Senator J. William Fulbright (Democrat, Arkansas) was almost jubilant: he said Congress for the next five years would be under "strong obligation" to put up the money for whatever the President promises to foreign governments.
All in all, it is improbable that Congress ever passed another bill more destructive of American constitutional principles; more harmful to our nation politically, economically, morally, and militarily; and more helpful to communism-socialism all over the earth–than the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which was, from beginning to end, a product of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Our foreign aid does grievous harm to the American people by burdening them with excessive taxation, thus making it difficult for them to expand their own economy. This gives government pretext for intervening with more taxation and controls for domestic subsidies.
Furthermore, the money that government takes away from us for foreign aid is used to subsidize our political enemies and economic competitors abroad. Note, for example, the large quantities of agricultural goods which we give every year to communist satellite nations, thus enabling communist governments to control the hungry people of those nations. Note that while we are giving away our agricultural surpluses to communist and socialist nations, we, under the 1961 foreign aid bill (as under previous ones), are subsidizing agricultural production in the underdeveloped countries.
The 1961 foreign aid bill prohibited direct aid to Cuba, but authorized contributions to United Nations agencies, which were giving aid to Cuba.
At a time when the American economy was suffering from the flight of American industry to foreign lands, the 1961 foreign aid bill offered subsidies and investment guarantees to American firms moving abroad.
Our foreign aid enriches and strengthens political leaders and ruling oligarchies (which are often corrupt) in underdeveloped lands; and it does infinite harm to the people of those lands, when it inflates their economy and foists upon them an artificially-produced industrialism which they are not prepared to sustain or even understand.
The basic argument for foreign aid is that by helping the underdeveloped nations develop, we will keep them from falling under the dictatorship of communism. The argument is false and unsound, historically, politically, economically, and morally.