Cantor To Japan: No Aid For You.

by Stuart Shapiro

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor defended cuts in foreign aid in the wake of the disasters in Japan.

“All of us need to be tempered by the fact that we’ve got to stop spending money we don’t have,” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters at his weekly press briefing. “Essentially, what you are saying is to go borrow money from the Japanese so we can spend it there to help the Japanese.”

Now I can understand wanting to cut foreign aid (it is actually the only area of government spending that a majority of Americans favor cutting).  I don’t agree with it, but it is a defensible position.  What I don’t understand is issuing a statement like this several days after Japan has had a natural disaster that may kill upwards of 10,000 people.  Republicans resent being called heartless.  Then they say things like this.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.