$23 billion to $37 billion each year. The countries that the United States give foreign aid to are not a big fan of them. They can do anything with the money that we give them, and not even for the right or wrong reason. The United States gives foreign aid to a lot of different places around the world, and they may not even need the foreign aid. The United States does not even know if the foreign aid is actually helping the places it is going to. America should not give foreign aid to any other place other than the United States, where it belongs. Indeed, while foreign aid is well under 1 percent of the total United States federal budget, it is still counted in the multiple tens of billions of dollars. That is around $23 billion this year, or a total of $37 billion if you include assistance to foreign militaries. And that, of course, is a lot of money. In fiscal 2013, U.S. government funding for humanitarian assistance and international development will total around $23 billion. In addition, the U.S. spent around $14 billion in fiscal 2013 for foreign military assistance. That is money spent on training foreign armies and providing them with weapons. Use our trade offs tool to see how many teachers, police officers, and years of health care coverage among other things your community could buy with tax dollars currently spent on foreign aid and the military.
The United States may only spend 1 percent of the federal budget.
For 40 years, U.S. foreign aid has been judged by its intentions, not its results.
Foreign aid programs have been perpetuated and expanded not because they have succeeded, but because giving foreign aid still seems like a good idea. But foreign aid has rarely done anything that countries could not have done for themselves. And it has often encouraged the recipient governments' worst tendencies helping to underwrite programs and policies that have starved thousands of people and derailed struggling economies. In agriculture, in economic planning, in food assistance, U.S. foreign aid has routinely failed to benefit the foreign poor. In Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the U.S. Agency for
International Development (AID) has dotted the countryside with "white elephants": idle cement plants, near empty convention centers, abandoned roads, and perhaps the biggest white elephant of them all a growing phalanx of corrupt, meddling, and overpaid bureaucrats. Foreign aid can fail to help the countries.
Most of the countries that the United States give foreign aid to do not like the U.S.
Anti Americanism is particularly strong today in the Middle East. In Egypt only 10% of the public favor the United States. That caused it to long back the regime of Hosni Mubarak and failed to oppose the military overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government.
Support is not much higher in Jordan, 12%, and Turkey, 19%. Both countries that are notionally Washington’s allies. Those not so warm feelings for America have fallen 17 percentage points in Egypt and 13 points in Jordan since 2009. In addition, less than a quarter of Russians, 23%, have a positive view of America, whose image is down 28 points
in just the last year. The countries that the United States give foreign aid to are not a big fan of them.
On the other note giving foreign aid helps by a lot. More than 3 million lives are saved every year through USAID immunization programs. Oral rehydration therapy, a low cost and easily administered solution developed through USAID programs in