Obama Middle East Speech: President Will Announce Billions In Economic Aid to Egypt, Tunisia

[TheeHazelnut]

Source: Huffington Post

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama will announce plans Thursday to funnel billions of dollars in economic aid to Egypt and Tunisia as part of a broader effort to inject democracy into the Middle East and North Africa.

Obama will unveil a massive package of economic measures, including up to $1 billion in debt relief and another $1 billion in loan guarantees, during a speech on U.S.-Middle East policy set for Thursday morning at the State Department. Other pieces of the package include a new trade partnership with the region and a fund for stimulating regional private sector investments.

In a Wednesday preview of the speech, senior administration officials said the U.S. singled out Tunisia and Egypt for economic help because they are the best positioned countries to serve as role models for democratic reform in the area, which has been gripped by anti-government protests in recent months.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/18/obama-middle-east-speech-billions-aid_n_863927.html

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Yet Social Security and Medicare have to be "reformed" and our federal government workers have their wages frozen?

[dkf]

1. Maybe we need to move funds from Pakistan.

[JDPriestly]

2. Shouldn't the priority be American schools, infrastructure,

our debt and above all Social Security and Medicare.

We should be cutting back on our foreign involvements.

[DesertFlower]

3. i agree. nt

[The Northerner]

5. +100

[HillbillyBob]

12. I have to agree giving away $$ after the last maladministrations

'generosity' with our $$. When is some of that going to hit here at home. Mypartner has been laid off for 2 1/2 mos, this time. Last time was in 2002 and we had to lose home, savings etc we manage to hold on to the truck so we could at least look for work. Now we have no savings, and we have had to live on 75% less than prior to 2002 going from middle class income to about 30 a years(which sounds like a lot, but run the house hold pay for our meds, partner helps his mom)..
We cannot find a place that rents for less than our house payments and still be livable..I know I looked at hundreds of places for rent, sale or rent to buy.
The only other possibility came with 1200 month payments not 550. Now Im hearing that the pukes want to kill medicare/medicaid/ ADAP both state and federal. I cannot afford the deductibles...forget the 3400 a month for my meds and the 1200 for partners meds. And I know we are lucky, but I cannot do being homeless again.

[customerserviceguy]

14. Thank you

My thoughts exactly. If the President wants to engage in nation building, there's a pretty good one in the middle of North America that needs a bit of repair in places.

I can just see the ads from the Repukes next year, a split screen of President Obama pledging billions, and the other side, protestors in the same lands chanting "Death to America".

[bluethruandthru]

17. [phone] n/t

[OmahaBlueDog]

21. We don't have the money

..and if we have billions in aid to give, I'd rather see some student loans forgiven, or some SBA loan money made available.

I appreciate the reasoning here, but the timing is politically tone-deaf.

[Stuttgart77]

48. That doesn't matter. Obama will not be stopped.

He will raid the federal pensions. Print the money and debase the currency.

Borrow it from China regardless of future generations having to pay it back.

He doesn't care. Whatever HE want's is all that matters.

He's economically illiterate. :mad:

[avebury]

28. 100% in agreement

[TheEuclideanOne]

31. Obama has the most pathetic sense of political timing I have ever seen.

So, right now, as we are discussing shutting the government down due to budget, he comes out with this. It reminds me of a dilbert cartoon (can't locate it) where the pointy haired boss announces "This year, the company has made record profits", then announces "We won't have money for raises or bonuses this year", then comments to his secretary "Maybe we should have seperated those announcements"

[harun]

42. +1, We should be CUTTING foreign aid.

[OHdem10]

4. I never ceased to be amazed how they can pull money out of

hat somewhere when we are trying to influence foreign
countries by bribing them to be our friends. Then turn
on the poor mouth when it is time to take care of Americans
and our country.

The South is a Disaster Zone and will be for decade.

