Smarter than a congressman? Test yourself on foreign aid -- March 9, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Donald Trump’s budget for the fiscal year that begins in October likely will include a $54 billion hike in defense spending and drastic cuts in the State Department and foreign aid to pay for it.

But it’s far from a sure thing. The president’s budget is a proposal or starting point. Congress has the final word and will begin work on the budget later this month.

Americans believe we spend too much on foreign aid, polls show, although people have misconceptions about what’s called “soft power” – humanitarian relief, economic development and anti-poverty programs, among others.

Think you know foreign aid? Before the debate begins, test your smarts with our 10-question quiz. Answers are below. Good luck! 

1)    How much of the federal budget goes to foreign aid?

A.   31 percent

B.   26 percent

C.   15 percent

D.   1 percent

2)    Roughly how much will the United States spend this year on foreign assistance?

A.   $100.5 billion

B.   $75 billion

C.   $36.5 billion

D.   $20 million

3)    How many countries around the world receive U.S. foreign aid?

A.   50

B.   75

C.   More than 100

D.   More than 200

4)    Which country receives the most foreign assistance from the United States?

A.   Iraq

B.   Afghanistan

C.   Egypt

D.   Israel

5)    The United States provides more foreign aid than any other nation. How much of the world’s development assistance comes from the United States?

A.   24 percent

B.   30 percent

C.   50 percent

D.   65 percent

6)    The United States hasn’t always been the No. 1 donor. Which country provided more foreign aid between the years of 1989 and 2001?

A.   United Arab Emirates

B.   Japan

C.   Saudi Arabia

D.   Qatar

7)    Where does the money go? Pick the largest program category.  

A.   Peace and security  

B.   Humanitarian assistance   

C.   Health

D.   Economic development

8)    Where else? Which of these smaller categories distributes the most money?

A.   Environment  

B.   Education and social services

C.   Democracy, human rights and governance

9)    The State Department and USAID are two of the federal agencies involved in foreign aid. How many agencies in total provide foreign assistance?

A.   10  

B.   20

C.   25

10)           Name that tweeter: “Foreign aid is not charity. We must make sure it is well spent, but it is less than 1% of budget & critical to our national security.”

A.   Hillary Clinton

B.   Marco Rubio

C.   Barack Obama

D.   Mitt Romney

ANSWERS:

1       1)    D.  Foreign assistance was 1.3 percent of federal budget authority in fiscal 2015, the Congressional Research Service reported in June. Americans’ average guess is 31 percent, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found last year. Only about three people in 100 knew foreign aid is about 1 percent.

2      2)    C. Tallies vary from $31.3 billion to $39.9 billion, depending on the kinds of assistance included and how the calculations are made, according to PolitiFact. The $36.5 billion figure comes from foreignassistance.gov, a federal site that collects data from federal agencies involved in foreign aid.

3     3)    C. Source: foreignassistance.gov

4     4)    D. Israel -- $3.1 billion this year, increasing to $3.8 billion after 2017, followed by Egypt, Afghanistan and Iraq. (foreignassistance.gov)

5     5)    A. 24 percent in 2014 (Congressional Research Service)

6     6)    B. Japan took the lead when foreign aid spending by the United States declined after the Cold War ended. United States spending rose after 9/11, surpassing Japan. (Congressional Research Service)

7     7)    C. Health at $9.3 billion in 2017, followed by Peace and Security at $8.3 billion, Humanitarian Assistance at $6.0 billion, and Economic Development at $3.7 billion (foreignassistance.gov)

8     8)    C. Democracy at $2.7 billion, followed by Environment at $1.3 billion and Education at $1.1 billion (foreignassistance.gov)

9     9)    B. These include the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury as well as such independent agencies as the Peace Corps and Millenium Challenge Corporation.

1     10)                       B. Sen. Rubio of Florida on Feb. 28, 2017.

For more, check out www.foreignassistance.gov

Defrosting Capitol Hill? -- Dec. 12, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Asked how to start writing a novel, Ernest Hemingway supposedly replied, “First you defrost the refrigerator.”

Ah, procrastination. Everyone puts off getting to work – and Congress is the classic repeat offender. But Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin deserve kudos for defrosting the Capitol fridge – at least for a while. We can all hope the thaw lasts so Congress can do its job.

Murray, a liberal Democrat who heads the Senate budget committee, and Ryan, a conservative Republican who’s chairman of the House budget panel, did what many thought impossible. They delivered a compromise budget agreement that keeps the government open -- no shutdown! -- for two years. During a couple of months of negotiations, they reportedly bonded over football and fishing and agreed, for the greater good of the country, on a deal neither likes much.

“I see this agreement as a step in the right direction,” Ryan said Tuesday, announcing the agreement. “In a divided government, you don’t always get what you want.”

“For far too long here in Washington, D.C., compromise has been considered a dirty word, especially when it comes to the budget,” Murray said. “We have broken through the partisanship and the gridlock.”

Breaking through partisanship and gridlock, even temporarily and for a modest deal, is no small matter. Since 2011, Congress has staggered from budget crisis to budget crisis, raising the blood pressure of the business leaders and infuriating ordinary citizens. The last crisis ended in a 16-day government shutdown in October and low approval ratings for Congress.

The bipartisan deal is far from perfect. It’s not a Grand Bargain that tames the country’s appetite for entitlement programs. It’s an OK deal that has more thorns than blossoms.

Ryan insists the deal doesn’t raise taxes, but Republicans balk at its higher airport and other fees. Democrats resent the lack of an extension of unemployment benefits for more than a million long-term jobless workers. The deal also trims pensions of younger military retirees and requires new federal workers to contribute more to their pensions.

