GOP Gearing Up for a Major Overhaul of U.S. Foreign Aid

The incoming chairman of the Senate panel that appropriates foreign aid is proposing an overhaul of the U.S. foreign assistance program to dismantle the Agency for International Development and cut back funds for development in Third World nations.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who will become head of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, said Monday that he envisions a much leaner foreign aid budget, with all areas except the Middle East and Europe taking a 20% cut in assistance next year.

“The message of the November election was that we ought to downsize government, and I don’t think foreign aid should be exempt,” said McConnell, who is to take over the subcommittee when the new Congress convenes in January. He said the United States could no longer afford to finance “ongoing, perpetual entitlement programs” that do nothing to contribute to “our national security interests.”

One of the biggest changes he proposed was not in the level of foreign aid but in the manner in which it is doled out. McConnell is preparing legislation that would eliminate the Agency for International Development, the sprawling bureaucracy that oversees most economic aid, by moving its functions to the State Department.

His bill would also put the Peace Corps, currently an independent entity, under the State Department. And it would put more emphasis on promotion of U.S. commercial interests abroad by consolidating the Trade Development Agency and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation into a single entity with control over a greater portion of the total foreign aid budget.

With welfare reform a top priority of the new Republican-controlled Congress, McConnell said that the “guiding principle” of the foreign aid bill, which he will introduce in January, will be to discontinue “funding abroad for anything that we wouldn’t fund” at home.

Although McConnell will head the subcommittee that controls foreign aid spending, the revisions he proposed would have to be approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which will be chaired by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).

Congressional observers believed that McConnell, one of the GOP’s acknowledged experts on foreign aid, wanted to preempt the more conservative Helms from defining the debate because the North Carolinian’s views on the subject are too extreme for most Republicans. Helms said recently that one of his priorities next year will be to save taxpayer dollars from being poured down “foreign rat holes.”

McConnell said that his reforms are meant to give foreign aid “a new lease on life” after the changes that have taken place in Congress since the Nov. 8 elections and in the world since the end of the Cold War.