Strings on Soviet Aid

There is a suggestion by one of our liberal legislators that we 1) send the Soviet Union $1 billion for food purchases with no strings attached, and that 2) we get the money from the Pentagon’s portion of the national budget.

While I might agree about sending food to the Soviet Union on a basis of humanitarianism, I do have some questions on the rest of the idea.

The USSR grows all the food it needs internally, but her people still go hungry. Why? Because their rail transportation problems are a self-inflicted wound. Remember all the aid that was lost in Ethiopia because of the internal politics involved? How much of this food aid will be lost due to Russian internal politics? Adding the string of requiring Russia to move to a market economy is not unreasonable.

Getting the money from the Pentagon is the typical liberal answer to any budget question. In this time of massive budget deficits coupled with a recession, this shows the usual knee-jerk answer of liberals. If the idea has real merit, then why not pull half from the Pentagon and the other half from the social services and social engineering programs that liberals have pushed for in the past?

We could add a bonus of reducing the pay raises that legislators gave themselves recently. Legislators seem to enjoy spending someone else’s money. Would they be so quick to send their own money, even if it is supposed to be a good cause?

JAMES KNIZEK

Santa Ana