By John Norris

Foreign aid has never been the most popular program in the federal budget. Most Americans think that it is the single largest item of government spending, greater than defense spending, Medicaid, or Medicare. Asked to guess how much of the budget goes to foreign aid, the average American estimates about 25 percent — when in reality it has been consistently less than 1 percent.

Given that it is an election year, and that spending on international affairs makes an easy target, it should come as no surprise that the Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget absolutely decimates spending on both international development and international affairs in general. (The Ryan budget would cut $31.6 billion from the international affairs account over the next four years.)

So yes, much of the public’s view of foreign aid is based on misperceptions. But the U.S. government, including Congress, deserves its own share of blame for the public’s cynical view toward foreign aid for one important reason: the United States still is not very selective in how it delivers aid. This year, the U.S. will deliver economic and security assistance to 146 countries around the globe. That approach is too scattershot, and makes it far less likely that any given aid program will actually nurture real change over the long haul. We continue to offer aid to too many bad partners and too many countries that are ready to graduate from assistance programs. The bottom line: we should be doing much more in fewer places if we hope to foster real change.

In our new report, Engagement amid Austerity: a Bipartisan Approach to Reorienting the International Affairs Budget, we rank all 146 countries receiving U.S. aid as to whether or not they rate as a good investment for scarce U.S. assistance dollars. Looking at everything from corruption to the percentage of the population living on less than two dollars a day, the report offers readers like you a wide array of data to reach their own conclusions about vital programs that make a huge difference for millions of people.

Various news outlets reported last November that Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), chair of the House Foreign Affairs committee, had lifted her hold on all U.S. aid going to the Palestinians. Ros-Lehtinen said she was blocking the funds until she received assurances from the Obama administration that they were in America’s national security interest. But last month the Florida congresswoman sent a letter Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying she would continue to hold $147 million because the Palestinian economy grew.

But the National Journal reports today that Clinton is bypassing Ros-Lehtinen’s hold and authorizing the aid anyway:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is allowing U.S. funds to flow to the West Bank and Gaza despite a hold by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., a rare display of executive-branch authority sure to anger the key lawmaker concerned about protecting her congressional oversight role.

A State Department official said that the letter was delivered on Tuesday to key members of Congress informing them of Clinton’s decision to move forward with the $147 million package of the fiscal year 2011 economic support funds for the Palestinian people, despite Ros-Lehtinen’s hold. Administrations generally do not disburse funding over the objections of lawmakers on relevant committees.

The State Department official told the National Journal that said that withholding the funding could “undermine the progress that has been made in recent years in building Palestinian institutions and improving stability, security, and economic prospects, which benefits Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) called for completely eliminating foreign aid on a conservative radio show over the weekend, arguing that doing so would help fix the budget deficit.

Appearing on the Rusty Humphries Show, Paul bemoaned the fact that Republicans “are still divided on [eliminating] foreign aid.” The Kentucky senator continued that Republicans have to get “on the same page on eliminating wasteful things like foreign aid.”

PAUL: But you need to eliminate some things. Republicans are still divided on foreign aid. Some Republicans still want to send foreign aid. We send foreign aid to China. We send economic development assistance to China. We’ve got to get Republicans on the same page on eliminating wasteful things like foreign aid, sending the Department of Education back to the states, greatly downsizing if not eliminating the Department of Energy, all of these things we do up here.

Listen to it:

There are two problems with Paul’s goal of getting rid of foreign aid. First, it would do almost nothing to balance the federal budget. Though polls show Americans think it accounts for anywhere from 10 percent to one-third of the budget, in fact, less than one percent of federal spending goes towards foreign aid.

Second, zeroing out foreign aid would be a disaster for both those living in dire poverty around the world and the United States’ foreign policy interests. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) ripped his own party on the issue last month, saying that eliminating foreign aid would be “outrightly foolish” and “un-Christian.” “I resent the idea that the conservative viewpoint somehow is at odds with the idea of strategic investment in countries around the globe,” Huckabee said in South Carolina. Helping lift people around the globe out of poverty also benefits our own economic and national security interests.

Unfortunately, Paul’s position has found much more favor in the Republican Party of late than Huckabee’s. Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul have all called for zeroing out foreign aid during the presidential primary campaign. Rick Santorum is the only presidential candidate willing to defend foreign aid, calling his opponents’ opposition a “lowlight.”

Our guest blogger is Peter Orr, the Senior Sudan Advocate for Refugees International.

