Newsaic ®

FootnoteTV ® | Footnote Comics™ | Mirror Law™ | Bulletin Board

By Stephen Lee

Issues

Cases

Resources

FootnoteTV ® No Frames

Footnote Comics™

Mirror Law™

Site FAQ | Search B.B. | Shop

Author FAQ

In the News Home   What's This What's New Search Mobile/PDA Recommend this site     Best viewed on a 800x600 screen, with text size set at smaller Corrections Fine Print E-mail

FootnoteTV (TM) : The West Wing Examining the issues behind your favorite TV shows, episode by episode. More info here.   (Frames) | <--- Episode ---> Guns Not Butter (episode 77). Josh tries to get one more Senate vote in favor of a foreign-aid (1) bill. One senator offers an unexpected deal: his vote for some token funding for further study into intercessory prayer (2). Goaded on by Zoe's new boyfriend, Charlie throws around some borrowed weight. Danny continues pursuing his investigation into the disappearance of Kumari Defense Minister Abdul Shareef. The White House Foreign Aid (last updated January 7, 2003) (back to top) The United States has long given money to assist the development of smaller countries as well as to achieve its own foreign policy objectives. In 2001, the United States spent roughly $11 billion on foreign aid specifically contributing to the development of smaller countries (commonly known as official development assistance, or ODA), less than 1 percent of its annual total budget and about 1/30th of the United States' annual defense spending. Nevertheless, polls show that the American public greatly overestimates how much is currently spent on such development assistance and would support larger amounts than is actually spent. For example, a poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) in 2000 found that the mean estimate for how much of the federal budget was spent on foreign aid was 20 percent and the mean estimate for what people thought more appropriate was 10 percent. President George W. Bush has proposed a measure which would increase the amount of U.S.-funded development assistance by 50 percent over three years, resulting in an annual increase of $5 billion by 2006, and would tie aid allocation to successful efforts to reduce poverty and improve economic growth. Bush has described such development assistance as not only moral, but also as a measure to ensure international security; his proposal to increase development is part of his administration's National Security Strategy, which was published in September 2002. The United States began giving foreign aid with the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II and to combat the spread of communism, and the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 then turned the focus of aid more towards less-developed countries. The level of overall aid has generally declined over the years, falling as a share of the United States' gross national income from 2 percent during the Marshall Plan to roughly 0.1 percent today. Allocation of U.S. Development Assistance and Other Kinds of Foreign Aid Development assistance from the United States is delivered through about 50 different U.S. agencies and bodies, including the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Peace Corps, and various offices within Cabinet-level departments. The United States also contributes to multinational efforts such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. All told, the United States gave about $9.8 billion in 2000 (in 1999 dollars) for official development assistance, according to statistics from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC). Of this amount, $8.1 billion went to other countries ($1.1 billion for disaster relief, $4.2 billion for technical cooperation, and $0.895 billion for food aid) and $2.5 billion went to multinational agencies and banks. Of individual countries in 2000-01, Egypt received the most development assistance from the United States (about 7.0 percent of total ODA), followed by Pakistan (3.8 percent), Colombia (2.0 percent), Yugoslavia (1.4 percent), Peru (1.4 percent), and Indonesia (1.4 percent). Development assistance is just one kind of foreign aid delivered by the United States. USAID, for example, is the United States' lead agency for development assistance and manages its primary international food-relief program, but USAID actually allocates roughly half its funds each year to promote stability in the Middle East and to assist the transitional efforts in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe. USAID's $6.97 billion budget in 2002 was allocated among the following broad programs as follows : Development assistance ($2.5 billion in 2002). Funds here promote economic growth, agriculture, health, and democracy and humanitarian concerns. Countries receiving the most funds in 2002 here were Indoenisa ($74 million), India ($70 million), Uganda ($57 million), Bangladesh ($62 million), El Salvador ($60 million), Nigeria ($56 million), and South Africa (54 million). Economic Support Fund ($2.2 billion in 2002). Used largely to support Middle East stability as well as peace between Israel ($720 million) and its neighbors such as Egypt ($655 million) and Jordan ($150 million). Also used for trouble spots including Indonesia ($50 million), Haiti ($30 million), and Ireland ($25 million). Assistance for Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, and the former Soviet Union ($1.4 billion in 2002). P.L. 480 Title II Programs (programs to enhance food security and combat malnutrition) ($0.85 billion in 2002). The biggest recipients in 2002 were India ($86 million), Afghanistan ($40 million), and Peru ($31 million). Ethiopia received $140 million in 2000 and $103 million in 2001, but only $13 million in 2002. Operating expenses ($0.56 billion in 2002). International disaster assistance ($0.24 billion in 2002). Indeed, Israel and Egypt by far received the greatest amounts of USAID's foreign aid in 2002, with these two countries ($720 million and $655 million) receiving more through the Economic Support Fund than all of Africa did through all of USAID's development assistance and food-security programs ($1.1 billion total). Other large USAID recipients in 2002 include Russia ($157 million), the Ukraine ($154 million), India ($164 million), and Indonesia ($129 million). The following table shows a sample of countries that have received large amounts of aid from USAID from 2000 to 2002. Afghanistan is also included due to the attention given that country since the September 11, 2001 attacks.   