Resolved: The United States Federal Government should Terminate All Foreign Aid

Thank you, Con.C1: Foreign aid hurts the USFG.Throughout the past, aid workers have been kidnapped, killed, and disappeared while working in foreign lands. In just 2008 alone, 150 western aid workers were attacked [1].In fact, many humanitarian aid groups have found it increasingly hard to deliver aid due to the risks and rising security issues [1].In areas with security concerns, such as Pakistan, sometimes aid organizations allow the local government and institutions handle the aid - leading to corruption - and other problems like crippling economic growth [2].Furthermore, we are spending billions of dollars every year. In 2008, the USFG spent 49.1 billion dollars in total on foreign aid, which eventually reduced to 44.9 billion dollars in 2009 [5]. For countries such as Pakistan, the USFG has sent nearly 30 billion dollars alone to, since 1948, when we began delivering aid [6].Not to mention Pakistan still in a horrible state after decades of aid,Since 1950, Western nations have sent around 2.3 trillion dollars, intending to help improve the situation and lives of people [7]. There have been no changes in living standards, in places in Africa, even though $600 billion dollars has been poured in [7].In places like Ghana, where the World Bank calls an aid success, half of the babies with diarrhea never receive re-hydration care.Theft, bribery and corruption in the health care industry worldwide deprive millions of people of proper care and especially undermine the global fight against HIV/AIDS [8].When such a large amount of this gets wasted, and can actually prove to be counter-productive.C2: Foreign aid hurts the recipientsH. Mahood, a PhD scholar and lecturer writes:"Foreign aid is bad for political process as natural resources become bad for natural resource-rich countries...Foreign aid and natural resources have the common features of exploitation by corrupt politicians." [3].He also writes:"Reinnika and Svensson studied the survey of primary schools in Uganda and found that only 13% foreign aid for education reached to the schools and rest was exploited. Knack documented the pattern of corruption with foreign aid, as aid dependence increased, accountability would decrease, domestic corruption to disburse the aid fund would increase and there would be weak institutions. Knack and Rahman found that the greater the foreign aid with respect to GDP the greater would be corruption levels and weak democratic and bureaucratic performance." [3]As more foreign aid flows in, corruption in the government will increase.Overall, foreign aid has little to no impacts on the countries. Lack of good coordination, high transaction costs, and failing government alignment has led to the undermining of the sustainability of national development plans, the distorting of priorities, and the diversion of scarce resources and/or establishing uncoordinated service delivery systems [4].Peter Heller, a Deputy Director of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, says:"Maureen Lewis on HIV/AIDS programs notes obvious dependency issues, including a reduced incentive for aid recipients to mobilize domestic resources; the potential for economic agents—whether in the government or the NGO sector—to tailor their priorities to the perceived interests of donors; a reduced pressure for governments to address inefficiencies in how public services are delivered; resistance by governments to a greater private sector role in delivering services; and the potential for increased corruption and rent seeking. Finally, countries relying heavily on aid inflows give up significant autonomy in decision making on budget priorities."Basically, foreign aid takes away from the responsibility of the government, inviting laziness, corruption, and bad decision making. Also, aid allows bad governments to stay in power. "In some circumstances external aid can fill so great a proportion of civilian needs for food, shelter, safety, and health services that significant local resources are thereby freed up for the pursuit of warr. This economic substitution effect of aid has a further political impact. When external aid agencies assume responsibility for civilian survival, warlords tend to define their responsibility and accountability only in terms of military control. Even if they started with a commitment to peacetime political leadership, as the international aid community takes over the tasks of feeding and providing health services and shelter for civilians these military-oriented leaders increasingly relinquish responsibility for civilian welfare. They focus on military ends and, over time, define their roles solely in terms of physical control (and the violent attainment and maintenance of that control). As this occurs, warriors struggling for victory over space and people lose all interest and competence in civilian affairs and become increasingly ill prepared to assume broad, responsible leadership in a post war period" [13]. Self-explainable - aid shifts the responsibility of leaders and allow them to wage war."...development aid can exacerbate social tensions, encourage bad policy making, make governments less accountable to voters, intensify competition for resources, and feed processes of structural violence in a country, ultimately empowering the very elites who benefit from exploiting marginalized segments of the country..." [14/15]. In Rwanda's situation, the aid that was sent directly resulted in a corrupt and genocidal government slaughtering an ethnicity. C3: USAID has failedUSAID has failed in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq [9].The NY times writes"The foreign assistance arm of the U.S. government, the United States Agency for International Development, increasingly has been politicized, gutted of expertise and made subservient to short- term U.S. foreign policy interests." [10]They also suggest that the US government should instead focus on improving and solving issues at home, and let future leaders to work on the international level.USAID is horribly managed. The agency's monetary and personal resources are too thinly spread around the globe. Currently, it maintains a presence, with at least 1 permanent member, in 99 different countries, and in 26, there is no permanent staff [11]. Furthermore, their are too many layers of management between the Administrator and field programs, along with a lack of a strong and consistent leadership [11]. The design and implementation of plans within USAID is uncoordinated and confusing [11].USAID also has overwhelming high prices and needs transparency. The agency requires overhead costs of up to 35%, compared to 3% for Global Fund [12]. Furthermore, USAID doesn't force its programs to report in quantitative amounts, allowing workers to only report on some health factors, empowering workers to hide failing areas [12].Sources:[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk...[2] http://fpc.state.gov...[3] http://www.waset.org...[4] http://www.fightingmalaria.org...[5] http://www.politifact.com...[6] http://www.fas.org... [7] http://www.econtalk.org...[8] http://www.thebody.com... [9] Laurence Jarvik, international relations professor, Johns Hopkins[10] http://www.nytimes.com...[11] http://findarticles.com... [12] http://www.aidspolicyproject.org...[13] Mary Anderson, President of the Collaborative for Development Action, Inc, DO NO HARM: HOW AID CAN SUPPORT PEACE OR WAR, 1999, p. 49-50REMAINING SOURCES IN COMMENTS