In the last few weeks, the media has ramped up its coverage of violence in the South Sudanese state of Jonglei — and rightly so. Inter-ethnic clashes in Jonglei flared up in January, pitting the Lou Nuer and Murle ethnic groups against each other in what is the latest round of recurrent attacks between the two.

At the same time, however, violence on a much larger scale is hitting Sudan’s “new south”: Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States. Fighting between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – North (SPLM-N) has forced tens of thousands of people to flee to Ethiopia and South Sudan. Nearly as many have been internally displaced and face dire food shortages.

Displacement is a growing problem in the region, and aid groups face immense challenges providing enough emergency food and care to support the displaced population. Bombing and fighting in the area have prevented local families from cultivating their crops, and a poor harvest in November left food stocks even lower than usual. The most insidious problem, however, is the aid blockade imposed by Khartoum.

The government’s refusal to allow international aid agencies (both UN and private) into its territory is putting tens of thousands of lives at risk. Only the Sudanese Red Crescent, seen as neither impartial nor capable of handling the needs of civilians in government and SPLM-N areas, has been allowed to enter the area.

The U.N. and countries including the United States have tried to shift Khartoum and stave off a humanitarian disaster. In recent weeks, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.N.’s top humanitarian official both visited Sudan and pressed Omar al-Bashir’s government for greater access. But neither visit was successful in opening Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile to desperately needed assistance.

Khartoum is clearly in bunker mode. Feeling that it was not sufficiently “rewarded” for allowing South Sudan to break away, it is now wary of any incentives the West might offer for opening up these war-torn states. It is also keen to avoid a second Darfur, where Khartoum saw humanitarian assistance as merely a friendly façade for Western meddling. More than that, Bashir’s regime sees the aid blockade in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile as another way to force the SPLM-N to surrender for the sake of suffering civilians.

Given the dire need in these two states and the lack of movement by Sudan, some in the U.S. are now calling for forced access to Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile – whereby food and medical supplies might be flown or trucked into the two areas against Khartoum’s will. Certainly, the need is clear; but leaving aside the prospect of Sudanese military retaliation, the practicalities of such a move are thorny indeed. Dropping aid from the air would be incredibly costly, and it’s unclear how the supplies would be distributed once the aid hits the ground. Meanwhile, the land routes from South Sudan into Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan are either impassible or go through Khartoum-held areas. Ethiopia, another possible entry point, would be wary of provoking Khartoum by cooperating with such a plan.

For the time being, Khartoum’s recklessness and intransigence is certain to push more families from Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile into South Sudan and Ethiopia – adding to the over 100,000 Sudanese refugees already there. Those who can’t flee will face even more danger and deprivation; many will surely die.

As humanitarians, we continue to hope that this time Khartoum will prove its critics wrong; that this time it will welcome assistance and not endanger thousands of lives out of pique. But after years of disappointment, it is hard to expect anything better from Sudan. And the fear is that the most the world can do is prepare for the human tragedy that is about to unfold.

Bill Gates issued an appeal to policymakers to support foreign aid that tackles public health and poverty challenges in the developing world. Gates, writing in the the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual letter today, highlighted the importance of foreign aid in global development and raising living standards in the world’s poorest countries.

The letter acknowledged that the global economic and political climate puts foreign aid expenditures under pressure, but warned that a cut in these funds could have severe implications for populations struggling to pull themselves out of poverty:

The world faces a clear choice. If we invest relatively modest amounts, many more poor farmers will be able to feed their families. If we don’t, one in seven people will continue living needlessly on the edge of starvation. My annual letter this year is an argument for making the choice to keep on helping extremely poor people build self-sufficiency.

Gates argues that investment in poor farmers can “increase their productivity so they can feed themselves and their families,” and “contribute to global food security.” The past fifty years has marked dramatic improvements in poverty reduction — global poverty levels have dropped from 40 percent to 15 percent — but Gates is concerned that the historic improvements could slow if funding for irrigation and agricultural research dry up:

We can be more innovative about delivering solutions that already exist to the farmers who need them. Knowledge about managing soil and tools like drip irrigation can help poor farmers grow more food today. We can also discover new approaches and create new tools to fundamentally transform farmers’ lives. But we won’t advance if we don’t continue to fund agricultural innovation, and I am very worried about where those funds will come from in the current economic and political climate.

The Gates Foundation — which has committed more than $25 billion [PDF] in grants since its inception in 1994 — has been an outspoken supporter of government funding of global public health and poverty reduction programs. Gates’s letter emphasized that development assistance programs “has a significant impact on people’s lives” and “modest investments in the poorest make a huge difference.”