[stockholmer]

27. it's not pulled out of a hat, its printed out of thin air,& that debt WILL be on YOUR collective ass

enforced on the hi-tech grid of a police state 'track-trace-database' schema, and backed up with governemnt guns and thugs freshly returned from the empiric war battle theatres, itching, yearning to keep 'cracking skulls' and pulling triggers.

[neoralme]

32. It is disgusting. We will steal money from aged and disabled

Americans to coax new foreign puppet governments to do our bidding while they in turn cheat their own people through our enablement. Simply disgusting.

[No Elephants]

6. Medicare? Fuel subsidies? Chair Simpson's Meow Commission? On whose backs do we give foreign aid?

Egypt went from a Mubarak-fronted military regime to dropping Mubarak. And, during the revolt, we bragged how we had trained so many of the Egyptian military and had "very good relationships" with them.

[madrchsod]

7. i read the same sentiments over on the other side...

more disaster capitalism for the new democracies?

[girl gone mad]

8. Just what they don't need.

[leftyladyfrommo]

9. Hey, what about me?

How come I never qualify for anything. I don't need billions. A few thousand would make a huge difference.

[IamK]

10. their new leaders need to fill up their offshore bank accounts... n/t

[rfranklin]

11. These are insignificant amounts of money...

when compared to the hundreds of billions involved in SS and Medicare but politically very big. Because most people think that these "gifts" to foreign countries are a much higher percentage of government spending than they actually are.

"In poll after poll, Americans overwhelmingly say they believe that foreign aid makes up a larger portion of the federal budget than defense spending, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, or spending on roads and other infrastructure. In a November World Public Opinion poll, the average American believed that a whopping 25 percent of the federal budget goes to foreign aid. The average respondent also thought that the appropriate level of foreign aid would be about 10 percent of the budget – 10 times the current level.

"Since the 1970s, aid spending has hovered around 1 percent of the federal budget. International assistance programs were close to 5 percent of the budget under Lyndon B. Johnson during the war in Vietnam, but have dropped since. Compared with our military and entitlement budgets, this is loose change."

http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20110506/EDIT05/305069995/1144/EDIT05

[stockholmer]

25. not to mention the $1.2 trillion in total war machine spending & $400+ billion in total debt service

[Hotler]

30. Because it is insignificant it is ok to keep handing it out?

I keep hearing that even if we tax the rich it won't help because it's not that much and won't have much effect on the budget. Shared sacrifice means cutting foreign aid and taxing the rich. In my world I not only count my folding money I also count any loose change I find.

[TheEuclideanOne]

39. I think that your question answers itself.

[pampango]

43. Europe, Canada, Australia all give much more per capita, but they know how

to combat the right wing mentality that "we" need the money more than "they" (poorer) do. It's one of the reasons that conservatives want out of the UN and other international agencies that they claim use "our" money to fund aid projects for "them".

[Stuttgart77]

52. Then YOU give them YOUR money.

Let them go to the Saudis. We're broke dammit.

[Ghost of Tom Joad]

13. rob the pensions of Americans to give billions overseas and then complain we are broke!

[MissDeeds]

15. +1000

[florida08]

16. exactly what I was thinking

Giving money away to everyone but when it comes to the American taxpayer..sorry we're broke. Focus on jobs? :shrug:

[dotymed]

18. "Charity"

Starts at home. Hell, it is not even charity. It is our damned money. BULLSHIT! :wtf:

[palmtree guy]

19. ahhhh the joys arab spring

while billions of OUR tax dollars go to waste in the middleast AMERICANS stand around with their thumbs up their butts watching the dog and pony show in washington piss on us and calling it rain!!!

[BlueJac]

20. Obama=disappointment

[lostnfound]

22. More corporate welfare = "injecting democracy".

I just hope it's not in the style of deterring democracy, as in ensuring that a false substitute for democracy is nourished instead of the real thing. That would be more consistent with the last 70 years of American "foreign aid".

[mountainlion55]

23. What a fucking

waste of badly needed money! Another DLC=Obama travesty. Change you can believe or just more bait and switch like the last four presidents we have had.

