Tonight while many lay comfortably in their beds at home while an estimated 3.5 million people will go to sleep in boxes, on sidewalks and in shelters all across the country. Of those homeless people, 1.5 million of them will be a child, that’s one for every five children in the Unites States (“Facts”). In America there are currently 35.9 million people living below the poverty line and that rate grows every day (Siddiqi). With all of these shocking and saddening statistics, one would begin to wonder why it is that our country continues to send millions and millions of dollars in aid to other countries every year. International aid or foreign aid is a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another, given at least partly with the objective of benefiting the recipient country (Google). While these foreign countries are considered to be in need or in the midst of crisis, it is becoming more and more clear that this country is in a crisis of its own.
While our families and our children are sleeping on the streets and starving we are paying for those in other countries to receive shelter, food and other basic necessities. Not to insinuate that we should be cold and callus to those in need but our country needs to take care of itself, before it can help others in an attempt to gain popularity in the international political scene. The tax payers of this country, the ones whose family home was foreclosed on and who are struggling to get by, are the people who are suffering from our country’s over zealousness towards helping other nations in their time of need. We are now in great need of their help to but it seems as though our cries for help have gone unnoticed which is apparent by the staggeringly large amount for money sent just last year to foreign countries.
Emotions aside, the national deficit is at a historical high and growing virtually every second. This can largely be attributed to our country’s overwhelming need to be generous at our expenses. Just last year alone the U.S spent over 16 billion dollars towards aiding foreign nations. While our people are dying every day of various diseases the government is sending almost five billion dollars in an attempt to assist in the AIDS and HIV outbreaks Africa is currently experiencing and 385 million dollars to fight malaria in other Central American countries (Larsen). It has been common practice for America to be more than willing to help those in need. For example many schools in Africa, a third world country, are funded by America. Why is it then that our schools are shutting down, teachers being laid off and our students being cramped in over populated schools because they say there is not enough funding? That would be because the money that would be used to fund our schools is being sent away to other countries to help their cause.
The USA is in what is being called an economic crisis by some and a complete economic breakdown by others. Houses are being foreclosed at an alarming rate. Many of your family, friends, and neighbors are only 30 or so days away from being homeless (‘Facts”). It is sad and depressing to imagine a family member going to bed hungry and contemplating where they will live in only a matter of days when they lose their home. Millions of Americans are losing their jobs because the economy is so damaged; more than 13% of Americans are jobless (‘Bureau’). That’s a rate our country has only seen once before but we still are giving money to fund cleanup efforts and retribution to countries we have been to war with instead of funding and establishing more jobs for our people to thrive and begin anew. We suffer, they prosper…. how is that deemed right? While all of these good deeds are great for publicity and really do help the people of the suffering countries, it’s harming this country tremendously to an irreparable level.
The money, we as tax payers, pay out to fund the war in eastern countries is absurd. While it is different type of international aid, much of the conflict in these countries is between the people of those lands, not the US. Even though we pay for the war we are fighting for them we also have sent billions of dollars to these numerous countries to help them and their people build their country up. Iran received 397 million dollars and Afghanistan received a whopping one billion to name a couple. Mexico for various reasons received 450 million dollars in 2009 (Larsen). Why would America pay so much money to Mexico when they are trying to kick all of the Mexican immigrants out of the country?
As of today, our national deficit is $13,042,652,508,996.03 (Hall). Was this astounding debt what our founding fathers had in mind when they came to this country? The even greater shock is that a large chunk of that debt comes from the U.S having to borrow money in order to help fund international aid efforts. We cannot even afford to fund our own good deeds to these countries, that is sad fact to swallow. This is because after all of the tax the government allots for their “projects”, money our population pays, it’s still not enough for the causes they pursue so they borrow in addition to sending out our tax dollars. It seems as though America is attempting to self destruct. With that amount of debt, how is our government supposed to help us when they are distributing money that could be used to put families back in their homes and fix our schools. That same money could be helping us rebuild our failing economy.
Much of our countries focus lately is our youth and what role they play in our futures. How do we suppose they will prosper and thrive in the intended way when they live on the streets and are not receiving the best education possible because we have still not recovered from our failed economy? What will they have to look forward to in life? Debt and the constant struggle of our economy? How will we explain to our children that the reason that they are living in such despair and moving from house to house is because our government is sending money that could help them to people that they will never know or meet. How will you explain that the people we depend on, our government, to make the right choices for us and for them has failed them in order to gain political popularity and for their own career gains?
As if it couldn’t get any worse President Obama has stated that he intend to double the amount of allotted international aid by the end of his term in office (Larsen). Whatever his plan may be to fund these efforts even it’s surely not going to help our national deficit and our economy, but in fact do the opposite and send our nation further into debt and deeper into economic crisis. This is not to say that we as a country should not offer help to people in other countries because they are all human beings just like us but we cannot effectively help them when we are in the pits of debt, it’s like the blind leading the blind. Here’s the more important question, who will come to our aid when this catches up to us and we need help? Who will pay our way after we have used all of our money to pay theirs? Who will take care of our children and feed them and build their schools? The answer is simple, no one.
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