Aid Aid, Please

Factual Questions
1

To the Teeming Millions,

This question is addressed to the economists, civil servants, bureaucrats of government financial departments, politicians, aid workers, etc or anybody else who might know anything about this topic.

When a natural disaster strikes some unfortunate part of the world, the national governments of our fine international community come out with these vast sums of money for the victims of the tragedy. I would like to know where the money for this is coming from. Obviously it is the taxpayer that is the donator technically (or it is the bond buyer but he/she, theoretically, gets repaid by the taxpayer too… Eventually… …Hopefully…) So is there a specific part of national fiscal budgets which are set aside for possible coming disasters, big or small. I just find it hard to believe that there wouldn’t be a “slush fund”-like repository or else the exquisitely manicured budget numbers are at the whim of mother nature. And we know what she’s like when she hit’s the gin and tonic.

Whatever the actual answer is I would also be curious to know if there is a link to the (again) theoretically annual aid that developed nations are supposed to give to the developing world. Which I believe is set at 0.7% of GNI by the UN.

Please note: This question is not limited to the great US of A. I would appreciate input from any national perspective.

2

In the US, most direct foreign aid is coordinated through the conveniently-acronymmed Agency for International Development. They get their budget from Congress, like everyone else. In the case of severe natural disasters, Congress will sometimes pass special one-off appropriations bills to supply money for the relief effort. An example is the Indian Ocean Tsunami, where Congress passed an emergency aid appropriation as part of a larger defense appropriations bill.

3

The main US government overseas development organization is USAID, whose website says they operate on .5 to 1% of the US budget. There is a ton of info on their website

It’s my understanding that USAID doesn’t do a ton of work directly, but rather provides cash to aid contractors and NGOs to carry out their projects. There are methods that ensure a significant amount of that aid returns to the United States. For example, there are all kinds of rules requiring US funded aid programs to buy products from the US and use US contractors.

In direct disaster relief, the US military also plays a large role.