Extension of Foreign Aid

Report Outline
Foreign and Prcblems for New Congress
American Foreign Aid in War and Peace
Foreign Aid and the National Interest
Special Focus

Foreign and Prcblems for New Congress

Foreign aid proposals to be submitted to the new Congress by President Eisenhower will be subjected to intensive scrutiny by the law-makers in the light of changed conditions in the Middle East, Western Europe, and Communist countries on Russia's western border. As the Executive Branch revises its estimates of funds needed to carry the mutual security program through the next fiscal year, three separate committees are checking the record of American military and economic assistance in critical areas and are reviewing the assumptions that underlie long-range objectives of the country's foreign policy. Doubt as to the continuing validity of many of these was freely expressed at the 1956 session of Congress.

Authoritative estimates last September, when preparation of the budget for fiscal 1958 was begun, placed the amount of new money to be asked for foreign spending at about $4 billion. Upheavals of the last two months have necessitated upward revisions but the foreign aid request is still expected to be well below the $4.9 billion asked by the President for the current fiscal year. Congress trimmed that request to $3.8 billion and withheld discretionary powers the President said were needed to deal with emergency situations.

The three committees now studying foreign aid policies are a citizens' advisory committee appointed by the President last September, a special Senate committee on foreign aid, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The President's committee, headed by Benjamin F. Fairless, former chairman of U.S. Steel, was asked to survey existing foreign aid operations and determine their effectiveness in terms of national interests of the United States. The congressional committees have greatly broadened the scope of their inquiries as a result of recent developments in troubled areas of Europe and Asia.