The Senate Appropriations Committee has zeroed out funding for the National Endowment for Democracy, which was launched by President Reagan in 1983 to help build up and consolidate new democracies around the world. Republican Judd Gregg suggested the administration could find NED's requested $ 32 million by reallocating State Department funds. As a former board member of the endowment, Secretary of State Albright may well take the hint and shift the funds rather than let the organization die. But this is a shabby way for conservatives to treat a worthy Reagan legacy.
The National Endowment for Democracy works because, while accountable to Congress, it operates at arm's length from the U.S. government. It can help build democracy in nations where the United States has no diplomatic relations. And where democratic forces need rapid help, it can act with a dispatch unusual for government bureaucracies. With State Department funding, NED would lose these virtues.
It's not as if some small-government balanced-budget principle were at stake here. According to a Wall Street Journal story last week, Gregg may deliver as much as $ 26 million in new federal funds to Dartmouth College, in his home state of New Hampshire. Dartmouth is a private school with an endowment of $ 1.5 billion. Surely the cause of supporting democracy around the world is at least as deserving.