Helms: Religious groups can handle foreign aid

Christian Century, Jan 31, 2001

Senator Jesse Helms (R., N.C.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says he wants all U.S. foreign aid channeled through private charities and religious groups.

"The time has come to reject what President Bush correctly labels the `failed compassion of towering, distant bureaucracies' and, instead, empower private and faith-based groups who care most about these issues," Helms said in a speech at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington. His proposal, which also would eliminate the nation's primary foreign aid agency, was among many wish-list suggestions coming from conservative Christians and politicians even before George W. Bush was inaugurated.

In calling for disbanding the Agency for International Development, the U.S. foreign aid office, Helms said that Bush's vision of "charitable choice" should not stop at the water's edge and cited the work of Samaritan's Purse, the relief organization headed by Franklin Graham, as an example. "My friends, these are the armies of compassion that President Bush is talking about," Helms said. "And I put it to you: If we can deploy these armies of compassion across America, then we can and must deploy them around the world."

Many humanitarian and relief groups working overseas already receive substantial funding from the U.S. government. Under the Helms proposal, AID's humanitarian and relief budget of roughly $7 billion a year would be given to a quasi-government foundation which would then make grants to private and religious groups. The senator also said that if his plan is implemented, he would support an increase in foreign aid spending.

A spokesman for General Colin Powell, Bush's choice to be secretary of state, was noncommittal about the proposal, telling the New York Times, "We welcome his [Helms's] ideas and his contribution to the debate."