Patrick Leahy: “Mr. President, this is a balanced bill. It is a balanced bill only within an allocation which, frankly, does not meet…”

“Mr. President, this is a balanced bill. It is a balanced bill only within an allocation which, frankly, does not meet our needs. Foreign aid would never win a popularity contest. In fact, we were able to pass foreign aid bills in the past because the funds in the bills were distributed among diverse constituencies. This year is no exception. It is fast becoming more difficult because there is less money to go around. The bill is more than $700 million below the President's request. To put that in perspective, President Clinton has requested for foreign aid about 40 percent less than President Reagan used to request. It is not that somehow there is a Democrat foreign aid giveaway. This administration is requesting about 40 percent less than either the Reagan or Bush administrations did, but it is also $1.5 billion below the level for foreign operations in fiscal year 1995. Each year, what we do is we take a larger and larger share of the overall pie and we earmark it for the Middle East. Unquestionably that is a major priority of the United States. But, of course, it does leave less and less for the United States to carry out any policies in other parts of the world.”