How much $$ anually does America give to the world [Re: Stephanopoulos' Sunday Show] (Vanity)

[soundandvision]

After hearing Rush play the clip of Tony Campolo on George Stephanopoulos' show from yesterday I got very curious as what the actual dollar amount we send to other nations, anually.

Is there a website that tracks this or is there a government website that at least shows the tax payer dollar amount?

I know Campolo is full of it... but I'm just curious how full of it he is...

[Strategerist]

It's typically divded into military and non-military.

It's a much, much, much, much tinier portion of the Federal Budget than people generally imagine.

[lilylangtree]

How much? Too much!

[F15Eagle]

I don't know if these are current. But they've been reported on various occasions.

Israel 2.7b

Egypt 2.0b

Palis 300m

[RandallFlagg]

The UN = Too much

[prophetic]

in view of those ingrates who turn around and piss on the USA when we need their help (e.g. Eygpt at $2.4 billion last year), I really think we need to de-fund USAID and the United Nations (an oxymoron really!!) and a lot of other organizations too!

[mad puppy]

I saw that clip with George and after hearing that Americans give less to the world (I don't remember the exact quote), then others, I turned it off. To hear France, the UN and the Left wingers tell it, we are a stingy bunch and I have always found that very hard to believe. I await the proof, either way.

[hedgetrimmer]

You must include USAID, the inter-american bank, funds to the UN and a whole lot more than direct payments. Also the Millenium Challenge account and the AIDS Africa project.

[hlmencken3]

Compolo and his ilk think only gov't money helps anyone.

For example, does Compolo include Jimmy Carter's NGO that helps fight certain diseases in Africa?

Americans give more to all sorts of charitable causes per capita than anyone in the world!

[mad puppy]

"As of November 17, 2003, the United States had paid the UN over $897 million in calendar year 2003,"

Well, there is $897,000,000 we could save.

http://www.un.int/usa/03budget1118.htm

[wannabeyank]

It's never the governments job to take money from its people and distribute it to other governments's people.

[massgopguy]

According to the U.N. (if they can be believed) The United States' contribution to fighting global AIDS is more than double the contributions of all others combined.

[Bikers4Bush]

The point is not what % of the budget it is, the point is how much are we giving to ungrateful miscreants that should instead be spent to improve the lives of American citizens?

If it's 100 billion that's money that should be spent here, not given away to god knows who for god knows what.

[mad puppy]

And according to this:

http://www.usaid.gov/policy/budget/cbj2005/pdf/fy2005summtabs1_150acct.pdf

USAID will cost $31,519,189,000 for 2005.

[hlmencken3]

Check ou these:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/mort/zuckerman071702.asp

http://www.policyreview.org/oct03/brooks.html

http://www.chatabouthistory.com/Increasing_Private_Charity_in_Europe-3083076-477-a.html

PDF Warning:
http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/maxpages/faculty/acbrooks/Charity%20in%20Spain.pdf

[Sionathan]

I suppose that if we were left to our own judgement regarding what charities and causes to give OUR money to, that would be prejudicial against all of the unpopular, unproductive, corrupt bureacracies that manage most foreign governments and major "charitable" organizations.

No, no... better for everyone if we just allow all our funds to be taken by our own unpopular, unproductive and corrupt bureacray, and let them make such enlightened decisions on our behalf.

Remember kids: If you criminalize control of your own property, only criminals will have control of their own property.

* * * * *

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the constitution which granted a right to congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents..." -James Madison

[mad puppy]

And this:

"...pointed out that the United States will this year spend $2.4 billion, nearly twice as much to fight AIDS as the rest of the world's donor governments combined.."

from

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-07-14-aids-defense_x.htm

[Owl558]

Also remember that the socialists will only count the government spending as going towards a total. I know that I and members of my family practice giving through our church also and that much of this $$ finds its way overseas.

[KwasiOwusu]

"I saw that clip with George and after hearing that Americans give less to the world (I don't remember the exact quote), then others, I turned it off. To hear France, the UN and the Left wingers tell it, we are a stingy bunch and I have always found that very hard to believe."

You are right to be very skeptical of the figures which have been bandied about by the liberals and the America haters.
What these guys do basically is to take a very narrow definition of aid and giving.
The fact of the matter is that private individuals and organizations from America (like the Bill Gates Foundation) give far, far, far more aid to the world than from any other countries.
The Bill Gates Foundation for example, gives more to stop diseases like malaria in Africa and India than the entire European Union.
Factor in the aid from private individuals and foundations and America's aid as a percentage of GDP is suddenly looking as high , if not higher than those of the Euro-weenies.

The liberals will work their butts off to keep propagating the myth that America gives less, by taking just direct government grants alone, which is just not right.
America is a capitalist country, and private firms and individuals contribute far more to the American economy than in Europe, so of course private giving should be part of the equation.
I remember Condi Rice telling off one arrogant female British government minister (Claire Shot), when that minister made this same suggestion. Condi pointed out t her, that Americans are the most generous people on the planet, by bringing up these same points about giving by private individuals and foundations.
The Euro-weenies of all people should know that. America gave them free money in Marshal Aid, after WWII to the tune of Trillions of Dollars in today's money.

[prophetic]

so $31 Billions of our hard earned and HARD TAXED money given away to Anti-American ill wishers, especially to Muslim countries who do little or nothing to stop the wild imams spewing the "KILL AMERICANS" rhetoric.

I just love that movie Swordfish where they have the line "If they kill an American, we bomb their country". I really think the USA should tell these terrorist regimes to f##k *ff or die in a more stronger message.

