Is the U.S. stingy? Yes

Is the U.S. stingy? Yes

President Bush finally roused himself from his vacation in
Crawford, Texas, to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of
India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly
about the devastation of the tsunamis in Asia...and he took issue
with an earlier statement by UN emergency relief coordinator, Jan
Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western
nations "stingy."

We beg to differ. Egeland was right on target. We hope
Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when,
two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's
poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate,
he held a press conference to say that America, the world's
richest nation, would contribute US$15 million. That's less than
half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural
festivities.

The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35
million, and we applaud Bush's turnaround. But $35 million
remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the
pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for
nonmilitary foreign aid.

Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we
actually deliver. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year
ago are still living in tents because aid, including ours, has
not materialized in the amounts pledged. And back in 2002, Bush
announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African
countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but
the account has yet to disburse a single dollar.

-- The New York Times