Surprise! Americans want to ‘slash’ foreign aid to 10 times its current size
From the Christian Science Monitor:
If a poll shows support for a position that politicians espouse, they will point to this finding as proof that they are doing the will of the people. If a poll shows the opposite, they are likely to dismiss it, saying pollsters shouldn’t be running the government.
So what are our politicians to do with this? Polls show that in this big-deficit, belt-tightening time, Americans think that foreign aid should be cut. But they also think that it should be ten times the amount it is now.
Say what?
That’s right. According to pollsters, the vast majority of Americans polled say the US should put foreign aid first in line for the chopping block. When you ask them how much of the federal budget is now spent on such aid, they say 25 percent. And how much should it be? They say about 10 percent.
But the fact is that foreign aid is only about 1 percent of the budget. Not 25 percent, as most Americans polled think. So slashing it to 10 percent – the level they think it should be at – would actually be a huge increase. This is just one of the misconceptions about foreign aid that exist in America. And it’s these misconceptions that need to be cleared up as we enter this budget season, or millions around the world are going to suffer. Ultimately, foreign aid isn’t just good for those we help; it’s good for America.