America's foreign aid programs are controversial. Polls indicate most Americans want the United States to be a generous donor of foreign aid. At the same time, these Americans greatly overestimate how much help we send overseas. Others are concerned that our foreign aid falls far short of the global commitments made in the Millennium Development Goals. And yet others say Western foreign assistance is focused more on "giving a man a fish" than on "teaching a man to fish."
To deal, in part, with this complexity, Congress moved in 2004 to create a panel which would recommend small and large changes to the structure of U.S. foreign aid. The Helping to Enhance the Livelihood of People Around the Globe, or HELP, Commission included 21 members appointed by the president and bi-partisan leaders of Congress.
The group met for almost two years and delivered a report last month. The full report (215 pages, PDF) is available here.
First, the HELP report is a clear-eyed assessment of the things that are very wrong with U.S. foreign assistance. Josh Weissburg at the Global Interdependence Initiative blogged:
I was afraid that such a long process [by the HELP Commission], amidst so much structural turmoil between the State Department and USAID, would result in few useful, actionable recommendations. Not so. Take a look at the table of contents in the report. Take a moment and think: what are your main concerns with the way U.S. foreign assistance is formulated and delivered? Fragmented agencies and approaches? Incoherent trade v. aid policies? DoD encroachment? A dreadfully outdated Foreign Assistance Act? The Congressional budgetary process? Earmarks? Presidential special initiatives? Procurement and tied aid? Too few channels for initiative and local entrepreneurship? No graduation strategy? Anemic staff and curtailed authority at USAID? Short-term political objectives at State? Preventive v. palliative programs? It's all there. The answers are not perfect and some may have only a slim chance of fruition, but this is a remarkably thorough and bold treatment of what is wrong with U.S. foreign aid.Second, the report offers some very big structural change options. One would be to greatly expand the U.S. State Department in mandate and resources so it becomes a true International Affairs Department. Another option would be to (as other Western countries have done) break the foreign assistance responsibilities away from the State Department and create an International Development Department.
One commission member, well-known economist Jeffery Sachs, opposed the HELP Commissions' final report. He and two other members penned a separate document (21 page, PDF) which makes an even stronger case for "...moving development assistance to a new separate Cabinet-level Department of International Sustainable Development."
Third and finally, all of this concern about the foreign aid and diplomatic budgets needs to be put in perspective. The State Department budget plus all the foreign aid totals less than $40 billion (which is less than 1.5% of the federal budget). But Defense Department spending for this year, plus maintenance of America's nuclear arsenal, plus the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be over $700 billion.
- Billions For Defense, Crumbs For Diplomacy, from Foreign Policy Passport
- How High is Up? The Defense Budget Gets Even Crazier, from Democracy Arsenal
