Opposition To Foreign Aid
Passman chaired a pivotal House subcommittee that ruled on foreign aid appropriations. He took the view of Doug Bandow, a former scholar with the Cato Institute, that foreign aid involves "taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries." He claimed that foreign aid is often harmful because it propped up despotic regimes that might otherwise have collapsed from corruption, failure, or unpopularity. Passman could not remove foreign aid from the budget, but he frequently was able to cut the program wherever he could.
For several years on the subcommittee, Passman clashed with Congressman Walter Judd, a Minnesota Republican and a former medical missionary to China, who was frequently the point-man to argue for expanded foreign aid to needy countries. Judd had even been considered for the vice presidency by Richard Nixon in 1960. Passman also disliked the Peace Corps, which was championed by President Kennedy. Passman's critics, mostly within his own party, claimed that the Monroe Democrat was trying to "bleed" the Peace Corps of sufficient appropriations to make the program work. Passman said at the time, "If I had three minutes left to live, I'd kill the Peace Corps."
An intraparty critic, Representative Jack Brooks, from Beaumont, Texas, noted that Passman succeeded in cutting foreign aid by some 25 percent during the early 1960s.
Read more about this topic: Otto Passman
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