What Do We Buy With All That Foreign Aid?

The United States government takes a lot of money from tax payers. A good deal of that confiscated money gets given away in foreign aid. I've heard several different arguments in favor of this expenditure. Whether the argument is humanitarian needs or political considerations I haven't found any of them to be all that persuasive. Primary reason I haven't been sold on the idea is my belief that if you attempt to buy friends you will wind up with no money and no friends.

What brings the issue of wasteful foreign aid up today is the deteriorating situation in Egypt. We have been giving Egypt more than a billion dollars of aid every year for decades. There is word today that their embattled president Hosni Mubarak is getting prepared to go into exile. As part of the story on his impending departure Bloomberg News talked about his net worth being between 40 and 70 billion dollars! Hmmm, wonder where he got all that money? Oh yeah, we took it from our tax payers and gave it to him.

End all foreign aid now! No additional foreign aid should be allocated until we have budget surplusses and then all aid should be direct humanitarian aid.