Capitol Ideas / Getting off the Dole

...And increasing aid to other countries not so far contaminated by our largesse, would hurt them...

...He believes that aid to Israel, Egypt, and the other leading recipients should be cut not by five percent but by 50 percent...

...More on this proposal in a minute...

...T his public silence on aid to Israel I has, I believe, sown confusion about aid in general...

...One or two said that, with more Ph.D.s per capita than any other country in the world, it was humiliating that Israel could not make its own way in the world...

...The best thing would be for Senator Dole to say that he would like to cut aid to Israel, Egypt, etc...

...But some do: Jewish support for aid to Israel may well be declining...

...If aid really is bad, then it really is bad for Israel too, and the country (like all others) would be better off without it...

...As a result, there is a tendency to respond to his intentions with reciprocal antagonism and to forget about the possibly good effects of a reduction in aid...

...There are plenty of others who oppose economic aid...

...he wrote...

...She added that in private Dole's critics tell a different story...

...If Dole's message brings this day closer, his mission will have been a blessing...

...The key is to end the addiction with a phased reduction of aid over a specific period...

...Stef Wertheimer, a prominent pro-free-market businessman in Israel said recently: "Our Dear American Friends: If you really want to help us—don't help us...

...He, too, noted the "fear of being seen as an accessory to Dole...

...The belief that aid is efficacious enjoys overwhelming bipartisan support on Capitol Hill...

...But Dole's proposal went nowhere, seventy-three senators immediately signing a letter to President Bush, opposing the cut...

...Former assistant secretary of state Elliott Abrams is one who does try to separate out bad intentions and good effects...

...aid, a recent case being Egypt, now declining to Bangladesh living standards...

...the subsequent discussion of aid, have suffered from the following confusion: everyone—Dole himself, his administration supporters, the secretary of state, the Democrats who want to rewrite the foreign aid bill so that they can heap more dollars on more countries, and probably also Dole's "younger Republican conservative" critics—accepts the premise that foreign aid really is helpful to the countries that receive it...

...Daniel Pipes agrees...

...When will American Jews rebel against demands for larger contributions primarily to sustain socialism...

...Yes and no...

...Front-page articles by the Washington Post's John Goshko on May 17-18 plainly showed the press in its policy-shaping role...

...defense contractors, e.g., F-15 and F-16 fighters, AWACS planes, tanks, missiles, and rockets...

...It underlies almost every program they support...

...At about the same time we began to see the outlines of a campaign by the policy-shapers, including the press, to rewrite the U.S...

...We should be wary of any aid suggestions coming from liberal Democrats...

...According to Wolf Blitzer, formerly the Jerusalem Post's man in Washington (now with CNN), Israel receives approximately $500 million in additional aid, some for the Arrow Program (antiballistic missile defense), some for more arcane military expenditures...

...Even a booming Israel "would require some military help," he added, "but less than it is now getting...

...And so still more countries would go on the dole...

...foreign aid law...

...The British economist P. T. Bauer has repeatedly said this, but he has been on his own, more or less...

...But he believes that Dole's approach is counter-productive, its instant repudiation by so many senators possibly even encouraging bigger aid requests by current recipients...

...He first quotes Justice Holmes to the effect that even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being tripped over...

...In March, Secretary of State James A. Baker told a congressional committee that aid to all these countries should be "shaved...

...One answer is that many Jews don't accept the analysis...

...Countries that receive U.S...

...This in turn might be construed as disloyalty, a country which "already has enough enemies as it is," and soon...

...This person did not want to be identified, and since returning to the United States I have found, when the subject of aid to Israel is brought up, that public reticence and private disapproval is common among American Jews...

...CAPITOL IDEAS GETTING OFF THE DOLE R ecently the Senate Republican leader, Bob Dole of Kansas, proposed that U.S aid to Israel (and to the four other largest recipients of our aid, Egypt, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Tbrkey) be cut by five percent...

...About $350 million of its $1.8 billion military aid is sent in the form of a check to Israel...

...The people become impoverished and their overlords don't feel the pain...

...From this it follows that reducing aid will hurt the recipient country...

...Howard A. Cohen, the president of Operation Independence in New York (a group of international business leaders who support Israel's economic independence) favors a plan to phase out economic aid to Israel over a ten-year period...

...increasing it will help...

...For contemporary liberals, of course, the value of government-sponsored income redistribution is bedrock faith...

...Their aid may then be reduced or threatened (South Korea and Chile fell into this category, El Salvador is now in it), and then, with a bit of luck, wealth-generating rather than dole-seeking policies are pursued...

...Treasury (or only leaves it for a few months, as with Israel's economic aid) is probably as harmless as aid can ever be...

...Off the record . . . " they will say, and then tell you that Israel should get off the dole, that aid is destructive, addicting, and so on...

...If this analysis is accepted, and in Washington it is still very much an "insurgent viewpoint," according to Daniel Pipes, director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, a paradox stares us in the face: reducing aid to Israel, far from hurting it, would help it...

...If we subtract the $1.1 billion with which Israel repays its loans, and the $1.45 billion spent here for military hardware, it seems that Israel itself actually sees, every year, about $1 billion in aid from the U.S...

...One of the main problems is that Dole's present position is seen as antagonistic to Israel, rather than a case of frustrated generosity (a desire to reallocate the aid pie...

...But I can't say it because I'm running.' " Dole's position on aid for Israel, and Tom Bethell is The American Spectator 's Washington correspondent...

...Others recognized that, without aid, Israel would no longer have to kowtow to the State Department...

...Is this a good idea...

