How much of the federal budget goes to foreign aid?
What's your best guess? 10 percent? 20 percent? 1 percent?
If you're like most Americans, you probably guessed wrong.
In December, the Kaiser Family Foundation polled 1,505 people. Only 1 in 20 knew the right answer: less than 1 percent of the $4 trillion federal budget goes to foreign aid. The average respondent estimated that 26 percent went toward assisting other countries.
What's more, our ignorance colors the way we think about foreign spending. Fifty-six percent of the poll respondents thought the U.S. spends too much on foreign aid. Once they were told that the U.S. spends less than 1 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid, only 28 percent still thought we were overspending.
This is nothing new. The Kaiser Family Foundation has conducted this poll since 2009, and every year the response is the same. But maybe it's not our fault. Maybe the problem is that foreign aid is incredibly complicated. Even coming up with a definition of "foreign aid" is tough. So we spoke to five specialists to soak up some foreign aid smarts.
With Obama's $4 trillion budget for 2016 newly submitted to Congress for approval, here's a primer on the 1 percent.
More
DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
12 comments:
How about we stop all assistance to Muslim countries and use the money to help our economy for real (jobs training, business investment, etc).
Even though its a small percentage of the budget, its still a lot of money.
We're still giving too much aid to those countries that want to do us harm - or refuse to help us hunt down those that want to do us harm.
Pakistan is a prime example - they knew where Obama Bin Laden was hiding - and persecuted the one that helped us nail the terrorist!
You poor uninformed people.False accounts in the US receive a large portion of money designated for foreign countries,so even less than the aforementioned actually reaches their shores.If the average US citizen found out where the money is actually going & how it is being horded here under the pretense of going to foreign nations,fur would fly.John Q Public would suddenly be outraged that it IS'NT going to foreign countries!Ponder that.
This story sounds like it was written by libtards.
I don't mind foreign aid if it actually going to help our allies like Isreal,what I do object to is huge sums of money going to line the pockets of dictators who hate us and do everything they can to destroy us.Thats the problem politicans giving money to government bureaucrats who just hand it out with no real system of accounting for it.
What about all the grown grains? Any aid is too much when we have Americans going hungry.
This is food weapons etc. It doesn't include when we actually invade or send troops. That is different. This basically refers to food drops and disasters.
I say we change it to 0...ZERO...ZILCH...Nothing. Let them prosper or fail on their own. If they need goods, they can pay for them. If they can't, sorry about your luck. Bring the military home too, if we need to send a message, fire it from our shores. No occupying, no rebuilding, nothing.
The lack of empathy scares me sometimes on sbynews.
You poor uninformed people.False accounts in the US receive a large portion of money designated for foreign countries,so even less than the aforementioned actually reaches their shores.If the average US citizen found out where the money is actually going & how it is being horded here under the pretense of going to foreign nations,fur would fly.John Q Public would suddenly be outraged that it IS'NT going to foreign countries!Ponder that
OK so tell us, and by the way libertard guy, you are still are moron
where did Uncle Sam get that $$ ?
"The lack of empathy scares me sometimes on sbynews." 'Empathy' has nothing to do with it. You are free to give as much of your hard-earned money as you wish to whatever cause you prefer. However, confiscating other people's money to distribute as you see fit is another matter entirely.
Post a Comment