[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 92 (Thursday, June 20, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6626-S6627]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               UNITED STATES LOSES RANK IN GLOBAL GIVING

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, a press conference was held 
yesterday, which included, among other persons, Congressman Tony Hall; 
the head of AID, Brian Atwood; and Julia Taft, the head of Interaction. 
Also present were Rudy von Bernuth, executive director of the Council 
of Voluntary Agencies, and David Beckman, president of Bread for the 
World.
  The press conference called attention to the abysmal record of the 
United States compared to other nations in our response to world 
hunger. For example, France, with only 60 million people, compared to 
our 250 million people, has provided more foreign economic assistance 
than the United States. And we have a gross national product--national 
income--that is 5\1/2\ times that of France.
  Japan, Germany, and France are all ahead of us in absolute dollars 
given, when once we were by far the leading country.
  Not only that, but in terms of the percentage of our national income, 
we are behind every Western European country, Australia, New Zealand, 
and Japan. Denmark provides almost 1 percent compared to our one-tenth 
of 1 percent. Ahead of us are Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, France, 
Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, Australia, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, 
Germany, United Kingdom, Japan, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, New Zealand, 
and Italy.
  I ask to have printed in the Record the transcript of the news 
conference and the article in the Washington Post by Thomas Lippman.
  The material follows:

                    U.S. Loses Rank in Global Giving

                         (By Thomas W. Lippman)

       The United States, once the world leader in aid to 
     developing nations, has dropped to fourth in the amount of 
     money it spends on such aid and is a distant last among donor 
     nations in the percentage of economic output devoted to 
     foreign aid, according to new figures released yesterday.
       Japan, France and Germany contributed more money to Third 
     World development last year than the United States did. 
     America fell to fourth place from second, behind Japan, in 
     1994.
       The United States also was last among the 21 nations in the 
     Development Assistance Committee of the Paris-based 
     Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development in the 
     share of national output devoted to Third World assistance, 
     OECD reports.
       Among the countries that contributed more of their gross 
     national product were Portugal, Ireland and New Zealand, 
     negligible economic powers by comparison with the United 
     States, which has by far the world's biggest economy.
       The OECD figures were trumpeted at a news conference 
     yesterday by Clinton administration foreign aid director J. 
     Brian Atwood and spokesmen for nongovernmental groups 
     supportive of foreign aid. They used the figures to argue 
     that U.S. aid has fallen too far and that this country is 
     abdicating its global responsibilities.
       ``Our foreign assistance program accounts for less than 1 
     percent of our national [federal government] budget, about 
     $34 per taxpaying family,'' Atwood said. ``That's not 
     generous. We should feel ashamed. We are failing to fulfill 
     our responsibilities as a world power. More importantly, we 
     are failing our own national interests and we're failing our 
     own national values.''
       Atwood's Agency for International Development has been hit 
     especially hard by budget cuts imposed by the Republican-
     controlled Congress, where many members are hostile to most 
     forms of foreign aid. This morning, Atwood said, AID will 
     begin laying off 200 workers, including veterans with years 
     of experience in the field and foreign language skills, 
     because ``we do not have the budget to sustain their 
     employment.''
       Atwood and his allies--including Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio) 
     and Julia Taft, president of the Interaction umbrella 
     organization of volunteer groups--made the same argument they 
     have been making for the past year and half: that it is 
     penny-wise but pound foolish for Congress to beef up defense 
     spending but cut development assistance that could make 
     military interventions unnecessary.
       ``Many members of Congress, especially the newer ones, they 
     express a deep hostility toward foreign aid,'' Hall said. 
     ``Many elected officials lack the vision and the leadership 
     to make it clear to their voters that the eradication of 
     poverty is in the best interest of everyone, both rich and 
     poor countries.''
       Congress has not been moved by such arguments. Funds for 
     development and humanitarian assistance--not including 
     military aid--were cut from $8.4 billion in fiscal 1995 to $7 
     billion this year and are scheduled to decrease a bit more 
     next year--even as the House voted earlier this month to 
     spend $11 billion more on defense than the administration 
     requested.
       Using slightly different categories, the OECD credited the 
     United States with $7.3 billion in development aid in 1995. 
     Japan gave $15.5 billion, France $8.44 billion and Germany 
     $7.5 billion. The U.S. figure was one-tenth of 1 percent of 
     GNP, lowest in the contributors' group. The highest was 
     Denmark, at just under 1 percent of GNP.
       The role of U.S. assistance in the developing world was 
     narrowed by the heavy concentration of funds going to Israel 
     and Egypt: $2.05 billion of the $7.3 billion was earmarked 
     for those two Middle East nations.
       Supporters of foreign aid complain that Americans in 
     general, and many members of Congress, believe foreign aid is 
     a big-ticket item in the U.S. budget that can be slashed to 
     cut the deficit. The reality, Taft said, is that this 
     represents ``widespread misunderstanding about how little 
     money really goes to foreign aid.''
                                                                    ____


