistan), development assistance has stagnated and is likely to be cut in the next federal budget. In sub-Saharan Africa, the United States provides a paltry $7 per African per year (one quarter of the $28 all donors together provide), with private giving perhaps doubling that amount. Meanwhile, 27,000 children die every day from preventable diseases, half the worlds population lives on incomes less than $2 per day, and resentment of the United States continues to grow. This is no way to create a more stable, secure, and pro-Western world. The United States may or may not be stingy with its aid, but it is clearly short sighted.

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The U.S. Government Provides More Foreign Aid than Any Other Country. Yes. The United States gives more cash to developing countries than any other nation. Of the $69 billion in development assistance given by the worlds 22 top donors in 2003, the U.S. government contributed $16.3 billion, or just under 25 percent.

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"Should America keep Giving Billions of Dollars to Countries In Need?"

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"Should America keep Giving Billions of Dollars to Countries In Need?"

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This article talks about how the United states does spend lots of money on other countries but it is all beneficial. It also says how foreign aid does not really help other countries like it would like. she also talks about where the funding goes as far as helping.

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Each year, the United States sends billions of dollars to poor countries. Does it really help them grow?

The question isn't new.

But it's taken on renewed urgency in the Trump administration. Last month, NPR's David Greene asked Stephen Moore, who advised Trump's campaign on economic policy, whether he supports the idea of cutting the U.S. foreign aid budget. His response: "100 percent."

"There's zero evidence that any of these foreign aid programs have had any effect on development, whether it's in the Middle East or Africa or South America," said Moore, who is a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "And there's just zero evidence that any of that development aid has had any effect on raising the living standards."

Is Moore right?

"It's an extremely difficult question to answer," says Rachel Glennerster, executive director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her group uses scientific research to test and improve programs that address the needs of the poor. "If you can break it down, you can start answering it."

So let's break it down.
Does Moore have a point?
The first challenge is to defining "development." In a broad sense, it means economic growth - increasing the size of a country's economy over time.

For Moore, it's clear what leads to economic growth - and it's not foreign aid. "All these countries have to do is cut taxes, provide private property rights and get involved in global markets," he told NPR in a follow-up interview. He cites as evidence the Heritage Foundation's Freedom Index, which asserts that the less control a government exerts over its economy, the higher its citizens' incomes are.

It's a bit more complicated than that, suggests Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a think tank that focuses on poverty and inequality around the world. "The short answer is, we don't know what causes economic growth," he says. "Development economists have gone through loads of different theories."

Where does foreign aid go? It gets invested in roads and factories. It funds improvements in health and education, with the goal of creating a strong workforce, and ultimately toward growing a country's economy. But still, Kenny says, "we don't know. And if we don't know what causes growth, what the role is for aid is hard to answer."

In any case, foreign aid accounts for just a tiny percentage of low- and middle-income countries' income - about 0.6 percent, according to the World Bank. "Aid just isn't that big anymore in terms of its size in recipient economies," says Kenny. "So you wouldn't expect it to have a big impact on economic growth."

Nonetheless, researchers have tried for decades to connect the dots between aid and growth, says Glennerster of the poverty lab at MIT. But results have been mixed. "I can show you 40 papers that have appeared in economic journals in the last 10 to 15 years saying that there's been no relationship," says Kenny. "Twice the number that say there is. Some say it's a mix. All those stories are plausible."

One 2007 paper, for example, titled "The Aid Effectiveness Literature: The Sad Results of 40 Years of Research" looked at 100 studies and found that aid has not boosted economic growth. In some cases, countries receiving aid did show positive growth, but it was "small and of dubious significance," found the researchers, Hristos Doucouliagos and Martin Paldam. When they reanalyzed the literature in 2014, they reached the same conclusion.

Other studies have a rosier view. A 2015 paper published in the World Bank Economic Review looked at countries that receive foreign aid equivalent to 10 percent of their gross domestic product - the goods and services produced over a specific period of time. The paper found a bump in economic growth by one percentage point. That might sound trivial, but it's not - especially for developing countries that grow about 3 to 4 percent a year, according to Steve Radelet, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Opening the black box of aid
Then there's the question of what aid is supposed to do. Not all foreign aid is intended to boost income and GDP. "When people look at aid they just mash everything together," says Krishna Dipankar Rao, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health.

