we are not as careful with our foreign aid as we should be. This does not give a very good breakdown of exactly how most of that money is disbursed or even exactly what they count as aid, except for the military part. We spend a great deal on UN programs, and money dispersed through UN programs. That would be great place to cut. The majority of the UN disbursements go to government with the promise the money or aid will be used for the people. We know that is rarely the case.
We do a lot of medical stuff overseas including using our military medical staffs for various programs. is that aid, military aid, or even counted? We are supposed to have limits according to human rights abuses, etc. but this seems often ignored.
It is to our benefit to be involved. We gained a great deal of good will in Africa with our AIDS program. The 2005 Pakistan earthquake aid was the first interaction that many of those people had with Americans and they found we were not growing horns out of our head. Same thing in Burma.
As a health matter, vaccine programs, clean water programs, etc. are to everyone's benefit. It's' pretty easy to spread stuff all over the world these days.
There are a lot of things that are questionable and there should be more stringent controls and reviews.