...The truth is that international aid is injurious to recipient nations, just as intra-national transfers (from the suburbs to the inner cities) are injurious to the inner cities...

...Most of these people, among them Milton Friedman of the Hoover Institution, are careful to draw a distinction between economic aid (amounting to $1.2 billion a year) and military aid ($1.8 billion), continuing to support the latter...

...Jews who are influential in the policy-shaping community tend to be reticent on this particular aspect of public policy—foreign aid—knowing that if they criticize it, their anti-aid arguments will apply to Israel...

...But there is little chance that he will ever say any such thing...

...Still, it is time the country was pressed to reform its economy...

...But it should understand that internal American pressures to reduce foreign aid are real, and that the day when Israel will have to overhaul its economy and become self-reliant is near...

...that the loans to Israel should be forgiven, in other words, and our economic aid discontinued simultaneously...

...You do no service to a friend by refusing to tell him his faults (dole-seeking...

...It's only when you 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1990 stop supporting us that we will have no choice but to stand on our own two feet...

...Lee Hamilton, the chairman of the committee, is now considering...

...debts with some portion of their foreign aid disbursements...

...According to Karen Stewart, the economic officer on the State Department's Israel desk, of the $1.2 billion Israel receives at the beginning of the year, about $1.1 billion in principal and interest repayments is sent back here at the end of the year...

...pocket to another, with an inTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1990 9 termediate stop in the Bank of Israel, should be ended...

...But why disloyalty...

...I became aware of this while in Israel a couple of months ago...

...They get to keep the interest that meanwhile accrues...

...Post-Dole, the Jerusalem Post itself (hawkish, these days) editorially noted in mid-April that "Israel cannot yield to pressure at the expense of its own vital interests...

...and less prone to adopt socialist policies...

...where it is used to purchase hardware from U.S...

...At that point the economic performance of these welfare nations is unlikely to improve unless they are accused of human rights violations...

...Susan Rasky of the New York Times referred to Senator Dole's "running battle with Israel and those who lobby for it," resulting in "a public tongue-lashing from younger Republican conservatives...

...He belongs to that generation of Americans (and in this regard there really isn't a dime's worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats much over the age of 50) who all their lives have believed that you can buy friends around the world by giving them taxpayers' dollars...

...Some countries have been greatly impoverished by U.S...

...He added that Eizenstat's proposal—to forgive the debts and cancel the aid that is used to repay them—is one of the options that Rep...

...In the course of a conference organized by Daniel Doron of the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress (discussed in my May TAS colby Tom Bethell umn), we went to the northern part of the country, and as we traveled about in the bus I was intrigued to note that a good many of the participants thought it was time that Israel got "off the dole," if the pun will be forgiven...

...They won't say it out loud," Dole told her, "but they'll grab you in the cloakroom and tell you: 'You're right...

...It is assumed by everyone I have spoken to that in this Dole had the tacit support of the Bush Administration...

...In effect this money (possibly adding up to a billion dollars—Van Dusen wasn't sure exactly) never leaves the U.S...

...The non-debate on foreign aid would finally spring to life if the presently anonymous, pro-Israel aid-skeptics were to go public...

...It has done nothing but harm, it is harming Israel, and let us hope that the Jewish community soon unites against it...

...On the same day the paper ran a column by Gerald M. Steinberg, a member of the political science faculty at Bar-Ilan University, who began: "As an Israeli, I agree with Senator Dole's call for reducing the level of U.S...

...When you consider the abilities of the people who live there," he said, "you have to give credit to socialism for impoverishing the country...

...so that they can become more independent of the U.S...

...aid become "addicted" to it, remaining poor in every instance, retaining their eligibility for aid by remaining below the qualifying per capita income level...

...Foreign aid always goes from government to government, where it acts as a kind of methadone, partially insulating the officials who spend it from the bad effects of their policies...

...On the subject of economic aid, Stuart Eizenstat, President Carter's chief domestic policy adviser and now a Washington lawyer, who has made a dozen trips to Israel in recent years, pointed out something that one rarely reads in the newspapers: Almost all of this aid is used to repay loans made years ago to Israel by the U.S...

...Amos Perlmutter, an Israeli expatriate (of whom there are several hundred thousand in the United States), who teaches political science at American University, also favors a reduction of aid to Israel, and he wrote an article to this effect several years ago in the Wall Street Journal...

...Still, this is quite a lot in a $30 billion economy.along lamely) that foreign aid had now been reduced by that amount (by $2 billion, say, if we include Israel), so that $2 billion was now "available" to hand out to other, more "needy" nations...

...The remainder stays in the U.S...

...But if that is true, why is there still so much Jewish support for aid to Israel...

...Israel is being kicked, he said...

...If you really want to support us—don't do it with money . . . your gift of money distorts and corrupts us, making us eternally dependent on you...

...111 According to Mike Van Dusen, who works for the Europe and Middle East subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Egypt, Thrkey, and possibly one or two other countries also repay their U.S...

...Alvin Rabushka of the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies in Jerusalem, published a bold attack on foreign aid in the Jerusalem Post in February...

...Treasury...

...Eizenstat's recommendation is that this complex transferral of money from one U.S...

...What I am saying is that foreign aid that never leaves the U.S...

...What they really want is more aid going to more countries...

...Republicans of the Bush-Dole-Michel generation make it unanimous...

...One of the people listening to Eizenstat in the bus made the interesting rejoinder that senators and congressmen would be unlikely to support the change, because they are so eager to be seen publicly as supporters of Israel...

...Its drawback is that it would immediately lead to the claim by Democrats (and Republicans would, as always, tag THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1990 11...