[[Page S6627]]

               [From the Federal Document Clearing House]

              Transcript of News Conference, June 17, 1996

      (Speakers list: J. Brian Atwood, director, U.S. Agency for 
International Development; U.S. Representative Tony Hall (D-OH); Julia 
  Taft, president, Interaction; Rudy von Bernuth, executive director, 
Council of Voluntary Agencies; David Beckman, president, Bread for the 
                                 World)

       Atwood. Thank you very much, Julia, and thank you for your 
     leadership and that of Interaction, a group of American non-
     governmental organizations who do humanitarian and 
     development work. We're pleased that the NGOs that are 
     members of Interaction are partners in delivering assistance 
     to people around the world.
       We have a table at the front here full of leaders; David, 
     Rudy, Tony Hall. All, in their own way, have really been 
     leaders in this effort. We're here today to discuss some 
     rather dismal statistics. This is a very sad week for the 
     American foreign assistance program. The Development 
     Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic 
     Cooperation and Development has this morning in Paris 
     released its 1995 statistics for official development 
     assistance.
       The United States has now fallen behind Japan, France and 
     Germany in total aid volume. Our volume has dropped by one-
     third and we continue to rank last among donor nations as a 
     percentage of our gross national product, as Julia indicated. 
     Tomorrow, USAID will begin a reduction of its workforce. The 
     first of 200 letters will be distributed to our American 
     staff informing them that we do not have the budget to 
     sustain their employment. This comes on the heels of reducing 
     the USAID workforce from 11,500 to 8,700. This is the second 
     largest reduction in the U.S. government.
       The services of outstanding development professionals will 
     be lost to the U.S. government, possibly forever. So, at the 
     moment when global development problems are mounting, the 
     United States is severely damaging its institutional capacity 
     to respond. At the same time, the overall contribution of the 
     industrial nations to development has fallen another 10 
     percent. This is a reduction of 18 percent in the last two 
     calendar years.
       International organizations, the United Nations and the 
     international financial institutions, led by the World Bank, 
     are being undermined just as the world faces major real 
     development problems. Eight hundred million people, mostly 
     children, are malnourished. Food shortages in many areas 
     of the developing world have become acute. Insurance 
     companies are paying out record amounts for weather-
     related damages due to global warming. Millions of 
     families have no access to family planning services, which 
     is causing millions of unwanted pregnancies, maternal 
     deaths and abortions.
       Nation-states are failing in greater numbers than ever due 
     to political, economic, environmental and demographic 
     pressures, unleashing a tide of refugees and displaced 
     persons. These problems will only get worse as the world's 
     population grows by one billion people each decade.
       These new people can either be consumers, or they can be 
     the wards of the world's rich countries.
       That's the choice that we face today. We Americans think of 
     ourselves as generous people. We respond when there is a 
     humanitarian crisis. But the time is over for measuring our 
     generosity simply by our response to disasters.
       As Julia mentioned, we're the richest nation on earth. Our 
     economy produces $6 trillion a year in goods and services. 
     Yet our foreign assistance program accounts for less than one 
     percent of our national budget, about $34 per taxpaying 
     family.
       That's not generous. We should feel ashamed. We are failing 
     to fulfill our responsibilities as a world power. More 
     importantly, we are failing our own national interests and 
     we're failing our own national values.
       I think it's time to wake up and realize that we will not 
     balance our budget without sustained growth in the global 
     economy. We will not balance our budget if the developing 
     world continues to produce failed states that disrupt the 
     global economy. We need to make the investments in 
     development assistance that will preserve our children's 
     health, standard of living, and safety.
       If we continue to ignore this responsibility, the world 
     will see increasing chaos, and our generation will be 
     condemned for its short-sightedness. Thank you.
       Julia Taft. Thank you, Brian. Congressman Hall?
       Hall. Thank you, Julia and Brian and David, Rudy. Ladies 
     and gentlemen and friends, today's report--pardon me--really 
     comes at an historic moment. This is a time of enormous 
     opportunities for peace and prosperity. Russia had just held 
     its second election on a record of more economic reform and 
     more trade.
