Hatchet Job

"It is unmerciful to condemn millions to wretchedness," said President Johnson in an eleventh-hour plea to save his foreign aid authorization. "It is madness to so jeopardize our own security and the orderly progression of the world." But House members had al ready unsheathed their sharpest knives and, in a callously contrived show of economy, hacked the aid authorization to bare bones. The modest $2.9 billion Administration request, smallest in the aid program's 21-year history, was cut by nearly $ 1 billion before being passed by a 228-to-184 vote.

Closed Doors. For a time during the one-day floor debate, it appeared that a coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats might kill foreign aid altogether for fiscal 1969. Earlier, the Republicans had met behind closed doors with Presidential Candidate Richard Nixon, who was asked over a hearty breakfast of steak and eggs how he would vote on the program. "If I came from a tight district," said the candidate, "I'd vote against it. If I did not--and it would not defeat me--I'd vote for it." Concluded Nixon: "You should cut it as much as you can."

Some Republicans were dismayed by Nixon's advice. Most, however, agreed with his political reasoning. Asked Iowa Republican H. R. Gross: "Is the obligation of the United States to wet-nurse the rest of the world?"

As a wet nurse, the U.S. seems to be running dry. It gives less in foreign aid, as a percentage of the nation's wealth, than France, Australia, Portugal, The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Moreover, the Agency for International Development makes a persuasive case that U.S. self-interest dictates a strong program.

AID Administrator William S. Gaud is understandably anxious to emphasize that foreign aid is not merely an exercise in misguided altruism. In fiscal 1968, for example, 96% of AID-appropriated funds were spent in the U.S. by recipient nations. And the agency can tick off an impressive list of U.S. industries that will suffer because of last week's House action: fertilizers will lose $125 million; fuels, $35 million; metals, $85 million; chemicals, $75 million; pulp and paper, $25 million; machinery and equipment, $150 million; vehicles and parts, $80 million; rail equipment, $20 million; rubber, $15 million; various other industries, $100 million. '

Cut or Kill. The bill had already been cut $600 million, to $2.3 billion, in committee. Opponents threatened to kill the bill outright. Finally, House leaders of both parties agreed that the bill would have to be reduced to below $2 billion in order to survive. When the final vote eased the authorization on to the Senate, the Administration's military-aid request had been cut by only $30 million (from $420 million), but nonmilitary sections were ravaged, shrinking $958 million from an original $2.5 billion request.

With that kind of economizing on their records, few Congressmen would have to worry about losing support back home. Foreign aid, after all, is supposed to be a program without a constituency, excepting the poor, the hungry and the politically threatened in foreign lands--none of whom can cast a ballot. What this sort of reasoning overlooks is the fact that, for all its shortcomings, foreign aid has been a major instrument of U.S. foreign policy since World War II and, on the whole, spectacularly successful.

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