USAID and State Department: Smart way to save, or self-inflicted injury?

Steven Kull: Well, these days, there’s a lot of talk about how the American public doesn’t really like foreign aid. And we have been studying this question for three decades now. And we have found that, in fact, Americans feel pretty good about foreign aid. The biggest issue is that they have a very exaggerated idea about how much is spent on foreign aid and the majority believe it is 20% of the budget or more. Now, when we ask them how much it should be, the majority say, how about 10% or so, Republicans say 5%. The real amount is 1%. So the overwhelming majority favor the amount that the U.S. spends be at least 1% or more; 89% overall; 84% of Republicans.

Eric White: And how much of you’re throwing out those percentages? Do you think that a lot of the answers were coming from the place of not really knowing that just 1 or 2% of the federal budget is actually in the billions? People tend to think of their own budgets and apply that to the federal budget, but not knowing just how vast the actual federal spending is.

Steven Kull: Right. So what we did next was we said, ‘OK, the actual amount is about 1%. And here are six of the major programs. And here’s how much goes to each one in billions.’ So they could see exactly. And then they heard arguments pro and con for foreign aid in general and for those programs. And in those situations you had in every case, a majority said that we should spend the same or more. And that was true of Democrats and Independents. Republicans in some cases, there was the majority extended to wanting to cut a little. But in no case did a majority want to make substantial cuts and the numbers that wanted to zero out any of the programs was very small, under 10%.

Eric White: Yeah. It’s interesting that a lot of folks were in favor of just eliminating a little bit as if almost the majority thinks that too much is spent on it. I’m curious of exploring that point of feeling as if not being included in the process of how much foreign aid is actually doled out because it’s kind of just built up over time. Did you get any questions or a sense of that people didn’t feel like they had a voice in this process?

Steven Kull: Overall, Americans feel the public should have a substantially more influence on public policy than it does if you ask them. On a scale of 0 to 10, how much influence the public should have, they say, ‘Oh, about eight.’ And then you ask someone on average and then say how much you think it is, ‘Oh, three and a half or four.’ So there’s a pretty big gap there. I have seen no evidence that this applies to foreign aid in more than other areas of government.

Eric White: We’re speaking with Steven Kull. He is a professor with the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. So what were some of the other takeaways that you all discovered as you got into the nitty-gritty of the exact kinds of foreign aid that the majority of Americans do support?

Steven Kull: Yeah, we looked at different attitudes about different types of aid. And clearly there’s a strong feeling that we have a kind of moral responsibility to help others. So humanitarian programs get support. There’s also a perception that it serves our interests in the long run because it creates better relations with other countries. There’s also a support for working on global health and trying to deal with potential viruses and things like that. And the perception is that also serves our interests and in the long run. Now, if you say we present the argument, we shouldn’t really spend money abroad until we’ve saved and dealt with problems at home, all our problems at home. And a majority will say, ‘Yeah, that’s a good point. That’s a good point.’ But when they get down to it, they think we should spend some. Now one of the questions we asked was, ‘Of all the money that we spend on the poor abroad and the poor at home, how much should we spend abroad?’ And the majority said at least 10%. And in fact, that the amount is less than 10%. So here again, the way to think of it as if you create a priority question, the majority will say it’s more important at home to spend money at home than abroad. But if you create a kind of distributional framework where they say, ‘OK, here’s the pie, how much should go abroad and how much should go home?’ Large majorities will say some should go abroad, some should deal with problems abroad and international problems. And the amount that they specify is generally more than the amount that we’re doing. And when we tell them how much we’re doing, the majority say that’s fine. The majority Republicans would say, ‘Oh, let’s cut a little bit, not deep cuts.’

Eric White: I’m just fantasizing about a world where 10% of the American budget actually goes to foreign aid. I mean, what would that look like? That would be so much more money than what we’re spending. You would see the American footprint on almost every continent, including Antarctica, right?

