It's hard to not think we're blowing a ton of money

President Obama signed a bill was today to send $7.5 billion dollars to Pakistan in aid.

Seven and a half billion.

Yowza.

And maybe it's a good idea but you'd have to have a lot more information to know this is the right thing to do than what the lay person on the street has, for sure.

Pakistan is one poor country and it's so full of needs. It's particularly difficult to think this money will be well-used when a report from The Guardian UK reports that "Up to 70% of US Aid to Pakistan is 'misspent'". (See link, below).

So that news today comes on top of word from President Obama and the White House that they plan to give every senior citizen in the country $250.00 as part of the stimulus plans.

Forget the fact that the cost of living dropped in the last year 2 points, in effect giving the seniors additional money, now we're throwing money at them, too.

NPR reported that this is likely to "buy votes" of this very important voting lobby.

The cost for that little give away?

13 more billion dollars.

Yi.

At what point do we stop?

At what point to we quit borrowing from future generation's finances?

I'm a liberal to the core, socially, but I think this is all just way too much and that we need to rein in spending and drawn down the outlays from the treasury.

Links:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091015/pl_nm/us_pakistan_aid_usa
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/27/pakistan.usa
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113805482&ft=1&f=1003