"The Democrats take the whole thing as a joke. Republicans take it serious, but run it like a joke."
Will Rogers

The talk among crusty old southern Senators, such as the particular individual who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, is that America spends and misspends too damned much on foreign-aid. The whole scheme amounts only to about three percent of our budget, but hey, three percent here and three percent there, pretty soon you have funding for the tobacco subsidies or another nuclear submarine.

It doesn't seem to me it's going to do us a whole lot of good to let Russia, or any of the other places we throw money, just fall on their butts. Countries in economic distress are dangerous countries. It was after all, the Marshall Plan that has given the world peace (at least on the broad scale) for these fifty years since WWII.

The Marshall Plan, designed and pushed through to reality by a general of the victors, George C. Marshall, gave hope for the future to the vanquished, as well as our devastated allies. No such thing had ever before been conceived in the minds of victors. The fact that the concept was born in the mind of a man of war is particularly hopeful. The legacy of Marshall is a strong and peaceful Germany and Japan, a recovered and industrious Europe and Asia.

Still, some say it seems all we ever do is throw money around the world and it hasn't bought us all that much goodwill. There's a perception that most of the money ends up in numbered Swiss accounts and damn little of it makes a difference for the Russian or the Bosnian or the Angolan on the street. Home folks are getting tired of that and congress is feeling the heat. The call is to cut off and cut back, to retreat to the proven low ground of isolationism.

I think there are better and more efficient ways to still get the job done, maybe get it done better and show a little profit for the effort. Now there's a twist, profit in foreign-aid, something back for something given. Profit makes sense, I don't much believe in altruism, particularly when it comes to spending tax dollars, my dollars and your dollars, I might remind you. I don't think the average American believes in it either, not when he has to dig down deep for the mortgage payment and his kids are hoping to get to college.

Let me suggest another way. These countries, all of them including Russia that are asking for help, have an agenda. A laundry list of things they want, some sort of justification for the money they need and ask us to provide.

As an example, Russia wants roads and modern factories and trucks to bring goods out of those factories, trucks to drive down those roads. They want some worthwhile industries to locate in their most god-forsaken isolated cities and maybe a railroad or two to begin moving goods as well. Housing may be thrown into that wish-list for good measure.

Under the present system, we send them fifty billion dollars and hope they get all that done. But we know they won't, know that half of it will be greased across every decision-making palm. That's a great failing of our foreign-aid program and one of the reasons it's an increasingly hard sell to the American public. When a car-payment pushes personal resources to the limit, it's hard to read of yet another Ferdinand Marcos siphoning off billions while his country goes hungry. We're tired of it, with good reason.

Why not offer to do it another way? Still their laundry list, just another way, and we offer it on a take-it or leave-it basis.

Let's take roads as an example. Russia needs roads, because three quarters of the year they can't get the goods they do produce across the country. Five billion maybe, for a particular piece of road network they have on that wish-list. We won't merely send them the five billion and watch most of it runoff like this morning's thunderstorm, but we will send an American road contractor and pay the bill to build the road.

Would they agree? I don't know, it's a choice and it's their choice, not ours. Our choice is to make the offer. No one's putting a gun to their head, if they want a road, we'll help them build it and they'll have a road or else they'll decide not and not have a road. They're asking and we're offering. It seems to me we're paying the bill and by this method there are extra benefits on both sides of the equation.

Now certainly we're not going to send laborers over there. Our American contractors are going to have to use Russian labor. So they get jobs and wages and most of all, they get roadbuilding experience. By the time the aid contract is complete, it's a pretty good bet that we will have made some friends and learned a bit about each other's culture at the same time.

From our side, that American contractor's going to have made a profit. Something on the shady side of a billion or so out of every five we spend. And that money will come home to America, perhaps a portion of it to to your state or mine. That profit is going to be taxed and refed into our economy. Perhaps it will even give our American contractor enough experience over there in Russia to encourage him into some joint-venture projects, that are not part of a foreign-aid package.

In addition to that, the Russians, I mean the average Russian Ivan on the street, will see American companies working hand in hand with their people and building something that can be looked at and driven on and used.

Interesting.

I hope so, as well as workable and something that serves the interests of both countries, a sort of international barn-raising. Right on down the line, if they need a factory to build refrigerators, we don't give them money, we build a factory and equip it and give them some pointers on how to market refrigerators. All Russian run by the time we're done with it and a factory for them, a profit for us and hands on, honest-to-god eyeball to eyeball understanding of one another.

I think it makes sense and can be done, expanding a shrinking American workforce at the same time.

Is it impossible to get Washington to pull back from the old ways of throwing money and try something different? Is it impossible to wean the grafters away from graft? Will we be able to persuade the Russians or whoever else, to sit still for not being able to skim all those nifty Swiss accounts from an aid package?

It's like everything else, you have to start with the interested parties. The world and everything in it runs on self-interest. So the heavy equipment lobby and the heavy construction lobby and the lobbyists for the manufacturers and whoever else has a self interest is where it has to begin. When the Roadbuilders Of America or the American Association of Manufacturers come slip-sliding into congressional offices, asking for their part of the action, the good Senators and Representatives will get tuned in pronto. All of a sudden an idea such as this takes on the immediacy of PAC contributions and, as a strictly side issue, makes sense to foreign-aid spending. It will get an audience, because such a plan is in their self interest.

Consider that in its present configuration, all foreign aid is a total loss, at least so far as getting any money back. But there's efficient loss and there's dead loss. When half our aid money's stolen or wasted or grafted away, we only buy half a brick for our dollar. The way we're doing it now, they only receive a half a brick and we get almost nothing back for that half a brick. If we would actually build what is required, they get a whole brick, at least by American standards. Approximately twenty percent of the money given will come directly back into the American economy, perhaps a bit more. Twice the bricks for only eighty percent of the cost and a considerable improvement in international relations as well.

Show me a loser in that.

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