A Blueprint for Balanced US Foreign Aid

On June 26, The Heritage Foundation will hold an event on “Prospects for Reform of U.S. Foreign Aid,” where leading conservative economic development experts, including Professor William Easterly of New York University, will lay out their visions to improve U.S. foreign assistance programs.

Some of the substantive backdrop for the event can be found in the The Heritage Foundation’s recently released “Blueprint for Balance,” which includes recommendations that could save hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars through the immediate adoption of a number of reforms to the U.S. foreign aid budget.

The discussion also will be informed by a more in-depth analysis of U.S. foreign assistance programs, published last year, which urges a complete overhaul of U.S. foreign aid to make it more effective and less expensive.

American taxpayers have funded trillions in foreign assistance spending since the end of World War II, much of it channeled into programs with admirable goals to respond to humanitarian crises and provide political, security, and economic assistance to developing countries. Although these efforts may have been well-intentioned, many of those programs were failures.

An overhaul of foreign assistance programs is long overdue, and the June 26 event at Heritage will provide a roadmap for policymakers to structure fundamental reforms.