Trouble for Aid?

Secretary of State Dean Rusk climbed Capitol Hill to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with a strong plea for the New Frontier's foreign aid program. Foreign aid is a perennial problem--How much? In what form?--to the point that it has become a bit of a bore to many U.S. citizens, although they have always paid the bill. But Rusk last week discovered that the Foreign Relations Committee was in no ho-hum mood.

To make his congressional appearance, Rusk had delayed joining President Kennedy in Paris (and delayed his overseas journey still further after hearing of Dominican Dictator Trujillo's assassination). Aware of discontent because of past waste and ineffectiveness, Rusk first laid a philosophical basis for foreign aid.

"Humanity stands, for better or for worse, on the threshold of a new historic epoch," he said. "We do not wish to make the world over in our own image--and we will not accept that the world be made over in the image of any society or dogmatic creed. Against the world of coercion, we affirm the world of choice." He placed the problem within a moral context: "It is right to do these things because peoples are in need of help, and we are able to help them to help themselves; because their children sicken and die while we have the science to save them; because they are illiterate while we have the means of education."

Item by item, Rusk set forth the Kennedy foreign aid program. It would: P: Tighten administration by compacting various economic-aid agencies into a single bureau under the State Department.

P: Spend $2,921,000,000 in economic assistance and $1,885,000,000 for military help in the coming fiscal year.

P: Favor those countries willing to adopt social and economic reforms.

P: Allow the President to borrow $7.3 billion from the Treasury in the next five years and use $1.5 billion of the money being repaid the U.S. by countries who got loans under the Marshall Plan. Rusk termed this long-range financing, something President Eisenhower had also sought, "the heart of the new program."

The committee was plainly cool. Even its chairman and longtime foreign aid champion, Arkansas' J. W. Fulbright, warned that there must be reforms: "We have had too many examples of countries in which our aid programs have been corrupted." Another staunch aid advocate, Wisconsin's Republican Alexander Wiley, observed: "This matter of foreign aid will have to be resold to the American people." Oregon's Wayne Morse put it more bluntly: "I don't think the American economy can stand this program." And Vermont's Republican George Aiken was downright unkind: "I see no sign that they [State Department officials] are particularly qualified to handle huge sums of money. In fact, I would say they are pretty thoroughly demoralized down at State right now."

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