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HEADLINE: U.S. Urged To Double Overseas Aid; Assistance Groups Link Funding to the War Against Terrorism

BYLINE: Peter Slevin, Washington Post Staff Writer

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Asserting that the Bush administration's proposed foreign aid budget has "very serious inadequacies," many of the country's most prominent international development and assistance organizations will call today for a doubling of U.S. spending on overseas projects.

The coalition of 160 groups -- including CARE, Save the Children and Catholic Relief Services -- aims to persuade the White House and Congress to increase spending on the foreign poor as a moral action by the world's wealthiest country and a curb against instability that could breed armed conflict and terrorism.

Echoing the rationale advanced by the administration for its war on terror and its sharp budget requests for homeland defense, the organizations contend that increases in foreign aid will "enhance our own state security," said Mary E. McClymont, president of InterAction, the umbrella group launching the five-year campaign.

"We had higher levels of support during the Cold War. Ten years ago, if you adjust for inflation and population growth, $ 1 billion more was being spent on these issues," McClymont said. "It's got to be fixed. It's a matter of turning the rhetoric into reality." McClymont focused her criticism on $ 3.8 billion proposed last week by the administration in seven accounts, including basic education, health care, refugee and disaster response, and democracy projects. The administration's entire international affairs proposal is $ 16.1 billion.

Patrick Cronin, assistant director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, noted that development assistance would rise 9 percent if the State Department's proposed budget is approved. He said the most significant increases include funding for overseas AIDS programs and education.

But Cronin also said U.S. agencies must focus on delivering aid more effectively before they can seek dramatic increases in funding. "If we've learned anything, we know that for development assistance to be effective, it has to be spent effectively," he said. "We have to earn the trust of skeptical institutions within the U.S. government," referring to Congress and the Office of Management and Budget.

The United States spends less on foreign aid as a percentage of national income than any of the world's 21 other most developed countries.

"The current budget would not solve that problem," said Bill O'Keefe, director of government relations for Catholic Relief Services, a member of InterAction. "We believe, frankly, that most Americans are interested in helping people around the world be more self-sufficient and pull themselves out of abject poverty. We hope our government will respond to that."

The administration has dismissed earlier calls from its allies for a coordinated doubling of foreign aid to poor countries. When Microsoft's Bill Gates chastised the U.S. government for being a "laggard" in foreign spending earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill replied that poor countries have collected "trillions of dollars in aid over the years with precious little to show for it."

Americans typically respond in opinion polls that about 20 percent of government spending goes abroad, said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Studies at the University of Maryland. The true proportion is less than 1 percent. Most people think the right amount would be 10 percent, but they also worry that the vast majority of foreign aid fails to reach the people who need it most.

"There are a lot of concerns about foreign aid money ending up in the pockets of corrupt foreign officials," Kull said. To be successful, he contended, a case for doubling U.S. spending would have to be coupled with information about how the money is actually spent.

InterAction considers an improvement in the effectiveness of foreign aid to be a central part of a campaign designed to "reinvigorate America's role," with its partners, in building "safer, more stable and democratic societies."



LOAD-DATE: February 12, 2002