       But it's also a time of terrible suffering in countries all 
     over the world. There's well over 23 humanitarian crises that 
     are going on right now. And it's a time of internal chaos 
     that faces other countries where peace technically 
     prevails, such as in Bosnia.
       The clearest message in today's report is that while the 
     quality of aid is improving, the quantity of financial 
     resources is slipping dramatically.
       Two more reports offer a troubling picture of the future. 
     Four out of every five dollars that next year's foreign 
     appropriation bill cuts are in the programs that target the 
     world's poorest people. It does try to maintain the current 
     commitment to UNICEF and childhood survival programs, but 
     otherwise falls short of even last year's miserly 
     contribution.
       The agriculture appropriation bill ignores the sobering 
     fact that wheat and corn prices have doubled, and that prices 
     for other commodities are near all-time highs. This means 
     significantly less food will reach the mouths of hungry 
     children and others next year.
       And this is something that really hasn't been focused on. 
     The appropriation bill, the agriculture bill that we passed 
     last year--or I'm sorry, last week--is the lowest percentage 
     of tonnage that I can remember, probably the lowest 
     percentage of tonnage going to hungry people since the start 
     of the program. And it's been cut in half since 1993.
       This is doubly shortsighted because the grain we are not 
     providing is grown by American farmers.
       Many members of Congress, especially the newer ones, they 
     express a deep hostility towards foreign aid. Many elected 
     officials lack the vision and the leadership to make it clear 
     to their voters that the eradication of poverty is in the 
     best interest of everyone, both rich and poor countries.
       The story doesn't end here, though, and, like the spirits 
     of Christmas past and present and future, these trends do not 
     seal our fate. I believe there is a different spirit in our 
     nation, and that this is the spirit that should guide us to a 
     different future. I believe that people are willing to help 
     people help themselves, and there is no shortage of support 
     for food aid and microenterprise programs, and popularly-
     supported programs that do just that.
       Both government programs and NGOs need seed money and 
     nurturing. I believe that people stand ready to help 
     children, especially, and the millions of refugees of wars 
     and weather disasters. Poll after poll supports this 
     readiness, and my own constituents affirm it to me every time 
     I go home. I believe my constituents are proud of the fact 
     that I work on these programs.
       As a matter of fact--I've said this to you before, and I 
     can't say enough times--and that a recent poll showed that it 
     was a very wide, very wide poll from the standpoint it had 
     tremendous diversity across the country that people believed 
     that hunger and poverty issues are as important as balancing 
     the budget and health care issues.
       There is a consensus emerging among governments, NGOs, 
     churches, and people who are guided by their conscience that 
     we know how to fight hunger and poverty, and that we can beat 
     it if we work together. Despite the critics, there is ample 
     evidence to support the consensus. Some 20 years ago, the 
     world banded together and they wiped out smallpox, and we 
     won. And we are very close to eliminating polio.
       Winning that battle will mean that American families will 
     save the quarter billion dollars spent each year on polio 
     vaccines. It will mean that the dozen American children who 
     actually catch polio from the vaccine each year won't 
     anymore. And it will mean that we will save the lives of the 
     thousands of children crippled or killed by polio each year.
       In the past 50 years, we have helped raise literacy by a 
     third, cut infant mortality in half, and increase life 
     expectancy from 44 to 62 years. The United States cannot 
     afford to ignore any region or segment of a population, 
     however poor. We are too connected, we are too attuned to the 
     other people we watch on television every night, we're too 
     vulnerable to diseases that begin continents away, and too 
     enriched by exports to nations whose people achieve a healthy 
     standard of living.
       Interaction and development initiatives deserve a special 
     commendation for their Relief of Aid Report. It is hard 
     evidence that the quality of aid is improving, and it is a 
     clear call to action for developed countries to focus more 
     resources on hunger and poverty.
       Thank you.

  Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, the United States should become a 
humanitarian leader once again instead of dragging our feet. And in the 
long run our failure to do the generous and right thing will cost our 
people both in security terms and in economic terms.

                          ____________________