[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.''
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[[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.
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