Foreign Aid and the Budget

I am occasionally asked about my feelings regarding the USA donating aid money to other countries in light of the United State's budget problems. Rather than go into my own thoughts about the matter, I will present the facts of the matter and let you decide...

Peace Corps : $400,000,000.00 total budget for the year 2010.

That's 400 million that went to supporting 7,000 American volunteers working in 76 developing countries across the world as well as the full-time Peace Corps staff working in each host county. Peace Corps Volunteers work in education. A little over $1.00 from each American for the year pays for this global project.

PEPFAR in South Africa : ~$550,000,000.00 total budgeted for South Africa in 2010.

PEPFAR is a program started by President Bush to fight the HIV and AIDS epidemic in developing countries. SouthAfrica.info reports that "PEPFAR funds have supported treatment for nearly 920 000 adults and children in South Africa, while more than five-million South Africans have been tested for HIV and received HIV counseling with US support." Closer to $2.00 from every American for the year to pay for this. Worldwide, PEPFAR was allocated 3.8 billion dollars for 2010 and has been credited with saving millions of lives worldwide since its creation.

These seem like huge amounts of money right? However, when you consider the amounts, you have to look at things in perspective...

Total USA Military Spending for 2010 : $685,100,000,000.00.

685 billion dollars. This is the total amount of money budgeted for military spending for 2010 and includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's about $2,300 from every American for the year.

Very Simplified Budget for Comparison's Sake

Total US Budget for 2010 - $3,500,000,000,000.00

You will notice you can barely just see the Peace Corps and PEPFAR fund. Combined they used a little over 1 tenth of 1 percent of the 2010 budget. As a comparison, the military budget was 19.57% of the national budget...

Some More Perspective...

Virginia Class Submarine

This is a nuclear submarine used by the US Navy. In 2010, two of these submarines were ordered at a cost of 3.5 billion dollars. Thus, in 2010, if you take the money spent on the global Peace Corps program and in PEPFAR money for HIV/AIDS you will find that the total cost is 4.2 billion dollars, only a bit more money than the amount spent on the purchase of just 2 nuclear submarines in that same year.

These are just the numbers. I pulled them from various websites that anyone can find with a little Google searching. Go out and have fun making your own budget comparisons!