What percent of the federal budget would you estimate foreign aid consumes? Point five, 5, or 50 percent? The fact is that the United States, in all its wealthy, splendiferous glory, spends only around 1 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid. Shocking, huh?

To make matters worse, this country that has the potential to fulfill every good-hearted person’s wildest fantasies has the ability to help millions of people with relatively inconsequential amounts of money, but its “Christian” populace refuses to care about its global neighbors sufficiently to justify such expenditures.

Every Christmas, the United States spends its way into the “Holiday Spirit” of giving. Excuse me for a moment as Christmas is not my holiday, and Christianity is not my set of beliefs, but I thought the overall point of Jesus’ teaching was that people should leave virtuous and, for lack of a more precise word, good lives. Are we to only love thy neighbor when he is white, Christian, or next door? Why does the charitableness society expects of individuals during the holiday season not extend throughout the year?

For that matter, why does it not extend to our foreign policy where money the U.S. government can lose with an accounting error could provide health care to an entire nation?

In 2005, the United States granted foreign countries less than $30 billion out of a budget more than $2.5 trillion. For those who are not engineers or accountants, that works out to 1.2 percent. While much of the budget is tied up in Social Security and other “lock-box” type social programs, 1.2 percent is pitifully small. We have an economy that churns out more than $11 trillion a year; we extol the virtues of morality and being good Christians.

Where is the goodness in selfishly keeping taxes down so we can spend more on presents when people in other countries can, and will, put that money to developmental use and build a strong nation?

Historically speaking, the United States has been an isolationist nation. How’d that work out for us last century? World Wars I and II, as well as the Cold War, all demonstrated that a rich, powerful country cannot remain as such and sit on the sidelines of international relations.

This is true during crisis times, like the 1930s, as well as during eras of prosperity like the late 1990s. As the world continues to shrink because of globalizing industries, transnational ecological issues (i.e. global warming), and the Internet, economic powers must be even more active in international relations.

The more peaceful the United States’ relationship with the world is, the more business opportunities exist for American corporations. Foreign aid is a relatively cheap way of keeping peace while helping poor countries develop and become able to afford our goods and services.

Such a valuable tool seems like a no-brainer when considered logically, yet we constantly oppose increasing the foreign aid budget. For decades, wealthy and powerful nations have set the goal of spending 0.7 percent of gross national income (GNI is somewhat similar to gross national product) on foreign aid.

While most admittedly fall short, the United States spends only 0.22 percent, a pitiful quantity given our power and wealth. While the United States and its people have their own issues in need of funding (education and health care are two gigantic ones that come to mind), foreign needs get crowded out.

The caveat with all the numbers, however, is that Americans are privately generous.

While people give over three times what the government does in foreign assistance ($95.5 billion versus $27.3 billion), the fact that it comes from individuals dilutes some of its political efficacy.

This limits the political utility of the contributions.

Ignoring the debate over the morality of using aid money as a political tool, concentrating most foreign aid through the government would greatly strengthen our international reputation and further empower the Department of State while cleaning up the ugly statistics I previously manipulated.

America needs to learn how to manage its budget and minimize inefficiencies so it can increase in foreign aid spending without having a deleterious effect on important domestic programs.