David Obey: “let me simply observe that this bill is probably the least popular bill to emerge from the Committee on Appropriations…”

“let me simply observe that this bill is probably the least popular bill to emerge from the Committee on Appropriations every year, and I think it is without question the most misunderstood bill. If we take a poll of America, we will see that most Americans think that we spend about 15 to 17 percent of our budget on foreign aid. The fact is that this bill, which is the foreign aid appropriation bill before us today, spends roughly 1 percent of our budget. That is all it spends. I would like to explain why I think that is by and large justifiable. We have seen the overall spending for foreign aid go down by over 30 percent in the last decade under the subcommittee chairmanship of myself and now the gentleman from Alabama. It is going to be very difficult to point to any other part of the budget which has declined as fast. I would simply say that there is a price for participation in the world. There is a price for defending your own national interest in the world, and this bill is part of that price.”