(Archived document, may contain errors) 796 November 13,1990 YEIXQW LIGHT FOR EASIERN ENROPE BEWARl3 FouREcoNoMlC DEVEIDPMENT MYTHS INTRODUCI'ION Socialism has left Eastern Europe in economic and environmental ruins. Dilapidated 40-year-old factories grind out goods whose quality is vastly inferior to Western and even manyThird World products, all the while polluting the air and soil.
The Senate soon will vote on H.R. 4426, the U.S. Foreign Operations appro- priations bill for fiscal year 1995. The House already has voted on it; after the Sen- ate vote, differences will be resolved by a joint conference of the House and Sen- ate. An important element of this legislation will be its provisions for aid to Rus- sia and the other New Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union. De- spite billions of dollars in aid, the economies of these countries still are in deep trouble. While there are many reasons for this, one of them surely is the ineffec- tive way in which aid has been dispensed by the United States and other donors. To ease the transition to a f1ree market in these countries, U.S. programs should be restructured to make them more effective and timely. The American people are entitled to be skeptical about the effectiveness of U.S. aid to Russia and the NIS. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the U.S. has promised $16 billion in aid to the former
Library of Congress photo Speaker of the House Tom Foley (right), First Lady Hillary Clinton and
House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt in 1993. W
hen Spokane had Tom Foley as its representative in the Congress, federal dollars poured in, bolstering our push for prosperity. From what are now buildings serving WSU s Elson Floyd School of Medicine to the Foley Center Library on the Gonzaga campus (named for his father, Ralph) to Fairchild Air Force Base to the Spokane International Airport, his impact is still felt today. The farmers of Eastern Washington had a power broker in Congress for whom their interests were a top priority. We did things, like putting on a World s Fair.