There are many types of aid. Take the U.S., for example. Last year, we spent $33 billion on foreign aid, money that we gave to 100 countries around the world for a variety of projects. Sometimes the aim is to spur development, like offering low-cost tractors to boost agricultural productivity in Nepal. Sometimes it's to promote peace, like encouraging young people in Kyrgyzstan to vote. Sometimes it's to save lives: providing humanitarian relief in post-earthquake Haiti.

Once you break open the black box of aid, it's easier to find out whether a project has made a difference in a country's well-being. "What is it that you're trying to measure?" says Neil Boothby, a professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and a former special adviser on children's issues at USAID. "Are you looking to reduce poverty? Mortality? Develop robust health systems?"

For a long time, those kinds of questions were left unanswered. The folks who allocate development aid did what made sense to them and didn't conduct studies to back it up, reported NPR's Nurith Aizenman in January 2017.

That's no longer the case, Aizenman found. Since the early 2000s, social science researchers have been pushing policymakers to evaluate the impact of their programs. Many groups have begun using randomized controlled trials, a rigorous evaluation method often used in the fields of science and medicine, to design health and development programs. They compare one group of people that got aid with another group that didn't and see whether the aid helped.

Even the U.S. government has hopped on the train. In 2011, USAID established an evaluation policy to make evidence-based decisions about future aid programming. USAID has commissioned more than 1,000 evaluations since the policy was enforced.
Can health lead to wealth?
So now let's go back to Moore's statement. Can we really say that there's "zero evidence" that U.S. foreign aid has had an impact on development?

"That's false," says Amanda Glassman, chief operating officer at the Center for Global Development. If we interpret "development" to mean an improvement in overall well-being, then "there's plenty of evidence that shows aid has worked" - including aid from the U.S., she says.

The only problem is that the evidence is often in the realm of education and health. The President's Malaria Initiative, for example, has protected 6 million from the mosquito-borne disease since 2000. A vitamin A program in Nepal halved the mortality rate for children under 5 in just five years. And two education projects in Burkina Faso and Niger helped boost school enrollment and test scores, especially for girls.

Asked about these successes in a follow-up interview with NPR, Moore had this to say: "Global health programs can increase life expectancy or decrease child mortality, but ultimately, people want a higher standard of living."

Aid researchers often argue that health is wealth. "In the end, I don't think you can separate one from the other," says Boothby from Columbia.

Glassman, who co-wrote a book called Millions Saved that evaluates the effectiveness of global health initiatives, shares a case study. About two decades ago, Botswana was going through an HIV/AIDS crisis. In 2001, nearly 20 percent of the population - about 320,000 people - were living with HIV. "We are threatened with extinction," said President Festus Mogae to the U.N. General Assembly that year.

The health emergency also threatened to derail the economic progress that the country had enjoyed since discovering diamonds in the 1960s. The disease decimated the workforce, from farmers to teachers to civic leaders. Health care costs were racking up, according to the World Health Organization. Mogae declared his battle cry: " Ntwa e bolotse." ("The war has started.")

To fight the epidemic, the U.S. joined forces with Mogae and funded 75 percent of Botswana's $374 million HIV/AIDS response, which made life-saving antiretroviral drugs free for 223,974 people. As a result, AIDS-related deaths dropped from 21,000 in 2003 to 5,800 in 2013. By 2010, the annual death rate from AIDS was under 1 percent.

In 2012, NPR's Jason Beaubien met some of the people who benefited from the program, including a farmer named Johane Setlhare, who started taking antiretroviral drugs in 2007.

"I would have been dead nowadays if I hadn't taken the treatment," he told Beaubien.

Just two years after Selthare began taking his daily medication, he had built himself a new house with his own hands. Working on the roof and making the bricks for the walls, he was surprised at his strength.

Your Turn: Does U.S. Foreign Aid Help Raise Living Standards In Developing Countries?
Researchers are split on the issue. Where do you stand? Submit your perspective in the tool below. Try to keep it under 100 words. We'll feature some of the comments on Goats and Soda in a special #CuriousGoat post next week. Our submission deadline has passed. Thanks for participating! Read a selection of our reader responses here. If you select "anonymous" we will not publish your comment in our roundup.

