I appreciate Steve Ford's March 27 column ("Tough issues, talking them out"), highlighting how U.S. Rep. David Price engages the public in talking about the nation's tough issues. What is frustrating is how a straightforward issue like foreign assistance doesn't get talked about and suffers when it comes to the chopping block known as deficit reduction.
Our foreign assistance budget represents less than 1 percent of the federal government budget. Compared with a defense budget of 15 percent of the federal government budget, this funding enables a wide variety of global health, developmental assistance and democracy promotion programs that reflects our humanitarian values.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus have each stated that foreign aid is key to national security. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce argues that it is critical to U.S. economic engagement in the world. Despite these three great reasons to support robust foreign assistance funding, Rep. Paul Ryan proposes to cut the account by 30 percent just for 2012 and continue chipping away at it until 2016.