2000 2001 2002 Total (2000-02)   Afghanistan $14 m $29 m $69 m $112 m   Egypt $728 m $694 m $655 m $2,077 m   Ethiopia $180 m $144 m $59 m $382 m   India $168 m $136 m $164 m $469 m   Israel $949 m $838 m $720 m $2,507 m   Peru $84 m $84 m $86 m $254 m   Russia $193 m $163 m $158 m $514 m International Comparisons Compared to other donor countries, the United States gave the largest amount of development assistance in 2001, and was second only to Japan in previous years. Nonetheless, the United States gives the lowest amount relative to the size of its economy; while other donor countries give an average of roughly 0.40% of their gross national income, the United States gave 0.11 percent of its GNI and has not given amounts greater than 0.40% of GNI since the 1960s. Denmark, by contrast, in 2001 gave 1.03 percent of its gross national income in aid, almost ten times what the United States gives (0.11 percent of GNI), and gave 309 per capita, almost ten times what the United States gives on a per capita basis.   In Billions of U.S. Dollars (2000) As % of Gross National Income Per Capita   Denmark $1.664 1.03% $309   France $4.105 0.32% $71   Japan $13.508 0.23% 97   United Kingdom $4.501 0.32% $78   United States $9.955 0.10% $38 Sources: The Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development is on-line here. Statistics on official development assistance and international comparisons are from the Statistical Annex of the 2002 Development Co-Operation Report; see here. Other OECD resources useful for this article include the Development Co-operation Review of the United States. Information on the Millennium Challenge Account is on-line here, and the Bush Administration's National Security Strategy of the United States of America (September 2002) is on-line here. USAID is on-line here; budget information comes from the Budget Justification for FY 2003, on-line here. The Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) report, "Americans on Foreign Aid and World Hunger" (February 2001), is on-line here. Carol Lancaster, Transforming Foreign Aid: United States Assistance in the 21st Century (Institute for International Economics, 2000). Intercessory Prayer, Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and Federal Funding (last updated January 8, 2003) (back to top) Intercessory prayer, sometimes called distant healing, is just one of the many approaches to health care that are not part of the conventional medicine practiced in the United States. Such alternative approaches – including intercessory prayer – have received a growing amount of federal research funding in the past decade. Since 1992, the federal government has supported research into complementary and alternative therapies, first through the Office of Alternative Medicine within the National Institutes of Health, now through the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCAAM). Such funding has grown from $2.0 million in FY 1992 to $104.6 million in FY 2002. According to the NCCAM, complementary and alternative medicine are those therapies that are not presently considered to be part of conventional medicine; complementary medicine is used together with conventional medicine, and alternative medicine is used in place of it. The NCCAM classifies complementary and alternative medicine therapies into five major categories: (1) alternative medical systems such as traditional Chinese medicine, (2) mind-body interventions such as intercessory prayer and mental healing, (3) biologically-based therapies such as vitamins and herbal products, (4) manipulative and body-based methods such as massage, and (5) energy therapies. Through the OAM and the NCAAM, the federal government has funded a wide variety of research projects. In FY 2002, the NCCAM funded 66 research projects, including some into Chinese herbal medicine, Gingko biloba, and acupuncture. At least two projects relating to intercessory prayer have received some federal funding in the past 10 years. One project funded in FY 2002, "Distant Healing Efforts for AIDS by Nurses & 'Healers'," was at the California Pacific Medical Center – Pacific Campus, and one project funded in FY 1994, "Intercessory Prayer – A Pilot Investigation" was conducted by psychiatrist Scott Walker at the University of New Mexico. Walker's study into whether people in an alcohol-abuse treatment program did better when receiving prayer by intercession reportedly was inconclusive; there was reportedly no significant difference between the two groups. One well-known study that did not receive federal grants was conducted by researchers at the Duke University Medical Center. That study, published in the November 2001 issue of the American Heart Journal, compared five groups of 30 patients with heart problems; one group received standard therapy without any complementary medicine, and the other four groups received one kind of complementary therapy, including intercessory prayer conducted by Baptist and Fundamentalist Christian congregations in North Carolina and 150 Buddhist monks in Nepal, as well as through printed prayers left at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The study's authors found that fewer patients who received intercessory prayer suffered adverse outcomes than those who did not receive any kind of complementary medicine, but some have criticized the significance of these results given the small sample size; the study's authors themselves noted that sample sizes of hundreds or even thousands of patients might be necessary to detect any significant effect. The study did not conclude that prayer or any other complementary therapy had an effect on the patients' well-being, concluding only that further scientific study was feasible and worthwhile. Sources: The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCAAM) is on-line here. The Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health is on-line here. Mary Duenwald, New research revives an old debate, New York Times, May 7, 2002. Mitchell W. Krucoff et al., Integrative noetic therapies as adjuncts to percutaneous intervention during unstable coronary syndromes: Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Training (MANTRA) feasibility pilot, American Heart Journal (Volume 142, Number 5) (November 2001).

DISCLAIMER. The materials contained in this website have been prepared by Stephen Lee ("Author") for informational purposes only and do not contain or constitute legal advice. These materials may not reflect the most current legal developments, verdicts or settlements. Furthermore, this information should in no way be taken as an indication of future results. Reading this website is not intended to create, and your receipt and/or use of the information contained herein, does not constitute an attorney/client relationship. You should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Reproduction, distribution or republication of material contained within this website is prohibited unless the prior permission of Author has been obtained. (C) Copyright 2002, 2003 Stephen Lee. All rights reserved. Newsaic and FootnoteTV are registered service marks of Stephen Lee. Mirror Law and Footnote Comics are service marks of Stephen Lee. More information available here. Comments or suggestions to the Site Editor.

Newsaic ®

FootnoteTV ® | Footnote Comics™ | Mirror Law™ | Bulletin Board

By Stephen Lee