Very small amounts are being given for humanitarian purposes. I don't have the numbers in front of me right now, but typically less than 20% of the foreign aid budget is for things like that. To begin with, about 55% of the total foreign aid budget goes to Israel, Egypt and Columbia, and 95+% of that money is spent on arms.

As for things like HIV, Bush gave that wonderful speech 3 years ago where he said we would give $15 billion over 5 years for HIV/AIDS prevention & research in Africa, but that was nothing more than talk as nothing ever happened with his proposal.

As for your Dam/Caterpillar statement, since this is our tax money, Caterpillar should submit a bid just like other companies, and if a foreign company can do the job for half the price, we should go with the foreign company. Instead, the current process is that Caterpillar, Becktell, Haliburton, or some other large company will be given the job without ever submitting a bid, and they will vastly overcharge for the job. The government of the country where the dam is being built could care less since they are not paying the bill, and the politicians taking care of the contracts all receive nice campaign contributions from these companies. So everyone is happy except the taxpayers, who are being robbed blind. Like I said, this is "corporate welfare" with an excuse. They might as well say they are going to pay Caterpillar to dig ditches and fill them in. The only reason for these jobs is to find a way to divert our tax money to corporations. If they could just give these corporations our tax money without needing a reason or an excuse, you would see the foreign aid budget shrink to nothing overnight.