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Should America Keep Giving Billions Of Dollars To Countries In Need?

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Each year, the United States sends billions of dollars to poor countries. Does it really help them grow? The question isn't new. But it's taken on renewed urgency in the Trump administration. Last month, NPR's David Greene asked Stephen Moore, who advised Trump's campaign on economic policy, whether he supports the idea of cutting the U.S.

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"Whats the real value of US foreign aid?" 

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"Whats the real value of US foreign aid?" 

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This article talks about how the U.S. has provided foreign aid to countries that are now our biggest allies today. she uses the example of South Korea how the u.S provided foreign aid to them back in the 50s and now the U.S. has a great relationship with them. Foreign aid provides security as well.

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Those are sentiments echoed on all sides of the political divide when the public is asked about spending their tax dollars on foreign aid. As of April 2017, 73% of respondents in an ongoing poll seek a decrease in funding.

At the State Department, USAID and the development community, there has been considerable concern about major cuts to that International Affairs Budget, already less than 1% of our entire federal expenditure. The recently leaked State Department budget suggests how the new administration seeks to cut direct foreign aid.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the value of foreign aid, at times seen as some form of naïve humanitarianism. But modern foreign aid is not charity. It is strategic and an investment in a stronger America abroad.

For example, South Korea was provided strategic foreign aid after the ceasefire on the Korean peninsula in 1953, creating one of our most important allies and our 6th-largest trading partner. The return has been exponentially higher than the investment.

By stabilizing vulnerable communities, foreign aid strengthens our national security. It helps combat contributors to instability, which create circumstances non-state actors happily exploit to further their agenda. There are various non-state groups around the world with several and differing objectives. But groups our government has designated as terrorist organizations do not respect international human rights and use violence and fear to impose their political, ideological, and religious beliefs to gain power and legitimize their sovereignty.

Security and power vacuums exist in fragile regions that allow for human rights violations. Illicit trafficking of people, arms and drugs provide safe havens for terrorists and displace innocent people, creating refugees and IDPs (internally displaced people).

Strategic aid promotes economic prosperity while bolstering self-reliance and opening markets and trading opportunities to the United States. The impacted population is better able to contribute as members of local and global society, generating jobs, fueling market economies, holding governments accountable and serving as first responders to their own needs.

So at a cost of less than 1% of our entire federal budget, foreign aid is a bargain, given its ability to bolster our national security.

America has benefited from its leadership in the world, and in an increasingly interconnected society, we should continue to make investments in our shared future. An unstable world is not good for the United States. "America First" must not be a zero-sum strategy.

Extreme poverty in regions across the world may not seem relevant, given the challenges we face domestically, but those areas of vulnerability give terrorists potential ways to disrupt our national security and way of life.

Scarce resources, inequality, exclusion from participation in civil society, ineffective governance, weak institutions and sectarian divides create leadership and security vacuums that are quickly filled by non-state actors, such as violent extremist groups. Radicals influence these vulnerable populations by tapping into the sentiments of hopelessness, disenfranchisement and fear. This is precisely why development initiatives are critical in the most violent, impoverished and susceptible places in the world.

A real cost calculus actually shows that cutting funds for resilience-building solutions would inevitably sacrifice more with blood, through military intervention, when a conflict hits a boiling point; or toward emergency and disaster response when there are food shortages, refugee influxes, and health epidemics.

According to the Friends Committee on National Legislation, prioritizing development would be 60 times less expensive than military intervention and the subsequent assistance required for helping nations rebuild in the aftermath.

Military leaders are the first to advocate for proactive and coordinated development initiatives to prevent conflict and war, knowing that our men and women in uniform pay the highest cost in war. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said, "If you don't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately."

The US Global Leadership Coalition sent a powerful letter to the White House that was signed by 121 three- and four-star military leaders advocating for development to remain a critical component of our national security strategy. But even that level of endorsement may not be enough.