Steven Kull: It’s like after the World War II, as with the Marshall Plan, and so the U.S. was spending a substantial portion of the budget and Americans have the impression that just never stopped. That just keeps on going. Now, what’s interesting, though, is that over the years, people have actually become more comfortable. Right now, if you just ask in the standard poll question, do you think we’re spending too much or too little? About half say we’re spending too much or half say that we should cut it. And then number is actually gone down over the decade. That became particularly true with under George W. Bush. The Republicans became more comfortable with foreign aid and everything was kind of more settled. And the amount that the U.S. is spending on foreign aid did go up over those decades. So this is the first time that a leader, a key leader, has raise this question. And it’s not difficult to stir people up about it because they have ambivalence. Oh, on one hand, we really should be taking care problems at home first. Well, but it really is a good idea to help others and it actually serves our interests in the long run. And so they kind of have a little debate. When you present arguments, they find both arguments convincing. So there’s this kind of little dialogue in people’s minds so you can stir it up rather easily. And that’s been happening lately. But when the when you get all the information put it all together, they can work it out.

Eric White: Taking these numbers into consideration, you’re a public policy professor. Could policymakers come to realize that maybe more transparency could be used here as a way to justify it? As you said even Republicans were more in favor when it was George W. Bush doling out the foreign aid because he made the faith-based case for doing this and that seemed to speak to a lot of folks. Do you think that having a more transparent approach, like I said, may make those folks feel as if they do have more say in the process?

Steven Kull: I don’t know if that would make them feel that they have more of a say. I think they do feel they have more of a say when policymakers talk about public opinion and they express sort of concern about it. And in the end, they actually don’t a lot. However, they’re a substantial number have read these kinds of findings and are aware that there is this overestimation. And so you’ll often hear them say, ‘It’s only 1% of the federal budget.’ In fact, there was a whole campaign that got going at one point where with these buttons that said, ‘There’s just 1%, and people were wearing them. And even in the administration, Marco Rubio had talks about that rather regularly about how it’s just 1%. So in that way, they are trying to communicate that we aren’t out of control here. We’re doing something that is that is relatively reasonable. And when people get all the information, they go, ‘OK, that seems reasonable.’

Eric White: Looking ahead here, I’d be curious to know if you’re investigating just seeing people lament about the things that Elon Musk would tweet about saying we found this waste happening and USAID. And it’s almost as if they’re calling it waste when it just happens to be a program that they don’t support. I mean, I think of waste as somebody who covers this as a redundant program or a program there where the money’s going in and nothing’s happening with it. That’s what I consider a waste. But it’s almost as if people think, ‘Well, why are we supporting this program? Yeah, let’s deem that as waste.’ Curious to get your thoughts on that.

Steven Kull: Yeah, we’ve explored that a fair amount in various polls. And people do have the perception that most of the aid goes directly to governments abroad and that they siphon off a huge amount of it. That’s actually not true. A relatively small amount does, but that’s a definite perception. So they just see that because the money’s released, it’s kind of out of our control. And when we’ve asked how much of the budget do you think the foreign aid money actually reaches the people who need it? They say, rather small amounts like a quarter or so. And what’s interesting is that they still support it. It’s like a leaky bucket as it goes from here to there, lots of lots, but still they go, well, it’s still needed. So really it is helpful to try to address that. Now this is something that’s pervasive. If you ask of all the money, all your tax money, if it goes into the government, how much is wasted? And they say about half. It’s a little worse with foreign aid because the perception is that it gets out of our control. But that doesn’t lead people to necessarily say, ‘Well, therefore, we shouldn’t do it.’ And they just wish that we would do a better job controlling it. And in fact, over the decades, the amount of money that goes to directly to governments has gone down substantially and most of it goes through NGOs and things like that so that it is fairly well regulated and managed and observed.

Eric White: Yeah. From a historical standpoint, you talked about the Marshall Plan, but even as early ago as the 90s, people can point to the debacle in Somalia of how foreign aid was going there and a lot of it was being intercepted by warlords. There’s the famous SNL sketch of Phil Hartman using McDonald’s as Bill Clinton to explain what happens to foreign aid. Do you find that folks may still be thinking about those times of when foreign aid does get disrupted and there is actual waste, fraud and corruption? Was there any significant event that you all see as people pointing to as evidence of that happening still today?

Steven Kull: And that’s a good question and then comes to mind. It’s just a kind of baseline assumption about government, a little bit worse when it comes to foreign aid because there are there foreign actors involved. And there’s always some kind of story that somebody’s heard that really amplifies that. It’s not a deal killer in people’s mind. They just wish it would be done better and they really like money going through nonprofit organizations. And they have more confidence that if it goes to nonprofit organizations, it’s going to reach the people who need it. There’s also a tendency to assume that when we pass it through governments, we know that they’re going to skim it. And that’s kind of OK with us because that’s part of their building relations within government. But that’s exaggerated because the amount really involved is really quite small.