Paul Decries Last-Minute Foreign Aid Spending PDF Print E-mail
FOR RELEASE: July 1, 2000

Paul Decries Last-Minute Foreign Aid Spending "Supplemental" Spending Bill is Pork-Barrel Politics

Washington DC - Late Thursday evening, House members approved a fiscal year 2001 Military Construction appropriations bill which also contained an emergency supplemental spending package for fiscal year 2000. The bill provides a total of $20 billion in new federal spending, $11.2 billion of which is for fiscal year 2000.
Congressman Paul decried the supplemental spending as dangerous, wasteful and unnecessary. "Every year Congress decides midway through its fiscal year that it didn't budget enough money, so it creates an 'emergency' to justify new spending. The big spenders in Congress made sure the supplemental bill was packaged with a Military Construction bill to get it passed during eleventh-hour voting. Congress already spends far too much money, and this additional $11 billion in spending cannot be justified."
"Much of the spending contained in the supplemental bill goes overseas. Several South American countries receive a total of $1.3 billion, including approximately $500 million to Columbia for helicopters and drug interdiction. "Our nation should not be spending billions of dollars and sending 60 military helicopters to South America to continue our failed drug war" Paul stated. "Sending expensive helicopters to the Colombian Army and National Police is the worst kind of pork-barrel politics. Helicopters are ineffective weapons of war, as we have seen in Vietnam and Somalia. The American people are tired of spending their tax dollars to fund expensive toys for foreign governments."
Paul also criticized $2 billion in spending authorized for the ongoing Kosovo military action. "We don't need to spend more money on Kosovo. We should get our troops home and stop trying to police the world. U.N. 'peacekeeping' in Kosovo doesn't work, and we should not be spending billions perpetuating our involvement. The American people are tired of sending our troops abroad under U.N. command to interfere in conflicts unrelated to our national interest."
Paul continued, "This bill contains the kind of massive foreign aid that people in my district have had enough of. Farmers in Texas struggling with drought conditions have every reason to oppose our sending $25 million to Mozambique for disaster relief, as called for in this bill. We cannot throw our tax dollars at every global problem, and we should not let special interests and back room deals dictate our appropriations process."