Although it's supported and sensible, this is an understandably difficult strategy to sell because successful prevention does not attract popular attention. There are no videos and photos when a crisis is averted. There are no "hero" awards and higher approval ratings. And we live in an age of instant gratification where mere activity is mistaken for progress.

Recently, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke to an audience at the State Department to prepare people for the dramatic cuts to major programs and jobs in the fiscal year 2018 budget. He elucidated that the administration's goals are aimed at securing our national security and economic interests.

That insight into how the "America First" foreign policy will be executed gives us another lens through which to view the proposed budget. What's interesting is that some of the proposed cuts reallocate funding from aid to the Economic Support Fund (ESF), which was created to be a flexible way to support nations through development initiatives that are of strategic importance to our national security interests. This presents a unique opportunity to make foreign aid a more effective tool of foreign policy.

But if these programs are not coordinated with defense and diplomatic action, and if they fail to address the root causes of instability, using this type of aid as a negotiating tool in foreign policy will only garner temporary transactional alliances -- with short-term gains and long-term, unintended consequences.

So how do we address these issues? We structure the ESF grants so that initiatives utilize modern tools such as predictive modeling and data and analytics combined with the human element of local insight to identify root vulnerabilities. We build in longer-term indicators and make prevention the principal objective. In other words, we need to stop treating the symptoms and start addressing the disease.

Wasted funding, handouts and failed Band-Aid solutions-in-a-box have burned out many development practitioners who are ready to change the reactive and competitive norms of the archaic aid system.

Today's funding challenges carry an opportunity to start the changes that practitioners have wanted for decades.

Yes, we must win the wars we engage in and continue to have the strongest military in the world. But we cannot continue operating in civilian/military silos or relying on hard power alone.

But for this to work, prevention must be the objective key part of our national security strategy. Then, and only then, will aid no longer be seen as charity -- but as an essential, modern tool of US national security, and an investment in our economic prosperity.

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what's the value in helping other countries (opinon) - cnn

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What's the value in helping other countries?

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Those are sentiments echoed on all sides of the political divide when the public is asked about spending their tax dollars on foreign aid. As of April 2017, 73% of respondents in an ongoing poll seek a decrease in funding.

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This article talks about how Trump is cutting the foreign aid to a "skinny" budget. He is focused on making america come fist and foreign aid is getting in the way of that according to him. The cut trump is making will make foreign aid useless to other countries and could damage the u.s alliance.

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Why We Need Foreign Aid - The American Interest

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American security needs development as well as diplomacy and defense. If ever a policy notion were penny-wise, pound-foolish, cutting foreign aid is it.

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"Should the U.S. only give foreign aid to its friends "

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"Should the U.S. only give foreign aid to its friends "

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This article suggest we cut foreign aid from other countries but not the ones we consider friends. Basically to the countries that do not benefit the United States in any way. The argument is to prove that why spend money on countries that do not help the U.S when it is needed.

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"U.S. foreign aid: A waste of money or a boost to world stability?" 

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"U.S. foreign aid: A waste of money or a boost to world stability?" 

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This article talks about how foreign aid has help many countries in the past and it continues today. It brings up how the U.S. has spend $4.7 billion on Afghanistan since 2017. The money goes to help them with funding jobs, schools system and the hospitals.

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It has long been a divisive issue: how much money the United States gives to foreign nations in aid, what kind of effect development assistance actually has on recipient nations, and whether America should be involved in the aid-giving business at all.

Advocates of foreign aid say programs backed by U.S. funding help feed the needy, promote social and economic progress, and foster political stability. Critics, on the other hand, point to fraud and the misuse of aid, inadequate tracking of provisions, and the prospect of nations becoming dependent on U.S. handouts.

So what's true and what's false about one of politics' most contentious issues?

More than 20% of America's federal budget goes to foreign aid.

False

The amount is actually about 1%. The current projected spending for fiscal year 2017 is $4 trillion. The Obama administration had planned for $41.9 billion in foreign aid for this year. Polls show that Americans typically believe that the U.S. spends 25% to 27% on foreign aid.

Tons of basic food supplies such as grains, flour and protein powders, donated by the U.S. Agency for International Development, are kept in secured buildings to provide for the hundreds of thousands of people at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Afghanistan is slated to be the biggest recipient of U.S. foreign aid this year.

