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$10 million in aid to Pakistan is basically nothing in the US federal budget. Even the much larger aid to Israel is also basically nothing in the budget. Foreign aid is easy to be a demagogue about but it's misleading Americans about where their money really goes.
How much money would be saved if the government just let Americans buy pharmaceutical drugs from other countries? Instead we are getting complaints about something that is 0.000007% of the size of the omnibus bill...
This is the misleading thing. Less than 1% of typical federal spending is towards foreign aid. There is no universe in which America is handing out Scrooge McDuck vaults of money to foreigners and short-changing Americans. https://twitter.com/mOehlschlager/status/1341636042663710720
This nationalistic messaging on both left and right is unfortunate. I'm not a total internationalist, I believe in borders, taking care of Americans through social welfare and investment first, etc. But America spends very little on foreign aid compared to most countries.
It's not foreigners fault you don't have money for whatever you need in your life, the U.S. under-taxes everyone upper-middle-class and above and wastes money through regulatory capture and corruption it's not foreigners who are responsible.
Attacking foreign aid is defund the police for the right, both sides think foreigners/police are sitting on a massive vault of money when really policing and foreign aid are both under-funded generally speaking in the US, and most of the money is in tax avoidance.
Americans think we spend too much on foreign aid. But when you ask them how much we spend they estimate 25%. The actual number is closer to 1%. And then you ask them how much we should spend. They say 10%! So they actually want to...spend more?
The right also under Trump made the correct point that the past few administrations were too soft on China and allowed it to expand regional hegemony. It builds that hegemony via trade and aid. So that aid is a tool that serves us and undermines China's aims.
