Foreign aid folly. (Insider Report).

The U.S. Constitution does not authorize the practice of "foreign aid" -- extracting money from U.S. taxpayers to subsidize foreign governments. In effect, this pernicious practice amounts to taxation without representation, since the foreign rulers to whom the aid is given are not accountable to the taxpayers from whom it is taken.

By far the largest beneficiary of U.S. foreign aid is the socialist government of Israel, with the equally socialist government of Egypt coming in at second place. In a presentation on Middle East policy commissioned by the U.S. Army War College, economist Thomas Stauffer estimated that since 1973 -- the year of the most recent full-scale Arab-Israeli war -- aid to Israel has cost the U.S. about $1.6 trillion, or about $5,700 per American. This amounts to more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War.

The December 9th Christian Science Monitor points out that during a November meeting at the White House, "Israeli officials made a pitch for $4 billion in additional military aid to defray the rising costs of dealing with the intifada and suicide bombings. They also asked for more than $8 billion in loan guarantees to help the country's recession-bound economy." Stauffer notes that the Israeli bonds, covered by taxpayer-funded loan guarantees, will probably never be repaid. The Israeli aid requests "could be part of a supplemental spending bill that's likely to be passed early next year, perhaps wrapped up in the cost of a war with Iraq," observed the Monitor.

Whatever one thinks of the Arab-Israeli conflict, no foreign government is entitled to help itself to the hard-earned money of U.S. taxpayers. It is particularly perverse to prop up Israel's economy through foreign aid as the U.S. economy falters and statehouses across the nation confront fiscal crises.