True

The planned amount of American aid for Afghanistan in 2017 is $4.7 billion, according to the website ForeignAssistance.gov, a tool for tracking U.S. foreign assistance spending. Funding to this Asian nation is intended to support the agricultural sector by creating jobs; build a national education system; assist reproductive health; and establish basic infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, according to information published by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. In 2014, Afghanistan received $7.3 billion in foreign assistance from the U.S., of which more than half went toward conflict prevention and security, according to USAID.

Israel comes in second among U.S. aid recipients, with a planned disbursement of $3.1 billion in 2017, according to U.S. government statistics. Jordan is third at $1 billion.

This 2012 photo shows hand pump mechanics who have been trained through USAID's Afghan Sustainable Water Supply and Sanitation Project. They are paid by community contributions for the maintenance of wells. (Tetra Tech)

Slashing foreign aid would reduce the federal deficit by as much as 20%.

False

Experts say cutting the foreign aid budget, which currently amounts to $50.1 billion, would do very little to reduce the deficit, which in 2016 was $552 billion.

The New Stock Exchange in New York. (Bryan R. Smith / AFP/Getty Images)

President Trump wants to slash the U.S. foreign assistance programs by more than 20%.

True

In March, as part of his suggested budget for fiscal year 2018, President Trump proposed a combined budget of $25.6 billion for both the State Department and that U.S. Agency for International Development. That would be an estimated 28% cut in current spending on foreign assistance programs and U.S. diplomatic engagement, which total $50 billion for the current fiscal year.

According to a 15-page State Department budget document obtained by Foreign Policy magazine and detailed in a report by the publication in April, global health programs would take a 25% cut in aid while, among other sectors, the Bureau for Food Security, which works on eliminating hunger, would lose 68% of its funding.

would have to vote on the president's budget once he releases it, possibly late this month. In the meantime, a more than $1-trillion funding package that Congress and the White House agreed to on Sunday to keep the government afloat through the remainder of the 2017 budget year maintains most foreign aid programs and increases spending for international famine relief.

Copies of President Trump's America First budget at the Government Publishing Officebookstore in Washington, D.C. (Shawn Thew / European Press Agency)

Aid to Israel will face the ax next year.

False

Aid to Israel is safe - at least under Trump's proposed budget. Last year, the U.S. signed a 10-year defense deal with Israel that promises to provide the Middle Eastern nation a record $38 billion in security aid.

The United States agreed to a $38 billion, 10-year aid package for Israel in September. (Drew Angerer / Pool Photo)

Scandals that have beset U.S. aid programs include theft of malaria drugs and laundering of HIV/AIDS program funds.

True

Millions of dollars worth of antimalarial drugs provided by the U.S. government are being stolen and resold on the black market in Africa, according USAID's office of inspector general, which monitors the agency. The U.S. government fights malaria in 19 African countries through a program called the President's Malaria Initiative.

In January, the inspector general's office reported that an investigation it launched in the West African nation of Guinea led to the arrest of eight people on suspicion of illegally selling USAID-issued antimalarial drugs in public markets of Conakry, the country's capital. U.S. funding for combating malaria has exceeded $72 million since fiscal year 2011 and amounted to $15 million in fiscal year 2016, according to the office.

Last year, the monitoring agency announced the relaunch of its Make a Difference Malaria hotline to make it easier for Nigerians to report stolen, counterfeit or resale antimalarial drugs. The hotline offers rewards of $100 to $10,000. A similar program is underway in Malawi, according to the office.

USAID's funds have also fallen victim to money laundering. In February, the agency announced the arrest of a South African doctor, Eugene Sickle, who served as deputy executive director of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute program. Sickle is being investigated for his alleged role in a fraud scheme that targeted funds from USAID, which since 2012 has awarded grants worth nearly $77 million to help strengthen treatment programs for HIV/AIDS patients, according to the agency.

A baby in Kenya receives a malaria vaccine. (Karel Prinsloo / Associated Press)

Once a foreign aid recipient, always a foreign aid recipient.

True and false

Critics have contended that foreign aid make nations perpetually needy and unable to break the cycle of dependency.

