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The Senate too set out to salvage foreign aid. After nearly a week of wrangling, the Foreign Relations Committee came up with a plan that would temporarily keep things going at reduced levels—while insisting urgently on a fundamental reorganization of the program. "I think the initiative is in the Senate's hands," said Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana. The compromise was worked out only narrowly, with Minority Leader Hugh Scott at one point exercising a proxy from the ailing Karl Mundt of South Dakota to win by an 8-to-7 vote in committee. Senator William Fulbright proposed a $2 billion package in three separate bills—one covering economic assistance, another for special humanitarian aid and a third carrying military-assistance authorization. The committee decided to combine the first two, and increased the dollar totals slightly to $2.3 billion, divided almost equally between economic-humanitarian aid and military assistance.
One of the senatorial complaints is that foreign aid has become too restricted an instrument of U.S. foreign policy; in the past year, 93% of U.S. aid for economic maintenance, the category called "supporting assistance," went to only three countries—Viet Nam, Laos and Nigeria. Parts of the program are popular enough but, one Republican leader snapped, '"if they think they can get just aid to Israel and the starving children, they're crazy." The Senate was plainly trying to do just that. The separate bills may not both pass the Senate, since military aid is notably less popular there than aid for economic and humanitarian purposes. It has been the target of Senate doves, who have objected to military aid to Indochina to express their objections to the war. The two-bill approach would probably be fatal should it reach the House. There, the situation is reversed: military aid has had more backers than economic aid; only if the two factions get together behind one omnibus bill is there a bare majority for aid of any kind.
Radical Revolution. The fierce attack on foreign aid has been building for a long time and not been taken seriously enough by the Administration. The attack unites liberals and conservatives, disillusioned humanitarians who complain about lack of gratitude, and disappointed cynics who complain that the aid bribe has not kept a great many nations in the U.S. camp. Another profound objection is that aid distorts and damages the recipient nations. One example: over a period of 17 years $481 million was poured into Laos, $192 per capita; that was more than the economy could absorb, so the result was inflation, black marketeering—and political gains for the Pathet Lao.