U.S. Cannot Run Entire World

Mr. Speaker:

President Kennedy said in a famous speech at the University of Washington in 1961, “that with only six percent of the world’s population we cannot correct every adversity or right every wrong and that therefore there cannot be an American solution for every world problem.”

Today we are less than four percent of the world’s population, and we have a national debt of a mind-boggling $17.6 trillion.

We simply cannot keep sending mega-billions to corrupt governments all over the world.  

We should have trade and tourism with other countries and cultural and educational exchanges and, of course, diplomatic relationships.

But the people in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to have to solve most of their problems themselves.

We cannot do everything for them and still do what we should do for our own Country and our own people.

Let me repeat those words of President Kennedy: "There cannot be an American solution to every world problem."

This is not isolationism, Mr Speaker.  It is common sense.