(__) Foreign Aid does not help Russia's economy.
Paul Bedard, June 5, 1998 ("Foreign aid to Russia likened to drug 'fix' Funds misused, Kremlin auditor says", THE WASHINGTON TIMES, p. Westlaw)

 " * International loans have not been spent on the programs for which they were designated. "All the loans from the IMF or World Bank have never reached the real economic life of the country," he said.
  * Much of the money has been pilfered by Kremlin officials. Misappropriation of the money, he warned, has taken place "at the highest levels of the Russian government.""

(__) Russia refuses to get aid to appropriate places.
Paul Bedard, June 5, 1998 ("Foreign aid to Russia likened to drug 'fix' Funds misused, Kremlin auditor says", THE WASHINGTON TIMES, p. Westlaw)

 "Speaking at the Nixon Center in California, for example, he said the Russian government has blocked any effort to track the international money.
  "It is my considered responsibility that the main problem is that we have an entirely corrupt regime, which consciously and deliberately tries to block any efforts at transparency" and financial accountability, he said.
  "Instead of trying to reconstruct a healthy economy, the government has been living on loans. This policy has now come to a halt," Mr. Sokolov added."

(__) IMF experience proves U.S. taxpayers' money wasted on Russian aid.
Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow of the CATO Institute, May 15, 1995 (Policy Analysis  No. 226 , "A NEW AID POLICY FOR A NEW WORLD",  source: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa226.html , p. online)

Not that this will be the first time Russia has failed to meet the economic goals agreed to with its donors.  The IMF,for instance, found itself in the embarrassing position in 1993 of having to suspend one aid program for noncompliance shortly after its implementation.  In short, the grand events in Moscow will continue to play out without much regard to whether Congress mulcts U.S. taxpayers to put more money into the hands of the oldline bureaucrats who still largely staff Russia's economic agencies.(66)

 That apprehension is not unfounded, nor is it limited to average American citizens. Today, the failure of conventional governmenttogovernment aid schemes is widely recognized and has brought the entire foreign assistance process under scrutiny. J. Brian Atwood, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Developmentthe agency responsible for disbursing the bulk of Washington's bilateral development assistancepromised to improve his organization's performance, admitting that it was "on the road to mediocrity or worse.''

(__) Empirically, U.S. foreign aid fails across the world.
Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow of the CATO Institute, May 15, 1995 (Policy Analysis  No. 226 , "A NEW AID POLICY FOR A NEW WORLD",  source: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa226.html , p. online)

Since 1945, Washington has disbursed generous amounts of U.S. foreign aid in attempts to achieve a variety of foreign policy goals ranging from political influence to economic development.  Today, the poor record of foreign assistance programs is widely recognized.  Many countries receiving the aid are more impoverished now than when U.S. assistance began; the few that are making progress are doing so in spite of, not because of, foreign aid.

(__) Clinton Administration task force admits that foreign aid has not helped Asia or the Middle East.
Ian Vasquez,  May 18, 98 (director; Project on Global Economic Liberty at the Cato Institute, "56. Foreign Aid and Current Lending Fads", CATO HANDBOOK FOR CONGRESS, source: http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb10556.html, p. online)

That admission followed a Clinton administration task force's concession that "despite decades of foreign assistance, most of Africa and parts of Latin America, Asia and the Middle East are economically worse off today than they were 20 years ago.'' As early as 1989 a bipartisan task force of the House Foreign Affairs Committee concluded that U.S. aid programs "no longer either advance U.S. interests abroad or promote economic development.''
Aid Bad: Aid Makes It Worse

(__) Russia does not need U.S. aid; would be better off without it.
Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow of the CATO Institute, May 15, 1995 (Policy Analysis  No. 226 , "A NEW AID POLICY FOR A NEW WORLD",  source: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa226.html , p. online)

Anyway, why does Russia need foreign aid?  There is little disagreement as to what Moscow must do to make its economy work: free up prices, limit the printing of rubles, eliminate subsidies to uneconomic industries, encourage foreign investment, and privatize state enterprises.  The political resistance to such a course is formidable, of course.  But how is putting money into the hands of the apparatchiks who still run the Russian bureaucracy going to encourage reform?

(__) Even aid intended to help free market reforms worsens the recipient's condition.
Ian Vasquez,  May 18, 98 (director; Project on Global Economic Liberty at the Cato Institute, "56. Foreign Aid and Current Lending Fads", CATO HANDBOOK FOR CONGRESS, source: http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb10556.html, p. online)

Even aid intended to advance market liberalization can produce undesirable results. Such aid takes the pressure off recipient governments and allows them to postpone, rather than promote, necessary but politically difficult reforms.
Aid Bad: Must Stop Foreign Aid

The Clinton administration's proposal to "reform" U.S. aid does little to change the way foreign assistance is spent.  Traditional lending programs have simply been renamed, and new spending priorities are no more likely to promote sustainable development.  Even aid for humanitarian purposes continues to be used for nonhumanitarian ends.

(__) Stopping all Foreign Aid is the only way to solve.
Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow of the CATO Institute, May 15, 1995 (Policy Analysis  No. 226 , "A NEW AID POLICY FOR A NEW WORLD",  source: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa226.html , p. online)

The United States should encourage that trend by zeroing out foreign aid.  That includes foreign aid programs intended to promote freemarket reform; even that type of assistance tends to delay, rather than accelerate, liberalization.Washington can do much to help poor nations by abolishing the U.S. Agency for International Development and most of its functions.  Instead of disbursing foreign aid, the United States should open its market to the developing world's goods.