Do you agree with McCain that aid money given to poor countries is "lost to corruption"?

Question

And billions of dollars given in packages like the Global Poverty Act actually empowers the tyrants?

Answer 1

Without a doubt.It keeps the corrupt government in power.It never goes to the people.Wouldn't you think by now you would at least see improvements there?I think all foreign aid should be cut in half and even more to some countries.

Answer 2

absolutely - look at africa - people are tired of donating money becuase it just gets intercepted by the criminal element in that country.  Sad Sad Sad.

Answer 3

Yes, corrupt politicians pocket the money or give it to the military and police. Obamba's support for global poverty act is another indication that he cares more about Africa than the USA. It proves that he is a globalist. How on earth can you justify increasing foreign aid when the national debt is over $9.5 trillion.

U.S. National Debt

    The U.S. government's debt is over $9,500,000,000,000.00 and they are still spending our tax dollars like drunken liberals. We should be flooding our U.S. Representatives and the presidential candidates with messages demanding that they cut spending and balance the government's budget. Let's stop putting the bill for today's expenditures on our children and grandchildren. We owe it to them. Shane.

    U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK

    http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

    The estimated population of the United States is 304,409,460

    so each citizen's share of this debt is $31,321.18.

    The National Debt has continued to increase an average of

    $1.76 billion per day since September 28, 2007!

    Concerned? Then tell Congress and the White House! http://w2.eff.org/congress/

Answer 4

I agree that with any program paying money or benefits, the organization must be diligent to insure that the overwhelming majority of the money is used as it is intended. Many programs don't have the necessary controls in place to insure that.  Therefore, a substantial portion of the funds may be diverted to tyrants.

Answer 5

Most of it is. Let's be honest. If we sent AID and gave it to the people that would be more effective. Sending the money to the country where the leader is supposed to divide it doesn't do anything.

Answer 6

Yes.

Most poor countries are socialist (that's a large part of why they ARE poor, of course) which means they are run by left wingers, who are capable of handling money in only two ways - waste it or steal it.

Richard

Answer 7

Yes, we have been pouring money into poor countries for decades and all we've done is prop up their tyrannical leaders.  Those leaders vie for that aid money and keep their people that way to get it.  Our aid money is actually an industry there.  You can obviously see it's never made a bit of difference with countries in Africa and some of the Middle Eastern countries, like Lebanon, after decades of funneling money out of our family's pockets to these countries.

And I think it's worse than that.  I think it gives first-world countries a warm, fuzzy feeling -- you can see nonAmericans all over the place boasting about their countries giving a bigger percentage of their wealth than the USA in aid -- but what we're actually doing is being complicit in keeping these tyrants in money.  But I think many of our Western leaders even realize that and keep doing it out of peer pressure.

Israel is an aid success story.  That's exactly what you want to see happen, people build their country into a successful thriving country in less than 60 years.  And the 'aid' we give them now, most of it actually comes back to our economy in weapons sales by contract, because they've built the largest GNP in the region with their little tiny strip of land.  So we're true equal allies, it's a win-win situation.  But that rarely happens.

And this amount that Obama is wanting us to fork over is an unprecedented amount of aid, even by USA standards.  You cannot force people to evolve and stop tribal warfare.  You have to have people who want to help themselves like Israel did.

Answer 8

That is a convenient thing to think if you do not favor foreign aid.

The answer is, in other countries some of the government officials are corrupt; others are not.   The same type of behavior you see in your local township and city occurs elsewhere in the world.  

When giving money for a charitable purpose, it is important that it is done in an intelligent way.   That applies also when the state or federal governments give grants to municipalities.