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[neoralme]

33. Exactly. Well put. The dye is cast and most of us here know

whats going to happen. Those that don't are not paying attention. Whatever happened to Wikileaks? Has it been handled?

[stockholmer]

41. Assange-still appealing extradition here to Sweden,Wikileaks docs com out daily, hardly any care :.<

the controllers have checkmated 95+% of the West via 32-level chess matrices of propoganda control.

[avebury]

26. It is bad enough the the majority of Americans

have to provide welfare to corporations and the uber wealthy why should we also have to continue to foreign countries as well? This is so riduculous.

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. If anyone wants to hear the other side of this

Try the first five minutes of this BBC radio programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00gmb5l/From_Our_Own_Correspondent_Egypt_and_France/

[Autumn]

34. You mean we really aren't broke?

We can't be if we have billions of dollars to give away. This is disgraceful.:mad: More absurd every day.

[midnight]

35. Too many underwater homes that need economic aid in America first.

[Divernan]

36. Taking his supporters longer than usual to start posting on this, isn't it?

I wait with baited breath!

[leftynyc]

37. I'm not seeing what

everyone else is. $1 billion in debt relief is not handing over money. It's forgiving debt and it's money that is already out there spent. $1 billion in loan guarantees means we're cosigning a loan given by someone else - we do this all the time.

[blondeatlast]

38. +1. nt

[Divernan]

45. Who would those "someone elses" be? Corporate entities?

A link to elaborate and detail your vague statement would be appreciated. It didn't come from the OP's link.

[leftynyc]

46. I know what words mean

Do you have a different definition of "forgiving debt"? Or another for "loan guarantees"?

[Divernan]

49. Is Obama paying off banks which gave guaranteed loans? AGAIN?

Who's going to benefit from these bailouts? Do you understand those words?

[leftynyc]

50. The US has used loan

guarantees for Israel for decades. Israel has never defaulted. Now Pres Obama is extending that to Egypt and Tunisia - that's who is going to benefit along with hopefully having two more countries that we can call friends and depend on. That's what hope is all about.

[FrankinMO]

40. Can I get some debt relief also?

yes, yes. Mortgage and student loan please.

I can guarantee its cheaper than 1 billion

:sarcasm:


think they will help me out?

[Divernan]

44. Transferring $$$ from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries?

Effectiveness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aid_effectiveness
Main article: Aid effectiveness

"Aid effectiveness is the degree to which development aid works, and is a subject of significant disagreement. Dissident economists such as Peter Bauer and Milton Friedman argued in the 1960s that aid is ineffective:
... an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
— Peter Bauer"

http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance

Foreign Aid for Development Assistance
Author and Page information

* by Anup Shah
* This Page Last Updated Sunday, April 25, 2010

* This page: http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance.
* To print all information e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links, use the print version:
o http://www.globalissues.org/print/article/35

Foreign aid or (development assistance) is often regarded as being too much, or wasted on corrupt recipient governments despite any good intentions from donor countries. In reality, both the quantity and quality of aid have been poor and donor nations have not been held to account.

In 1970, the world’s rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their gross national income as official international development aid, annually. Since that time, despite billions given each year, rich nations have rarely met their actual promised targets. For example, the US is often the largest donor in dollar terms, but ranks amongst the lowest in terms of meeting the stated 0.7% target.

Furthermore, aid has often come with a price of its own for the developing nations:

* Aid is often wasted on conditions that the recipient must use overpriced goods and services from donor countries
* Most aid does not actually go to the poorest who would need it the most
* Aid amounts are dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access for poor country products, while rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country markets to their products
* Large projects or massive grand strategies often fail to help the vulnerable; money can often be embezzled away.

This article explores who has benefited most from this aid, the recipients or the donors.

[lovuian]

47. How can he offer Billions to Tunesia and Egypt!!!

OMG!!! they don't get it

we can't keep spending they put themselves in this position

the American people are not going to sacrifice for this

[Obamanaut]

51. "Hopey/Changey" has turned out to be "Same old/same old." nt