Richard E. Jones’ Sept. 29 letter, “Retract foreign aid allowances,” suggests we can achieve significant deficit reduction by cutting three-quarters of the foreign aid. Foreign aid accounts for only about 1 percent of the budget. Maybe this is why Congress doesn’t act on this “savings plan.”
The American public has always vastly overestimated the amount spent on foreign aid. And a person could certainly argue we shouldn’t be sending our tax dollars to foreign countries (that generally hate us), but cutting foreign aid, even by 100 percent, would have little effect on our budgetary woes. Read the debate at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brunitedstatescanadara/670.php.
Art Gaiani
Vancouver
