Cut Foreign Aid; Increase Private Charities

So, western Russia is aflame, and an estimate 350 per day in Moscow alone are dying from the disaster. As I reached the end of writing that blog, I remembered I am trying to accompany an opinion a day with a news story a day. So, how do I stand on government aid in time of such natural disasters?

I'm sure there is not a reader of this blog who would not want to ease the pain in Russia. In this case, I doubt there will be any U.S. government aid to help rebuild.

Nor do I think there should be. I would like to see aid -- aid that perhaps will not come -- but not U.S. government aid.

Our national debt is at a crisis point. We must pull back, cutting most all our foreign aid. This doesn't mean we, as a nation, need to quit giving. It means we, as a government, need to quit (until our national deficit is brought under control). But we cannot just turn a blind eye to all the hurt and pain internationally, not while thinking of ourselves as the model nation, the leader of all other nations.
Cutting our government's foreign aid should be done in concert with an exerted effort to raise private donations for humanitarian causes worldwide.

Out steps the government, and in steps the people, ideally speaking.

How much do we spend on foreign aid? One web posting tells me it is $25 billion. That's a chunk of change and will make a small bit of difference if we save it. Also, remember foreign aid is by definition money spent overseas, so it largely is not creating American jobs or spurring America's economy.

At a time when we are balancing the cutting the deficit on one hand with continuing to pump money into the economy on the other, cutting foreign spending is a logical and practical place to look.

I do sit back and wonder what will happen if we cut off our foreign aid. Can private charities raise so much? Only if they step it up. If we are to give more, as a people, we should increase our own awareness. Media attention would be helpful. When the Haiti earthquake struck, the disaster was covered throughout the media and, as a result, the fate of the Haiti people was on all our minds, and many of us offered donations.

Not so, the Russian Fires (admittedly, a much lesser natural disaster). Should the media not stir our interest, then it is left to the charity organizations themselves to be more active, more solicitous. Knock our doors, if you will. Call us on the phone, if you will.

And, we need organizations void of high-paid executives. If we question whether our donation money is being skimmed off by such administrators, let's create new charities. I think of a dominant charity organization in Utah, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and know there are no lavishly paid executives running it. I would doubt Catholic Charities has any.