Comments about ‘Letter: The United States should trim foreign aid, use money to fund education’

Studies going back decades have found that Americans say the government is too big and spends too much money. But when given a list of everything the government does, people can't find anything they want to cut--except foreign aid. Everyone always wants to cut foreign aid. Well, foreign aid consumes about 1% of the federal budget, so cutting it doesn't gain us much. Plus, by far the largest chunk of that aid is military aid to Israel which has major support in the U.S., especially among conservative groups.

To make a long story short, you're not going to see many cuts to foreign aid, and if you did, it still wouldn't make much difference.

Roland did you miss the letter writer's point or are you just trying confuse the issue.

She didn't suggest that cutting foreign aid would solve the deficit/debt crisis. She did not even suggest that the Federal Government should spend less. She just suggested redirecting some of that spending from Foreign Aid to Education.

Instead of trotting out the same old tired warhorse and saying, 'this won't reduce spending much so it isn't worth considering,' it would be good to consider the pros and cons of the writer's actual suggestion. Put the nag out to pasture; wrong battle, wrong horse.

My response to the writer's suggestion is that we need to get the Federal Government out of education entirely, reduce the money taxed away from the citizens of the states accordingly and let the states run their own schools.

No One of Consequence,
You could also argue that interjecting your state's rights view of education control and funding when the article clearly doesn't mention that either also does not "consider the pros and cons of the writer's actual suggestion", couldn't you? But perhaps your old warhorse doesn't look so tired to you.

Regarding the author's suggestion to redirect aid, I'd be all for it--if it the excessive aid we continually send to Israel.

and texas is rewriting history, for their textbooks, Utah could revise history too, maybe change science to include unintelligent design in Mississippi. With no standards I'm sure America will grow.

Stop sending money to Israel to be our friends.
My mom always said you can't buy friendship, but you can buy a "friend" for the evening.

Re: Happy Valley Heretic Orem, UT
"Stop sending money to Israel to be our friends."

The majority of Americans are able to distinguish between Israel's Friendship with us as opposed to that of our friends in Benghazi, Libya. Maybe we should cut off foreign aid to Libya ... yesterday.

American Aid to libya:
2010 - $29.6 million
2011 - $163.5 million
2012 - $13.1 million
2013 -$1.5 million (requested)
Source: Congressional Research Service

Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year,
which is roughly one-fifth of America's entire foreign aid budget.

I suspect nearly any country we gave that much money to would be our friends, but I'll tell ya what lets cut them off and see how friendly they stay.

Spending more money on education is not the answer. According to some studies, since the 1980's we have nearly doubled spending per pupil (inflation adjusted). Since 1997, spending per pupil has gone up by nearly $2000. All this time, the test scores from the students have not been changing that much.

Money towards education is not the answer. How about we just use the money to cut deficits and maybe pay down the debt.

Re: Happy Valley Heretic Orem, UT

All you gotta do is convince enough US Legislators to commit suicide by cutting Israel's foreign aid. That will be harder than it sounds.

Rifleman: since when did Israel become the most expensive state in our nation?
So your saying Israel owns the US legislature? and this is not a problem to conservatives?

How about instead we quadruple foreign aid. Wouldn't it be a good thing if kids growing up in, say, Afghanistan had some job training or educational opportunities aside from joining the Taliban?

Re: Happy Valley Heretic Orem, UT
"So your saying Israel owns the US legislature?"

Conservatives support foreign aid to Israel because we are smart enough to tell the difference between our friends and our enemies. Obama, on the other hand, is still trying to understand why they don't like us in Libya, Iran, Syria, and Egypt.