of the panelists will speak for about 10 minutes starting with kerry and heather and then judith. and then we will open it up to questions. cspan is here. so when you notice somebody with a bike fish pole with a microphone attached to it, don't be alarmed. that's all part of the plan. so without further adieu, we'll start with kerry hestler. >> good morning, everyone. my apologies to the people in the balcony up here. it's hard to see because of the bright lights. but please know that you're all included. i am the deputy director of peace corps, but i spent two and a half decades in public health for an organization called john stone incorporated. it's a international public health organization that implemented by your tax dollars at work.

>> my confers today will really focus on the budget. once again, foreign assistance is on the chopping blocks. most americans are completely surprised by the amount of foreign aid that we have. most vastly underestimate the amount that we spend on foreign assistance. those on the right typically want to cut foreign aid. just in terms of the fact ts, most of you know the facts, about one percent of our budget

goes to foreign aid. about one fifth of one percent goes to national income foreign assistance. research shows that most americans think that we spend 15-20% of our federal budget on foreign aid. and when asked how much we should spend on foreign aid, about 5% of american -- i'm sorry. when people asked what we should spend, most americans say we should spend about 5% of our federal budget on foreign assistance. . and what's absolutely certain is that our budget, our foreign assistance bundget, is not a cue for our deficit at all. we spend a total of about $30 billion in foreign assistance out of a budget of $3.78 trillion.

most research has shown that in general foreign assistance to developing countries, does help reduce poverty. does help increase equality, in general. it has built institutional capacity and has helped to achieve some human development success. it's not uniform. there's huge variation across countries and within countries, even. and so in general, the research shows that the trends are upward. the foreign assistance has been largely effective. we live today at the time of greatest development history in the whole history of the world. the indicators, i think have been most striking in global poverty rates. in terms of the percent of people who live under $1 a day,

since the beginning of history, that number, as a share of our total population remained relatively steady until the industrial revolution as a share of the percentage of the population. it was relatively stable. the portion of people living in extreme poverty actually declined. although with population growth, the number of people living in extreme poverty actually increased until about 1980. and that's when the dramatic change really happened. between 1980 and 1995, there was a huge reduction in poverty rates from 1$1.5 billion to $80 million. that was a decline of nearly half in 27 years. that's incredible. this is an incredible progress. just think about that. a decline in the total number of

people in extreme poverty from $1.5 billion to 8$800 million after an increase from the beginning of human history. that can't all be attributed to foreign assistance, for sure. but it does coincide with the period of time that developing countries received foreign assistance. also as an example, there were an average of about 30 countries that had greater than 2.2% global economic growth rates. 2.2% is the global economic average. it is also the economic growth rate for the united states, france, germany. so it's considered an indicator of economic growth. so between 1960 and '95, there were 30 low income country that is achieved 2.2% economic growth rates.

between 1995 and now, the number has doubled to 73. 73 countries having 2.2% growth rate. so again, we've seen some significant growth in development. so the biggest question, though, is is our foreign assistance a portion. most wisely, are we using it to the greatest e nekt? and are we investing in those country that is we should be investing? i think we've learned from history that aid to corrupt states where there are not leadership that cares about their people or invest in their people, that aid to those countries has not been in general. we've also seen investment to people who do adjust that have strong and accountable leaders has been more successful.

so in my opinion, one of the greatest indicators is the places where we invest and the leadership in which we invest. there has been global changing contests in terms of some of the factors that play in the world around us. there's been a dramatic inkres in foreign assessment. there's been increase in developing countries over the last 15, 16 years. we've seen, also, a huge increase in the number of democracies with governments that are accountable to their people. there have been some incredible advancements in technology, especially cell phone technology. i've done a lot of work in liberia. i get better cell phone coverage in buy beer ya than i do in washington, d.c. so the whole issue of technology, not only internet technology or cell phone technology, but also other kinds of cell phone technology have catapulted to the modern world.

almost everybody has a cell phone. there's a whole plet ra of new donors including china, in particular, is investing all over the world, especially in africa. we've seen dramatically increased funding in health and education, especially health department around hiv and malaria and it has led to some very important health outcomes. there's big concerns about resource use and climate change is very important and a new consideration to us now. so in ternls of what we've learned, what are the lessons that we've learned over the years? i think first and foremost, in terms of success and predicting out comes from foreign assistance, i think the most important factor is leadership of the countries where we work. are those leaders and are those

citizens committed to their own future and their own development. . they mentioned five officials by most major donors and the panelists will have something else. but i jugs think it's very important in terms of this debate. so i just want to mention what they are. the first one is improving country ownership. it's to have could be countries find their own goals and objectives and taking leadership in their own agenda. associated with that is increasing donor alignment with the country plans. so the degree to which donors allow the countries to take leadership.

