The Case for Foreign Aid, From the 2011 Care National Conference

Spent part of the day today at the CARE National Conference, listening to speakers like Melinda Gates and Helene Gayle make the case for continued American commitment to foreign aid funding.

After listening today (and after a good talk last night with some new friends), it seems to me that there are (at minimum) four categories of strong arguments in defense of our foreign aid budgets. Regular readers know that this is a special concern of mine, particularly since the GOP’s shameful, successful efforts to defeat the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act last December. This post is an attempt to get all of the arguments that I (and others) frequently use, but all in one place.

So, here are the most effective ways to defend the International Affairs and Foreign Aid Budgets:

1. The Moral Case: If you have more food than you need, and someone you can reach has none, it’s easy to argue that you should probably share some. Since at some level, we’re all born into the same world and all share its resources (even if unequally distributed), it’s morally dubious to live in overwhelming excess while others starve. There are more obese humans in the world now than “underweight”/starving/malnourished. Even if you’re a Randian objectivist, you have to work pretty hard to tamp down your moral intuition here. There’s clearly something wrong with a world where we stockpile food we can’t use and infants in the developing world starve. This doesn’t have to mean direct aid (food to the hungry). It can also mean foreign aid that helps communities grown their own food in a sustainable, non-aid-dependent way. This isn’t nearly as hard as some argue that it is.

It’s worth noting that this kind of argument can obviously work any time that you and your discussion partner agree on a universal claim. It’s not limited to basic consumption questions (I have extra food, you’re hungry, etc). Ex: If you both believe that forcing a twelve-year-old girl to marry a man four times her age is an unalloyed moral evil, you’re already most of the way towards settling any disagreement about whether something ought to be done to address it. You may disagree about methods still, but the bigger question is already settled.

2. The Economic Case: 1 in 5 American jobs depends upon exports. The economies of the developing world are growing much more quickly than the developed world. American involvement in this development can only help strengthen our position as a current and future trading partner. As the United States trends towards producing more and more middle and upper-class goods (and produces less goods to sell to the world’s poor), we’ll need more middle and upper-class consumers across the world to shop with us. As Rep. Howard Berman (D-Cal.) put it recently: “Aid is not a gift. The United States provides foreign assistance because it serves our interests.”

If you’re skeptical about this, take a look at the membership of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, an organization that exists to push for expanded funding for International Affairs.Cargill, Boeing, GE, Lockheed Martin, etc, haven’t joined up only for moral reasons. They’re convinced that American spending on foreign assistance is crucial for their profit margins. As US Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donohue put it, for American business, “Your future is in a global economy. 95% of the people that your product may get to, or your service may get to, are somewhere else. We’re the largest exporters in the world by a significant factor, and we need to capitalize on that.”

3. The Security Case: As I put it in my last column for the Washington Post,

If we aim to save money while remaining engaged in the international arena, we need to change our approach — identify these countries and, instead of thinking of national security solely in military terms, focus on human security across the globe. Political instability and threats to the United States develop in nations where individuals have few economic opportunities.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chair Mike Mullen have both been clear on this. Solving problems with development aid is cheaper and safer than trying to solve them with missiles. We are all safer in a world where desperate poverty doesn’t exist. The more we commit to the International Affairs budget, the better we’ll be able to identify crisis spots before conflicts erupt. Given the current state of things in the Middle East, it’s more important than ever that we address the root causes of extremism. Not only will this help rehabilitate our image after decades of propping up dictatorships in the region, but it will go a long way towards cementing democratic transitions where possible.

4. The Efficiency/Fiscal case: It’s not credible to talk about balancing the budget by slashing on International Affairs. There’s just not enough money there. It’s only around 1 percent of the entire federal budget[.pdf]. Shoot, if you cut the entire International Affairs budget (no more State Department, USAID, etc), you’d only save around $50 billion each year. That means that it would take 14 years w/o spending on International Affairs before you’d save enough to fund the US military for 1 year (we spend $700 billion each year on the military…more if you include various costs in Afghanistan/Iraq). Heck, it would take us 280 years of spending nothing on International Affairs before we could pay down the national debt. All of this hypothetical budget math assumes, of course, that there are no costs to zeroing out that budget. This is assuredly false. If we cut back on our commitments to international affairs, we’ll do much, much worse in international trade and we’ll have no resources to advocate for American interests during international crises.

More realistically, though, we should consider how foreign aid dollars leverage other resources. USAID’s annual budget is dwarfed by American private philanthropy in this sector. What USAID and international NGOs like CARE can offer, however, is critical expertise. At their best, they set up initiatives that leverage private giving and other resources in the field. Every public dollar spent on foreign aid helps to make private philanthropy more effective and efficient. It’s also an investment—as I’ve repeatedly argued here and elsewhere—in future opportunities/avoiding future crises. As Bill Gates put it recently, “When people make the argument that development assistance isn’t effective spending, I don’t just say I disagree. I say I think well-spent aid is uniquely effective among all the different kinds of spending our government does.”

Incidentally, at one of today’s talks, CARE’s Sofia Sprechman pointed out a fantastic resource that CARE has compiled to show the effectiveness of their programs in Latin America and the Caribbean. You can find that here (lower right hand corner: “Latin American & Caribbean 2005-2010 Impact Report”), if you’re interested.

If you’re at the conference and going to talk with lawmakers tomorrow…Good luck! Give ‘em hell!

(Actually, be nice, and don’t really give them hell…manners play better in this town than you’d imagine, and everyone’s on edge about the government shutdown. Second try…Good luck! Be tough, be nice!)