While America's standing in the Middle East couldn't get much lower, you wouldn't know it looking at the U.S. foreign aid budget. Of proposed U.S. assistance for 2012, almost two-thirds is earmarked for Muslim nations and one-third goes to Arab countries.
Yet, despite those billions in aid, opinion polls show most Arab citizens still have an unfavorable view of America and most Muslim nations routinely vote against U.S. interests in the United Nations.
"If we are giving money to countries consistently voting against our interest, we ought to cut them off," says Congressman Steve Chabot (R-OH) who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "But Congress is going to need to get some backbone here because it consistently gives Presidents the ability to waive the cutoff of that money."
Years ago, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton proposed cutting off all aid to the 30 nations who consistently voted against the U.S. in the UN. Before him, President Reagan's U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick proposed cutting off $1 million in aid for each vote an aid recipient cast against the U.S. in the U.N. In both cases, Bolton says the State Department overruled them.
"Foreign aid to a lot of countries could be readily cut and I think it's been a mistake by the U.S. government for decades not to take U.N. voting into account," Bolton said Monday.
This document, released by the State Department, examines 13 critical votes in the UN in 2010.
Compare that to this list of US aid recipients for 2012 and this poll released last week by the Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Project.
The result: some of the largest recipients of U.S. taxpayer money over the last 6 budget years consistently vote against the U.S. and harbor negative or unfavorable views of America.
Read more: http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/05/24/its-all-your-money-foreign-aid-muslimarab-nations?test=latestnews#ixzz1NJAMGyjk
