New Script

President Johnson produced a foreign aid program last week that was as elaborately hedged as an Italian garden. It included bookkeeping dodges to make the price appear low, legislative innovations to soothe the Senate, new ideas to succor the hungry, sick and ignorant, and tightened controls to mollify at least some of the critics who regard all foreign aid as a colossal boondoggle. For the most part, it made sense.

The basic package for the year beginning July 1, covering military and economic aid, comes to $3.39 billion, a shade under Johnson's original request for this fiscal year. This apparent economy was gained by shifting military aid to South Viet Nam to the regular Defense Department budget and charging $170 million in new health and educational-assistance projects to other agencies. In any case, it seems likely that Johnson will come back with supplemental requests after July 1, as he did last month, when he asked an extra $715 million for the current budget.

Solid Evidence. The significance of the program lies beneath the figure juggling. For years, Washington has given lip service to the idea that recipients of aid must show they deserve it by helping themselves. This time, Johnson emphasized his theme of "action, not promises," in his message to Congress. Specifically, the U.S. expects beneficiary nations to "invest every possible resource in improving farming techniques, in school and hospital construction and in critical industry; make land reforms, tax changes and other basic adjustments necessary to transform their societies; face the population problem squarely and realistically; create the climate that will attract foreign investment and keep local money at home." In the past, recipients had only to agree with these criteria. Henceforth, they will have to show "solid evidence" of meeting them. The new policy seems custom-tailored by the chief of the Agency for International Development, David Bell, whose reputation as a tough, able administrator was borne out by his performance last week as the Administration's chief foreign aid advocate.

In the military phase of the program, there will be a continued shift away from grants and an increased effort to enable countries to make outright purchases of U.S. equipment. The changes are far more basic on the economic side. Agricultural aid, for instance, would go up more than one-third, to nearly $500 million, at the expense of grandiose construction schemes. More emphasis will be placed on financing development projects through international agencies such as the World Bank.

School-to-School. In a separate message proposing international education and health acts, Johnson went still further toward the global Great Society. He recommended extensive schemes for exporting more teachers and medical personnel, including establishment of an "international career service" in the public-health field. He offered birth-control assistance to nations that request it. He would post educational attaches in U.S. embassies, create a placement service for American teachers seeking to go abroad, and encourage "school-to-school" partnerships in which, for a starter, 1,000 American institutions would assist in dividual counterparts overseas.

The most imaginative Administration proposal envisions a kind of reverse Peace Corps that would import 5,000 young people from underdeveloped countries to teach their languages here and work in domestic poverty programs. There are also programs to eradicate smallpox, malaria and other diseases, and to intensify aid to children abroad whose diets are supplemented by U.S. largesse. Finally, as suggested by some Senators, Johnson proposed that foreign aid be authorized for a period of five years rather than one--though funds could still be appropriated annually--with separate bills for military and economic assistance.

Congressional reaction to the new script was one of polite and not-so-polite skepticism. Thus, for all Johnson's efforts to make his aid program more palatable, it seemed likely that the annual foreign aid debate on Capitol Hill would go on much as before.

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