|
|
|
Foreign Aid in the Domestic Interest . . . Literally Outsourcing and the U.S. Aid System Sara Evans Generally speaking, foreign aid appears to be unpopular with the American public. In a recent poll, 61 percent of the public said we spend too much on aid (Nat’l Opinion Research Ctr, 7/05). But when informed that the U.S. is among the stingiest aid-giving countries and spends less than 0.2 percent of gross national income on aid programs, 59 percent of the public changed their minds and said we should spend more, especially on antipoverty and development programs (Gallup, 7/05). Contrary to common perceptions, altruism is alive and well among the U.S. public. However, our foreign aid system is designed so that only pennies of every dollar spent on aid actually reach those in need. Where does the rest of the money go? To U.S. consulting firms, businesses, and NGOs. For decades, the government has “outsourced” the implementation of aid programs to private-sector organizations. Today, contractors and grantees both design and execute the vast majority of U.S. aid projects. A government staffer may identify the need to build a school in Bangladesh, for example, but a private U.S. firm comes up with a plan for how to do it and carries it out. In practical terms, most of the taxpayer money appropriated for aid ends up as income for American citizens working in the development field. So much for the worry that aid spending diverts funds from domestic interests. Most of the public is unaware of this quirk of the U.S. aid system. In this way, outsourcing undercuts those beautiful altruistic notions of furthering development in other countries by keeping aid money circling around inside the U.S. If outsourcing leads to this perverse outcome, why do it? For decades, proponents of outsourcing (privatization, really) have insisted that the private sector is just more efficient at performing development work, and that businesses and nonprofits have greater expertise in particular issue areas and geographic regions than government agencies. But there is reason to question the assumption that privatization is best in every case. It’s true that NGOs are quite effective in delivering certain kinds of aid (i.e. humanitarian aid), but contracting is not always a win-win situation, and outsourcing deserves to be examined more closely as an overarching policy. Currently, outsourcing is accepted without question across the government’s aid agencies. Another cause of the trend towards outsourcing has been the Congressional tendency to make cuts in aid agencies’ budgets over the last few decades due to declining political support for aid. Agencies have not been able to support as many employees, so they have been forced to outsource a lot of their day-to-day work. Congress sees this as a good way to ensure that aid money actually serves domestic interests instead of foreign ones. But what politicians overlook is that the American public wants to be altruistic. And who’s to say that reducing poverty in other countries won’t serve U.S. long-term international goals? Given the increasing importance of foreign aid to U.S. foreign policy following 9-11, it’s time to re-evaluate whether outsourcing is the right way to deliver aid. Is it really more efficient than direct implementation? Is it more effective? Does it make sense to keep U.S. foreign aid money within the U.S. instead of making sure it gets to those who need it? Foreign aid programs are meant to serve U.S. interests by alleviating suffering and poverty in other countries. This is not a contradictory statement; problems are becoming global, and the world is becoming increasingly interconnected. Systemic problems overseas can have serious ramifications for the U.S. (consider bird flu). Naysayers question this reasoning and argue that aiding other countries for their sake (i.e. not diverting most aid money to the coffers of American firms) produces no benefit whatsoever for American citizens. I say we test this hypothesis; let’s make sure the aid money we appropriate actually gets to other countries in the first place and then test whether the results benefit U.S. interests. This will mean streamlining the aid pipeline and probably eliminating the contracting middleman. Sara Evans is a junior in the Woodrow Wilson School. |
| Send us a comment via email. |
|
|