President Barack Obama approves, saying, “This agreement doesn’t include everything I’d like – and I know many Republicans feel the same way. That’s the nature of compromise.”

My favorite comment on the deal came from Eugene Steuerle, budget expert at the Urban Institute, who told the Washington Post: "With this little package, we're not going to climb out of the hole we've dug. All we're doing is agreeing to stop throwing shovels at each other."

Members of Congress get to go home for Christmas, unlike last year. But the masters of putting off until tomorrow what they should have done yesterday have much work ahead. Their to-do list is long, starting with the farm bill, immigration reform, raising the minimum wage and tax reform.     

On C-SPAN the other morning, a viewer named Johnny from Woodbridge, Va., called Democratic Rep. John Garamendi of California on the carpet for Congress’ slack work habits. Johnny said members of Congress don’t even work 10 hours a month.

“We actually work at least 10 hours a month,” Garamendi said, although he conceded, “The amount of work is very, very slim.”

When another viewer suggested Congress should work harder earlier in the session, Garamendi said, “Congress doesn’t act much differently than most of us did in high school and college.” He sounded flip but Congress loves to bunch its work at the end.

“It’s human nature. Sort of like college students cramming for exams,” says Martin P. Paone, who retired in 2008 after 30 years on the Senate Democratic cloakroom staff.

Senate Historian Donald Ritchie notes that in the very first Congress, Sen. William Maclay of Pennsylvania complained in his diary that he was overwhelmed by bills in the last days of that Congress. Maclay said he didn't have enough time to read everything that was coming through, Ritchie said. Some things never change.

But with the 2014 congressional elections, the House is scheduled to be in session only 113 days next year, nearly two weeks less than this year. More work is likely to pile up or be postponed. Murray and Ryan may have defrosted the refrigerator, but there’s a loaded freezer waiting in the congressional garage.

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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It's time to stop demonizing food stamps -- May 19, 2011 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Trying to save his presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich recanted his sharp critique of the House Republican budget plan for Medicare.

But he hasn’t backed off calling President Barack Obama “the most successful food stamp president in American history.”

Obama can take care of himself in name-calling contests. Gingrich, however, is really disparaging people who have to rely on food stamps to put dinner on the table, and they don’t have a soapbox. Yes, Ronald Reagan used food stamp recipients and welfare queens to make political points, but, hello, Newt, it’s not 1976.

Gingrich may think he’s the smartest man in any room, but running a 20th century campaign in the 21st century?

Today, about 44.2 million Americans receive food stamps -- not the 47 million Gingrich said last Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” That’s one in seven of us – and not one in six, as Gingrich said. But let’s not quibble. Gingrich is correct that the food stamp rolls are at a record high. Something he didn’t mention: Nearly 80 percent of benefits go to households with children.

The former House speaker blames Obama and the Democrats for the explosive growth in participation, although tough economic times always result in spikes in food stamp usage. Changes enacted over President George W. Bush’s veto expanded eligibility for food stamps and formally renamed the program the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Also removing some of the stigma, recipients now use electronic cards to buy groceries.

Still, many Americans who are eligible don’t receive food assistance. The Agriculture Department estimates that one in three eligible people go unserved.

On the other hand, it bolsters critics when loony loopholes allow people to game the system, such as the $2 million lottery winner in Michigan in the news this week. Fortunately, such cases are rare.

During the 2010 congressional campaign, Gingrich urged Republicans to be the party of paychecks in contrast to Democrats, whom he called the party of food stamps. His construct ignores the bipartisan support food stamps enjoyed over the years. It suggests that Democrats prefer to put people on the dole than in jobs, which is an absurd and old-fashioned idea.

As for Gingrich, he fails to see how arrogant it is for someone with champagne tastes and a beer budget to tell the needy to tighten their belts. Politico reported that in 2005 and 2006 Gingrich owed Tiffany’s up to $500,000 on a revolving charge.

He may think he’s following in Reagan’s footsteps. In 1976, the former governor of California told a crowd in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., that working people were rightly outraged when they stand in grocery lines behind “a strapping young buck” who is buying T-bone steaks with food stamps.

Such racially charged language was unacceptable even then, but historian Dan T. Carter gives Reagan the benefit of the doubt, saying the phrase was an embarrassing “slip of the tongue” that Reagan never repeated. At the time, Reagan was trying to take the GOP presidential nomination from the more centrist Gerald Ford.

Carter is author of the 1996 book, “From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution 1963 to 1994.” He notes that in the 1990s, Gingrich dismissed criticism that his demonization of welfare mothers was racially motivated.

Gingrich’s Contract with America in 1994 called for eliminating food stamps as an entitlement and turning the program into block grants to states. The current House budget plan would do just that – and cut the SNAP budget by $127 billion between 2012and 2021. The budget is dead in the Senate.

Sunday, on “Meet the Press,” Gingrich hotly denied that calling Obama the “food stamp president” was racist.

Host David Gregory showed a clip of Gingrich, a former congressman from Georgia, telling Georgia Republicans as he kicked off his presidential bid, “You want to be a country that creates food stamps, in which case frankly Obama’s an enormous success. Or do you want to be a country that creates paychecks?”

Gregory asked Gingrich if the remark had racial content.

“Oh, come on, David!” Gingrich remonstrated.

“What did you mean?” Gregory persisted. “What was the point?”

“That’s bizarre,” Gingrich objected. Obama should be held accountable for the increase in the food stamp rolls, he said.

But calling Obama the “food stamp president”? That’s so last century.

© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.