Israel Aid Costs More Than All 115 Federal Programs Being Closed

In its grim attempt to meet mandatory caps put in place by Congress last year requiring the administration to reduce its budget by $30 billion from Fiscal Year 1994 to FY 1995, President Bill Clinton proposed killing 115 existing federal programs in the budget he sent to Congress on Feb. 7. The list of programs to be terminated filled almost a quarter page in The Washington Post of Feb. 4.

Among them are impact aid for local schools serving military dependents and 14 other Department of Education elementary and secondary education programs; 6 programs enhancing libraries across the nation; 8 separate programs for higher education student financial aid; and 4 nationwide vocational education programs. The losses, of course, will be felt most heavily by needy students and minority groups most in need of enhanced educational opportunities.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will lose 40 separate projects in research, conservation, construction and education all over the United States. The Department of Defense will lose its heavy cargo helicopter procurement program, its ship-based anti-submarine warfare helicopter, a search-and-rescue helicopter project, F-16 aircraft, and 5 other major programs.

NASA would lose its advanced solid rocket motor program and a long duration orbiter commercial experiment transporter.

The Interior Department will lose two Bureau of Indian Affairs grant programs and four other environmental and other projects. Another big loser is the Department of Agriculture, which loses certain export subsidies, research services, and rural development grants. Other departments that lose projects, services or public facilities are Justice, Energy, Commerce, Transportation and the State Department, along with the Small Business Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Information Agency and the State Justice Institute.

Total savings for wiping out all of these educational, research, environmental and development projects in all 50 states will be $3.25 billion. Does that sound familiar? It's about three-quarters of the annual $4.321 in U.S. taxpayer grants to Israel, exclusive of the additional $2 billion in annual U.S. loan guarantees to Israel (see box on this page).

If, instead of cutting out programs for U.S. citizens, the Clinton administration cut out the aid that has gone to Israel for the past 45 years without bringing it closer to peace with its Arab neighbors, or making it less economically dependent on the United States, there would be plenty left over to fund all of the programs listed above, and additional U.S. needs.

For example, the U.S. will be nearly $1 billion in arrears for its share of United Nations peacekeeping costs by the end of fiscal 1994. Since most Americans would rather see other U.N. members share sending U.N. blue-helmets to the world's trouble spots, rather than have the U.S. take on the role of world policeman alone, the best way to make that happen would be to stop being an international deadbeat. With its debts paid, the U. S. share of peacekeeping in 1995 would drop to about $533 million, about 8 percent of next year's aid to Israel.

Stopping aid to Israel would also enable the U.S. to fund its pledge of $430 million over three years, or $143.3 million annually, to a $2 billion fund being set up by aid-giving nations to help the world's poor countries keep the environmental promises they made at the summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro to help reduce global warming and preserve endangered animal and plant life.

Since all this still is less than the total of one year's taxpayer aid for Israel, stopping such aid might also have enabled the U.S. to leave behind in Somalia a little more than the $12 million it authorized to help re-establish police forces there. That was less than the cost of one day's aid to Israel, which is $17,317,808 daily, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

There are many who think the congressional decision to stop funding the superconducting super-collider, upon which the federal government already had spent $1 billion and the state of Texas another $500 million digging 54 miles of tunnels, was the most short-sighted economy measure of the century. It will cost additional billions of dollars to shut down, and the result will be to send some of the best and brightest young American physicists to Switzerland, which is now the projected site of a proton accelerator planned by the European Community, which is scrambling to seize the opportunity presented by the U.S. cancellation.

What would have been the total cost of this project aimed at familiarizing humanity with the true building blocks of the universe—uncovering knowledge that would affect the development of science for a century to come—not to mention the thinking of philosophers and theologians?

Total cost of the biggest scientific project in human history might have been as high as $10 billion to complete—but spread over several years. In short, if U.S. aid to Israel were to shut down completely, all of the programs listed above, and the proton accelerator as well, could be funded from the savings, amounting to at least $6.321 billion per year. It's too late for fiscal 1994, but why not fiscal 1995?

At least, it's worth asking members of Congress why, at the same time they are closing programs really important to and wanted by the American people, they continue the heedless pouring of funds into Israel. Even one member of the current Israeli government, Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, already has told American fund-raisers and lobbyists for Israeli foreign aid that his country no longer needs the money. Ironically, Americans do!

SIDEBAR

U.S. Grants to Israel in FY 1993 (in billions)

From FY '93 foreign aid budget................................$3.000

From other parts of FY '93 budget or off budget...............1.271

Total 1993 grants...............$4.271

Interest paid by U. S. on money borrowed for 1993 grants to Israel (paid during first month of fiscal year rather than on a quarterly basis as with all other foreign aid recipients) ........ 050

U.S. loan guarantees for Israel for FY 1993........................2.000

Total 1993 grants, interest, and loan guarantees................$6.321