[pas]

80% of statistics are made up on the spot. Or was that 75%?

[jazzman0718]

www.globalsecurity.org
This site has amazing information on foreign aid... as well as in depth reports on intelligence, WMD and the military.

This document has some foreign aid info
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/crs/98-916_010406.pdf#xml=http://www.globalsecurity.org/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/webinator/search/xml.txt?query=foreign+aid&pr=default&order=r&id=419ef4f33

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

You are falling for Campolo's subterfuge. Look at the context of his statement...look at what generated this accusation of "under-funding the oppressed".

Don't fall for the liberal revisionist theology...

[Skylab]

so $31 Billions of our hard earned and HARD TAXED money given away to Anti-American ill wishers, especially to Muslim countries who do little or nothing to stop the wild imams spewing the "KILL AMERICANS" rhetoric.

You don't understand. The US gives them money under the condition that they use it to buy American weaponry, agricultural equipment, medicine, ...
It really is a subsidy to select American companies.

[IAMNO1]

"80% of statistics are made up on the spot. Or was that 75%?"

There are lies, damned lies and statistics - Mark Twain

[Rockingham]

Do not get caught up in a "how much" argument because it always ends up with the liberal arguing that no matter how much aid we provide, it is not enough. Here are several things to consider which go to the heart of the issue:

(1) The cited calculations are dishonest because they apparently do not include our contributions to the UN and other international institutions like the World Bank, nor does it include American nongovernmental aid to other countries, which runs into the billions per annum and is nearly unique to the US. Notably, this aid comes predominantly from red state Christians donating to Christian organizations that provide aid to the Third World. Moreover, this aid is usually better targeted and comes without the often destructive conditions that commonly attach to government aid.

(2) The American economy has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, transforming entire societies in positive ways. Chinese factories, Mexican villages, Indian call centers, Latin American farmers all depend on work, markets, and business with America to generate prosperity. We are not the world's misers sitting on a pile of gold, we are the world's greatest creators and spenders of wealth -- a wealth based not on imperial exactions but on being a free people with a free economy.

(3) Governmental aid is characteristically misdirected, stolen, or counterproductive. There are catastrophic systemic errors like digging arsenic tainted wells for Bangladesh: scientific warnings were ignored for the sake of getting and spending the aid cash, a potent source of jobs and graft. Far worse is the obvious at the start harm in giving a poor county aid in the form of agricultural credits to purchase US or European foodstuffs. The result is to impoverish local farmers by depriving them of markets. Since agriculture is the central pillar of most poor country economies, this is profoundly destructive because it hinders an essential step in development of a market economy, which is money earning by small scale farmers.

(4) Government aid also has profoundly harmful effects in supporting predatory and corrupt bureaucracies and governments in the Third World. In effect, the aid makes corrupt and thuggish governments independent of the need to govern well and create prosperity for their peoples. As an analogy, imagine the effect on your neighborhood if the federal government paid local criminals on salary to patrol the streets and to hold municipal office -- and with immunity from prosecution. Being criminals, they would continue to steal, rape, and kill and do far worse than they would without federal assistance. Yet that is what the developed world does to many poor countries. Is it any wonder that some of the most prosperous Third World countries (Taiwan, South Korea, South Africa, Singapore, etc.) are those that did not get aid for political reasons even though donor criteria called for it? Look at the worst Third World regimes and note that they all depend on outside aid for survival, even, as with North Korea, demanding it as the price of not producing nuclear weapons and selling them to terrorists. The late economist P.T. Bauer and his disciples have proved to a fare thee well that in the long run, government aid does more to damage poor countries than benefit them.

(5) Adopting classic conservative policy prescriptions at home would benefit the Third World: more free trade, to open up American markets more than they already are; ending domestic agricultural subsidies and import quotas that put Third World agricultural imports at a disadvantage; and, perhaps the most important, the reform of socialist governments and overthrow of dictatorships throughout the world. Chile, for example, went from basket case to one of the most prosperous Third World countries because it adopted the free market reforms of the "Chicago school" of economists. China and India have had similar results by dropping the worst features of socialist economics.

(6) The basic premise of Campolo's argument is that Christianity calls for massive aid from American taxpayers to the Third World. This is absurd to any genuine Christian, telling us as it does that two millennia of Christian teaching about the Commandments and the salvation of souls are incomplete and that Campolo has discovered that one of the purposes of Christ's life and death on the cross was to inspire us to the modern welfare state and massive governmental foreign aid. What a perversion of Christianity -- and what an insult to faithful Christians.

[Keith]

Even better than Condi Rice's argument is her predecessor, Colin Powell's response when we consider our most precious gift to the world...the lives of our soldiers fighting for the freedom of other countries...

To quote the general..."We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we’ve done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in..." January 26, 2003

[soundandvision]

>>"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the constitution which granted a right to congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents..." -James Madison<<

Without a doubt one of the most important quotes by a framer...

I say that as he's spinning in his grave...

[Sweet Hour of Prayer]

There is no way to accurately add up all the money sent through churches, medical missionaries, and private organizations. The best the government can do is report the amount of tax dollars sent to various nations.

[april15Bendovr]

Here is a quote I found that liberals should live by

"Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian."
- Dennis Wholey (1937-)

[KwasiOwusu]

"To quote the general..."We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we’ve done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in..." January 26, 2003"

Couldn't have put it better myself!
That is something the liberals and the Eurotrash conveniently forget when they are talking about so-called foreign aid.
The turn around and use a very narrow definition, which invariably makes them look far better than they really are.
Its time to challenge their very convenient definition of what constitutes aid..