Bake a Bigger Pie, Not Smaller Pieces : Foreign Aid: The Dole proposal is appealing in it simplicity. But it ignores the reality of a long decline in America’s international assistance.

Sen. Bob Dole’s proposal to reduce U.S. foreign aid to Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines and Turkey in order to meet the needs of the world’s “new democracies” has appealing simplicity.

Yet in its focus and in its magnitude, the Dole proposal misses the point. True, there is an insufficient amount of funds to serve a wide range of avowed U.S. foreign-policy interests. But reallocation of existing foreign aid will in no way alter this fact. Advancing this chimera will only lull us into a complacency that promises to divert us from the task of raising the funds necessary to serve our interests abroad.

In the last decade, some members of Congress, Dole included, contended that the essential task of funding the national defense should not be compromised by the budget deficit. Yet if containing Soviet expansionism was the priority of the 1980s, the successor in the ‘90s is the fostering of nascent democracy. Funding changes must reflect the shift in our mission.

I have no quarrel with Dole’s assessment of the paramount importance of assisting the democratic revolutions taking place in Eastern Europe. But these are not the only important events transpiring around the world. Other areas also deserve our resources.

The fundamental problem with the Dole proposal is that it ignores the reality of what has happened to America’s international-affairs assistance in recent years. Our spending in this critical category has dropped by nearly $7 billion, or 25% (not counting inflation), since 1985. Within these dwindling dollar amounts, spending on foreign aid (as distinguished from maintenance of embassies and so forth) has absorbed the brunt of all cuts, falling from more than $19 billion to the current level of less than $15 billion. When inflation is taken into account, the reductions are far more severe.

The effects of these reductions have been devastating. Whole regions of the world have been wiped off the U.S. foreign-assistance map since 1985. In these few short years, Africa has seen its share of economic-support funding fall by more than 75%, from more than $400 million to $90 million. Non-military assistance to the Caribbean and to the Andes region, crucial to our anti-narcotics efforts, is imperiled. Reducing assistance to any “top five” countries would not relieve these shortfalls, nor come close to assisting Eastern Europe and Panama.

Let’s remember, too, how the top recipients of foreign assistance came to be such. It was neither arbitrary nor capricious. In each case, funding decisions were based on an assessment of the country’s contribution to U.S. foreign-policy interests. Aid to Israel and Egypt, two critical allies in an unstable region, has been unchanged since 1985. This means a 13% reduction when inflation is taken into account; Dole’s proposed 5% cut plus 4% inflation would take another 9%. And certainly the Philippines and Pakistan qualify as important developing democracies that deserve our help in their efforts to survive their own rocky transitions. The senator’s arbitrary application of percentage reductions in aid to certain countries ignores the different reasons why a country came to receive aid. His is a simplistic approach that lacks substantive foundation.

The imperative to increase spending on foreign affairs is obvious and incontrovertible. “Reallocation” is an evasion. Once a world leader in economic-aid spending, America has embarrassingly fallen behind other developed countries in this domain.

None of this is to say that we can’t re-examine our allocations of foreign aid. Let’s cut military assistance to unthreatened countries whose citizens go unfed. Let’s increase economic and development aid. Perhaps Sen. Dole will join us in re-examining whether 10 years of military aid to El Salvador has served U.S. interests and the interests of the Salvadoran people.

U.S. foreign-affairs expenditures amount to a minuscule 2% or less of total federal spending, yet are absolutely vital to the alleviation of the social, economic and political dysfunctions that historically have driven so many international conflicts. Even the most drastic foreign-affairs cuts will have a negligible effect on the overall federal budget deficit. Still, such cuts would seriously endanger U.S. foreign-policy interests and global stability.

It is worth addressing the issue honestly--in terms of finding resources for vital interests--rather than waiting for the consequences of our neglect to require the spending of far greater resources in the future.