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Around and around the money goes. The U.S. gives money to many countries. Top on the list is Israel and second is Egypt. We also support different programs, such as special U.N. programs. Over 51% of the World Food Program budget is from the U.S. This feeds 72 million people in 82 countries. We give about 25% of the U.N.'s budget to protect refugees. We also contribute 25% of the budget for Civil Aviation so that everyone can fly safely. The U.N.'s children's fund get over 17% of it's money from us and so on and so forth. When you think of it we are very generous to other people and other organizations, but not so generous to our own people. Some of the money we donate to things seems to be ridiculous. For example we recently pledged half of a one hundred million fund to foster democracy in the middle east. The middle east contains some of the richest countries in the world. But the middle east also contains most of the world's monarchies who don't want their countries to become democratic. Now let's take this a step further. We give Egypt two billion dollars a year. Egypt is contributing to this fund. So isn't that really us contributing their share? We give to Egypt and Egypt gives a little to someone else. Will any of this change anything?

The countries in the region were not happy about this meeting although some made believe they were. No country there even wants the money, after all most of the countries we are talking about are swimming in oil funds, why in the world do we think that a paltry hundred million would get any country in the middle east to do anything. This isn't even chump change to Saudi Arabia. Then there is the resentment. Egypt, our closest ally in the region handed us a slap in the face, but maybe we deserved it for trying to impose our will on sovereign countries. There is one thing for sure however, we could stop our aid to any country we had a mind to, yet you don't see much of this. The Egyptian representative left before the end of the meeting, handing the president a diplomatic dis. This surprised the president who must have figured that Egypt was bought and paid for and would never do anything to hurt their chances of getting taken care of by the cash cow U.S. When asked why he left early, the Egyptian representative said that he didn't leave early, the meeting just ran longer than it was supposed to.

So what is all this money that we give away buying us? According to the figures I have seen, which I hope are right but there is no guarantee, we gave away almost 19 billion in aid in 2004. This is not counting the Iraq War and probably not Afghanistan, which might account for another 150 billion or so, full scale invasions by the military are not cheap. So has the world become a better place because of these donations, which by the way, could have lifted many a U.S. citizen out of poverty or supplied free drugs to the elderly? According to the Washing Post Report On Middle East Affairs they state that we have given Israel in foreign aid, grants and loans $74,157,600,000 from 1949 to November 1, 1997 and that was eight years ago. The interest on this money cost us $49,936,680,000. We are talking about some really big bucks here. During this time we were funding countries such as Egypt who at one time was an enemy of Israel. So it seems we were funding both sides. It would seem that there would be another, more practical solution to helping countries than throwing huge amounts of money at them. One way might be a transfer of technology which allows countries to make money on their own by manufacturing products for sale to the world community. We did part of this at the end of World War II and you can see the results in places like Japan and Germany. As the old saying goes, it is better to teach someone to fish than to give them fish. Another way to help countries is to share our huge farm excesses. Instead of allowing grain to sit in piles unused because the silos are full, you could ship it to these countries.

I am just not convinced that money is the solution to a countries' problems. I think a country has to be helped to become self sufficient. Some countries might feel that they need arms to defend themselves. I can understand this in certain situations, but I think most of the time, if they feel this way, let them get their own weapons. Why should we take sides in most of these conflicts? We have defended some of the worst despots in South and Central America and that was done because we felt that they were better than Communist leaders at the time. The truth was they were both bad and both made the citizens of their countries suffer and even die. What was really needed, at the time, was a strong democratic government and that should have been what we were working toward. We have to think of the welfare of the people of those countries, not just the governments as we have done too many times in the past.

Its a funny thing with money. We have a political tradition of trying to make believe money is going to one place while it is really going to another. I remember speaking to someone about a state lottery. I said to him that I wasn't crazy about the idea, but at least the money was going to the schools. I said this because the politicians had promised that this was where the money was going. That person laughed and said that they had fooled me too. He went on to tell me how, when the lottery money is collected, an equal amount was taken out of the school funds and then that was put in. The money that was taken out went to various pork barrel projects favored by the politicians, so they loved the lottery. Boy were my eyes opened. Knowing that these scams are pulled on the state level, I can only imagine what happens on the Federal level. I wonder how much money is hidden in the budget for things that we will never know about?

Giving money away and being hated for it doesn't make any sense to me. One of the first things a country has to do when donating money is make sure that it reaches the intended target. Too many times our money and even food, for that matter, has landed up in the hands of people who have kept the money or sold the food while the people of a particular country were no better off for our sacrifice. Is this fair to the American public who has to finance these donations? Another thought I have on this huge money give away, is how can we continue to finance things like the Iraq occupation and remain a viable country. Even the U.S. doesn't have bottomless pockets? Now we are in the uncomfortable position of having to consider leaving Iraq and losing that country to the radical countries. We and the Iraqi people may be far worse off now than we were before we moved in, if that is possible. I have constantly said that it was relatively easy to win the war, but we had to plan on how to win the peace before we invaded. With just a fraction of what we have spent in Iraq already, we could have helped to finance a takeover. It may have not succeeded but at least we would not have been leaving the country in shambles and ready to be plucked plus we could have tried again in the future.

The U.S. saved some money recently when it suspended about forty seven million dollars to nations that refused to protect Americans on their territory from prosecution by the International Criminal Court. Where did these funds go, most likely into Iraq. We are giving military aid to Oman and Bahrain, two oil rich countries. Why in the world would we be giving aid of any kind to countries that are relatively rich? If anything, they should be paying us to protect them. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? These countries must think that we are truly fools.

The U.S. policy that determines the distribution of huge sums of money to other countries and organizations is sorely wanting. It's time that we took a careful look at where American money is going and why it is going there. I am sure if examined these expenditures we would find that we shouldn't be spending anywhere as much. We could then take some of the surplus that we save and use it for our own citizens at home, for a change.