[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 20 (Wednesday, February 9, 2011)]
[House]
[Page H556]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   FOREIGN AID: A TIME TO RECONSIDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on what my friend 
has just said about cutting Federal spending. I agree, cutting $400 
billion is really not much of a cut, especially in these times when 
Congress continues to spend more and more money. So let's talk about 
some specific areas where we ought to reconsider putting taxpayer 
money, and maybe it's time to reconsider our foreign aid that we send 
to countries throughout the world.
  There are about 192 foreign countries in the world, give or take two 
that sometimes exist and sometimes don't. So there's 192 countries, and 
we give foreign aid to over 150 of them. Now, this map over here to my 
left shows the world, and most of it is in red. All of those countries 
that are in red on this map receive American taxpayer foreign aid. The 
countries in green receive military aid from the United States, which 
is almost all of the countries in the world. There are a few countries 
in Europe and one part in Africa that are in blue that receive no 
American aid. But the vast majority receive American money, and we just 
keep sending it and sending it and sending it, and we send it to 
countries that many Americans don't even understand why we send it to 
those countries, and I'm going to address some of those.
  But here's how it works, Mr. Speaker, and this rule needs to be 
changed. When a country wants foreign aid, all of the foreign aid that 
America gives is put into one bill. In other words, when we write a 
check, we're writing a check on one bill. For example, we don't 
separate the countries one at a time and vote up or down on whether 
they ought to get American money. I think if we did that, most of these 
countries in red wouldn't be seeing any American money. With the way 
the rule works, we put all 150-plus countries in one package, and we 
vote for all of them.
  Now, I personally think it's good for the United States foreign 
policy that we support Israel, that we send them foreign aid and 
military aid. We ought to keep doing that. But if we want to continue 
to send aid to Israel, we've got to send it to other countries like 
Egypt and Pakistan and some others.

                              {time}  1010

  Right now in the crisis in Egypt, maybe it's time that we reconsider 
sending aid to Egypt. You know, if the Muslim Brotherhood takes over 
that country of Egypt, the world's in a lot of trouble. And we've all 
seen on television those tanks going up and down those highways and the 
city of Cairo. Those are American tanks. They came from American 
taxpayers. It would be a tragedy if those tanks and other foreign aid 
ends up in that radical group, the Muslim Brotherhood. Take over the 
government. We don't know. Time to reconsider Egypt.
  But, you know, we also give money to Pakistan--Pakistan is on the 
border with Afghanistan--and it's given in the name of helping that 
country. Pakistan doesn't support us, I think, adequately in our war on 
terror in Afghanistan, but yet we continue to give them money.
  But here is something that most Americans may not know about. We give 
money to Venezuela. Why do we give money to Chavez and Venezuela? He 
hates the United States. He defies our President, makes fun of our 
Nation. We don't need to give him any foreign aid.
  We give $20 million to Cuba. Why do we give money to Cuba? Americans 
can't even go to Cuba. It's off limits. It's a communist country. But 
we're dumping money over there.
  And we even give foreign aid to this massive country over here, 
Russia, that used to be called the USSR.
  And the zinger of them all, this country. Even though we are in debt 
$45,000 per American, and most of that debt is owned by the Chinese, 
this Nation gives foreign aid to our good buddies the Chinese.
  Why do we do that? It doesn't make any sense, and it's time to 
reevaluate our foreign aid policy. It's a time to reconsider. And let's 
start voting up or down on every one of these countries that want our 
aid.
  And last thing I want to say is most of these countries we give money 
to, they don't even like us. There was a poll done by FOX News 
yesterday that said 82 percent of the people in Egypt don't even like 
Americans. Well, why do we keep giving them money? We don't need to pay 
them to hate us. As my friend Louie Gohmert from Texas says: ``We don't 
need to pay them to hate us. They can do it on their own.''
  So it's time we reconsider foreign aid and save American taxpayers 
money. We are at war in two countries now. This debt is tremendous. We 
have a lot of issues in this country, and we need to start taking care 
of America before we start sending American money to countries 
throughout the world. It's a time to reconsider foreign aid.
  And that's just the way it is.

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