they can be incredibly onerous, although perhaps judith will have something to say about that. >> making sure that there are not gaps, they're not duplication or overlaps. there are some common indicators which enables us to better measure and monitor and evalwaiti the effectiveness of foreign aid. and then the last is mutual accountability by both donors and developing countries alike. to be accountable to their people and to the world at large for development. i wanted to throw out a few

provocative ideas that have been raised to the u.s. government and our own federal budget. these are for the senator by american progres. they are not new ideas. many people have mentioned them over the years. but they jugs wrote an article that i thought was particularly interesting. they could save 2 billi$2 billi year if we did the following things which are related to eliminating ridiculous regulations and laws, changing laws, that don't support our foreign assistance program. the first would be ending cargo preferences for u.s. foreign aide, or food aide, in particular. so demanding that u.s. flight vessels or ships registered in the united states are used for the shipping of food. the second is eliminating aid

which is appropriate that the united states gives private two. voluntary organizations who sell it either in the local market or to nearby commodities and use it to fund development programs or to offset the cost of distributing food aid. the third is cutting u.s. agricultural subsidies which also really favor large producers, such as monasno or other large, agricultural producers in our country. so instead of being able to buy locally, we always have to send our own commodities overseas and the fifth is eliminating

earmarks on foreign aid programs which praelly does limit the flexibility and makes it really difficult for our foreign aide decision-makers to be flexible and make decisions that are important to make in the time of crisis or as changing conditions evolve. so those are some issues that could dramatically help. and i'd be curious to hear what other panelists think about these. i just want to end with a story. i like to tell stories at the end because when we're talking about foreign aide, it's easy to forget that there are human faces attached to all of this. this is before there was very much foreign assistance in the area of hiv in africa and certainly treatment was very limited in africa. only available to those who are most wealthy.

as a point of comparison, my brother-in-law has been hiv positive since 1986 and since 1 1989 has been on antiviral retros and is healthy to today. so this is the story of elizabeth. elizabeth was a young mother, a non monogamous wife to a man who was unfaithful to her. she was not able to leave him because she was completely dependent on him and divorce was frowned upon in her community. she did know about hiv and she was fearful that she may be exposed to the vie ris. she wanted to find out if she was hiv positive and wanted to know if she could get -- a prevention of mother to child transmission. it was relatively new in those days in the late 1990s. but she had heard about it. so she boarded a bus, two buss, actually, to get from her home

in the slums outside of lusaka into the clinic in the center of town. when she got there, she found out that they were out of the tests. so she was told to return. so she had to take her two buss back to her community. two days later, she did the same thing. and it's very expensive. when she got there, she found out that all the healthworkers were gone that way because they were off testing the military. so, again, she wasted her time. the whole day. well, she was pregnant and frankly, she didn't go back to the clinic anymore because she had had such a poor result. a couple months later, she delivered a beautiful baby girl who was sick. five months later, she died. as she held her baby in her arms, she found out that her baby died of aids and she, herselves was hiv positive.

she could not tell her husband because she was afraid he would beat her. she could not tell her family or friends because there was so much stigma. she lived with this terrible secret all by herself for two years until she became pregnant again. this time, she was determined that she would fot let this happen. she had found out that there was a prevention mother to child transmission. it's actually quite easy. so she became enrolled in that program and nine months later, delivered a beautiful baby boy. in the meantime, her husband died of aids just three months before her baby was born. but her new baby boy was hiv free and she was put onto a treatment program and elizabeth lives today as an incredibly active advocate for hiv counseling, testing, prevention.

she supports family members of families who are affected by hiv and she's an incredible capacity story of hope and a real hero in her kmubty. but the difference in her life from a time there wasn't any foreign assistance, no u.s. dollars or global fund dollars available for hiv. and the prospects of what she's doing now in her community because those dollars are at work in her community are tremendous. there are 5.5 million people that receive hiv treatment because of foreign assistance program funded by the united states and by other donor countries, especially the global fund. so when we asked the question getting back to the title of our panel, to aid or not to aid, do i think we should aid? yes, it is in our best interest as a country and i think it is our right and our

responsibility. could it be more effective? absolutely. should we fund more? i think so. but, right now, we're living at a time in history when the world has changed more than ever before in terms of the development gains. and, yet, millions and millions o people still live in extreme poverty. we know that extreme poverty and economic injustice breed fear and hopelessness and terror. we spend billions of dollars on trying to find violence and terror. would bt it be better to invest in programs that improve the equality between people and really hope to the rest of the world? that's the part i'd like to leave you with today. >> thank you, very much.

