The House Foreign Affairs Committee is moving forward with a bill signifiying a new shift on America’s foreign aid, with some $6.4 billion in cuts. Those will be extremely welcome with the budget deficit soaring.
At the same time, those cuts are not an attempt to reduce America’s enormous programs aimed at buying influence abroad to more reasonable levels, but are directly at punishing a handful of nations seen as not sufficiently obedient to America’s whims.
The cuts center around post-revolution Egypt, Lebanon in the wake of its government change, and the Palestinian Authority in an effort to punish the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation. There are also conditional cuts to Pakistan aid, explictly demanding they fulfull a number of demands regarding their internal military conflicts.
In the end the “cuts” will likely be short-term, with those countries which acquiesce to the demands likely to see not only a resumption of aid, but an increase as a reward. This would be in keeping with the Obama Administration’s plans to increase the influence of the State Department going forward.
About freakin' time!!!! I'm sure they won't actually have to guts to do it but if they got rid of foreign aid it would be the death of the CIA's empire.
Whatever they cut in aid to the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Pakistan, etc will not go back to the Treasury – it will only get added to our annual homage to Israel.
Cut foreign aid? i'll believe it when i hear that the preponderance of opinion by politicians is to reject the very IDEA of giving to foreign governments, not just trimming the amounts.
I agree. At this point I imagine it's just rhetoric for the tea party people and libertarian leaning republicans.
Dont just cut it, END IT!
Cutting Foreign Aid? That would be Anti Semitic
And NO cuts to the billions given to Israel every year?
Oops – I forgot – America is Israeli occupied territory – the TRAITORS in the Congress would never cut aid to Israel.
Nice. We have to buy friends. Quit the program in total in the first place> If we had listened to President Washington we wouldn't be this mess. They only want to protect Israel by the people they are cutting. Israel, the country founded by war and never quit war.
Oh, yeah. I'll believe that one when I see it. There are two ways in which the US acquires puppets: buying them or invading them. Either way, we shell out the dough.
Actually even when we invade them we buy their/our hand picked puppet leaders off with huge amounts of foreign aid. Foreign aid is the key to the whole thing, end it all and you restore the US from an empire to a republic.