Director of Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Program Connie Veillette's op-ed piece was featured on CNN's Global Public Square website on foreign aid.
From the Article
If there is a silver lining to America’s current budget crunch, it is this: There has never been a better time for Washington to throw overboard some old programs and approaches that it knows simply do not work.
In a recent paper we outlined some obvious reforms that will not only save a great deal of money but make our international programs vastly more effective.
Politicians inside the beltway have known for years that the only reason these wasteful and uncompetitive practices are still in place is because of the influence of special interests lobbies that have managed to get their pieces of pork institutionalized.
Here are the most obvious places to make some long-overdue changes: 1. End Cargo Preference for U.S. Food Aid. Since 1954, U.S. law has required that U.S. food aid being sent to humanitarian disasters around the globe be shipped aboard U.S.-flagged vessels.
The law was originally designed to guarantee that these ships could serve as a reserve for the U.S. navy in case of emergency. The problem is that the Pentagon has said for years that the navy no longer needs these ships to serve as any sort of reserve.
So the U.S. taxpayer ends up paying more than $140 million in extra shipping costs for food aid every year while those most in need of life-saving supplies often face unneeded delays as relief agencies wade through extra layers of bureaucracy.