>> so since unlike kerry and judith, i don't work for a governmental entity, i'm a little more free to say provocative things and make blunt points. i figure it's my role on the panel to take full advantage of that. i'm here for the same reason that i'm guessing many of you are here. we're all pretty sure that the answer to the question in the title of the panel is yes, of course we should aid. and in my view, one of the biggest problem that is the aid community and its supporters have had over the last couple of decades, is that we're always so intent on the righteousness of the idea that we should aid and on defending that fundamental idea against frankly, the quite ignorant critiques of it that we have missed opportunity after opportunity to reform along the lines of some of the principles that kerry laid out so that we

would be more defensible both in the u.s. political context. but also some of the common critiques and where i think we are still failing to respond to them where we are succeeding and how we as people who all support the idea of foreign aid need to change our thinking and need to be more honest about what we are up in the world we are living in, and i come to that from the perspective that carrie's story suggests. there's a three-pronged critique in my view as foreign aid as it exists now. the first one is the one you here, and i will call it the conservative critique. aid doesn't work. it's money down, quote, rat holes, unquote. it's money o people who are

undeserving. it's money for poor investment. and we should look out for ourselves or if we have problems abroad we should solve them with the military which is immediate and effective and it's not wait 20 years and see what happens when the kid grows up kind of thing. and the truth is some of the aid has been ineffective and counter productive, and some of it it promised to the american public that it will do one thing and it does something else. we promise aid as the solution to a political problem, which it isn't. that critique, although it's framed in repugnant terms, it often has prejudice attached to it, but it's not entirely wrong. you can't wish it away and say that isn't true.

and there's a critique from the left, the american left and the global left that says aid is actually in its form and delivery is as oppressive as the conditions it seeks to remedy, and it distorts local economy, and this critique would say it's too tied to u.s. foreign policy goals. the third critique, and i will call it the post 9/11 critique, and it says u.s. foreign assistance is not tied enough to the u.s. foreign policy goals. and the post 9/11 era is keeping our safe from terrorism and violent extremism, and therefore all money that is spent needs to be looked at how are they helping produce societies around the world that are less likely to produce terrorists. each of those critiques have truth to it. the people that love aid have spent too much time wishing those critiques away, each of those, i believe, is

fundamentally wrong. but they suggest also some real confusion about what aid actually is. what it is, what it isn't and what it does and what we are supposed to do, and it will do what we are promising the recipients it will do. carrie already laid this out and i will put more of an edge on it because that's the joy of not being in government, but we ourselves are very often trafficking in mixed messages about those things and we need to understand that. so you know, i as an advocate have for years used the same saw 'tissics about 1% being used on foreign aid, and it's closer to 25%. and that's really mystifying. many people hear that and come away with a poor opinion of the american public. and that's actually not right

because as far as we can tell from doing more research, the thought process is something like this. foreign aid is everything that helps other people. well, these programs that carrie is talking about help other people, but when we send our military somewhere, it's helping them, right, and it's hurting us. it's costing american lives. we say it's to help the next generation of afghans or iranians or whomever. and that's foreign aid. as carrie referenced there is now in the post 9/11 era an enormous amount of money that flows through the pentagon in what used to be called the humanitarian assistance, and the pentagon controls it for the specific purpose of making things easier and safer for our soldiers to be on the ground and do the job they are there to do. but if you are a person sitting in colorado or virginia or

whatever, that sounds like foreign aid to you. you hear your cousin in marines are building wells in afghanistan, and that sounds like foreign assistance even though it doesn't meet the criteria that carrie laid out. that's where the public is getting this idea, that whenever you turn on the tv you see an american soldier off someplace digging a well or helping a kid. that's mashed in as foreign aid in the public mind. again, not entirely incomprensiable. the story carrie told would suggest is what many of us who come to the field from a faith-based perspective, and some of us grounded in the judeo

christian ideas don't have as much as those that are demanded. therwas a veryeresting debate about this at the benning of t obama administration which we can get into the q & a if people are interested. the decision was made that the u.s. gives foreign aid because it's in our enlightened self interest, to have healthy populations that both breed disease and pass them on to us and to have countries with a level of dignity and hope such that they don't breed violence and terrorism, and those are perfectly good strategic principles for a country to engage in. but -- carrie can speak more to this, or judith may as well. there is also a fair amount of research that suggests that actually aid works better when

the recipients don't think they are part of your grand plan. but actually aid works better when recipients thinks it's about them and not about you. which makes sense in your own life but on an individual level if you think about it. and i would argue that we have not quite hit the sweet spot of being able to explain to our fellow citizens that it's not naively throwing money down rat holes that it's in ourself interest, and part of our self interest is all truism. this ties back into a much larger debate that i think you are seeing play out in the presidential election about how the u.s. should act in the 21st century world overall, and

whether the kind of power that we have now requires that when we work with others, we consider their views and preferences in ways that can somehow be painful for us. or we have so much power that we can work with others and tell them what they want. a great many of the debates, we are not having a big debate about foreign assistance in the election and we have six months a to go so anything can happen, and the debates we are having, iran, israel, how to deal with democracy and china, and should the u.n. continue to exist. should we follow john bolton and a couple stories off that. and this is where we have the

intent to do that, and you heard carrie talk about principles and reforms, but we are not there yet. we are not there yet for a couple of reasons. and one is -- this is when i say obnoxious you can tell i am not in the military complex, and we have an aid industrial complex. this is not a bad thing necessarily, because you want to have experience and you want to have institutional memory over time, but we have a whole lot of groups in and out of government that are very invested in things going on the way they have always gone on. and it's been hard to go to the community and say we know you are constantly terrified about senator x slashing your budget by 25%, but you have to change in the fundamental ways. we have missed those opportunities time and again and we have to be honest with