"Perhaps the largest reason is corruption," James M. Roberts, a research fellow for economic freedom and growth at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has called for a scaling back of USAID funding, wrote in a 2014 commentary. "It's the 'pre-existing condition' that keeps many aid recipients from ever recovering. It's a major obstacle to economic growth."

Some critics single out Afghanistan, where international aid has become the backbone of its economy, as a likely candidate for dependency on aid. They point to a 2014 report from the the office of special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, which said "evidence strongly suggests that Afghanistan lacks the capacity - financial, technical, managerial or otherwise - to maintain, support and execute much of what has been built or established during more than a decade of international assistance."

But several of America's key trading partners were once recipients of U.S. aid and today receive limited, if any, assistance from USAID, according to data from the agency. South Korea, for example, has been dubbed by some analysts as "a poster child for successful poverty eradication" and is today itself a donor of humanitarian assistance. USAID calls the Asian nation "a textbook example of aid-recipient-turned donor."

According to a 2012 report from the Center for Global Development and the Center for American Progress, "nations need not be aid recipients forever."

"In the 1960s, nations across Latin America and Asia were dismissed as perennial basket cases yet countries in both regions combined sensible reforms with a jump-start from U.S. assistance programs to achieve dynamic, lasting growth," according to the report.

South Korea, once a recipient of U.S. aid, is today Asia's fourth-largest economy (Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

Foreign aid has long enjoyed bipartisan support among Republicans and Democrats.

True

In the 1990s, foreign aid bills had a hard time passing through Congress, but that changed with Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, said George Ingram, a senior fellow in the global economy and development program at the Brookings Institution.

Speaking during a " Brookings Cafeteria Podcast" last month, Ingram said the last Congress had passed eight bills supporting foreign aid. After Trump proposed cuts to foreign aid and international diplomacy in his budget, 43 U.S. senators signed a bipartisan letter urging against the reductions.

The U.S. Capitol in Washington, where U.S. foreign aid has long enjoyed bipartisan support. (Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images)

Foreign aid does more harm than good and is a waste of money.

Depends on whom you ask
Supporters' arguments include:
- Helping to end maternal and child mortality. At least 4.6 million children and 200,000 mothers are alive today in part because of USAID-funded programs, agency officials said.

- Ensuring that people don't go hungry. The U.S. government's Feed the Future initiative has helped more than 9 million farmers gain access to new tools or technologies such as high-yielding seeds, fertilizer application, soil conservation and water management, according to USAID.

- Improving reading instruction and creating safe learning environments for more than 41.6 million children from 2011 to 2015.

- Providing access to clean water and sanitation. As of 2015, more than 7.6 million people had received improved access to drinking water and more than 4.3 million people had improved sanitation.

- Helping to stabilize nations by promoting democracy, human rights and good governance around the world.
Detractors counter that:
- U.S. aid shouldn't go to countries that harbor terrorists who want to harm Americans, such as Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden had taken refuge not far from a Pakistani military compound before U.S. intelligence discovered him there. The U.S. has drastically cut aid to Pakistan in recent years, but the South Asian nation still received $383 million in 2016, according to U.S. government data, and $742,200,000 is planned for Pakistan in fiscal year 2017.

- There is too little accountability for those who abuse U.S. aid through theft or misuse.

- Foreign aid encourages corruption and conflict and stifles the will to pursue free enterprise, because recipients become dependent.

- A saturation of food aid can undermine opportunities for local agricultural markets to develop.

- American money should be spent on aiding Americans, such as the almost 50,000 U.S. veterans who are homeless, according to data from the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
ann.simmons@latimes.com For more on global development news, see our Global Development Watch page, and follow me @AMSimmons1 on Twitter UPDATES:
5:05 p.m., May 10: This article has been updated to reflect current data from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the website ForeignAssistance.gov.
This article was originally published at 6:45 p.m. on May 3, 2017.

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U.S. foreign aid: A waste of money or a boost to world stability? Here are the facts

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It has long been a divisive issue: how much money the United States gives to foreign nations in aid, what kind of effect development assistance actually has on recipient nations, and whether America should be involved in the aid-giving business at all. Advocates of foreign aid say programs backed by U.S.