The Foreign Service Journal, June 2006

J U N E 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 35 he U.S. Agency for International Development has become largely a dispenser of Band- Aids for poor countries, rather than a tool for reducing poverty. It addresses immediate hurts, not underlying problems. Conspiracy theorists and antigovernment extremists might agree on an explanation: government bureaucrats don’t solve the problem of world poverty because that would put them out of a job. But this is too simplistic. There is still so much poverty in the world — close to one billion people (one-sixth of the world’s population) live on less than $1 per day — F O C U S O N T H E F U T U R E O F U S A I D USAID IN 2006: B AND -A IDS , N OT D EVELOPMENT T E CONOMIC GROWTH IS TOO IMPORTANT TO CONSIGN TO A RESIDUAL CATEGORY OF THE BUDGET , BELOW EARMARKS AND UNFUNDED MANDATES . B Y J AMES W. F OX Phil Bliss