U.S. presidential candidate Perry wants to slash foreign aid, UN funding

"I think it's time for this country to have a very real debate about foreign aid,” Perry said at the Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas on Tuesday when asked whether the U.S. should continue providing aid to other countries.

WASHINGTON (RIA Novosti)- Texas governor Rick Perry, a Republican presidential candidate, has called for cuts in foreign aid and funding for the United Nations.

"I think it's time for this country to have a very real debate about foreign aid,” Perry said at the Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas on Tuesday when asked whether the U.S. should continue providing aid to other countries.

He also deplored Palestine's recent bid for statehood at the UN.

"When you think about the Palestinian Authority circumventing those Oslo Accords and going to New York to try to create the conflict and to have themselves approved as a state without going through the proper channels is a travesty," he said.

“I think it's time not only to have that entire debate about all of our foreign aid,” he added, “but in particular the UN. Why are we funding that organization?”

The UN received voluntary and assessed contributions from its member states as determined by the General Assembly based on each country's gross national income (GNI), foreign debt and per capita income.

Republicans have repeatedly criticized the UN as "bloated" and "ineffective.”

Another republican candidate, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who is known as a vocal opponent of U.S. military intervention abroad, said during Tuesday’s debates that U.S. foreign aid “should be the easiest thing to cut.”

"It's not authorized in the Constitution that we can take money from you and give it to particular countries around the world," he said. "To me, foreign aid is taking money from poor people in this country and giving it to rich people in poor countries. And it becomes weapons of war."

U.S. aid to Israel, the White House’s long-time Middle Eastern ally that receives some $3 billion of aid from Washington every year, should also be cut, because it “teaches them to be dependent," he added.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, another Republican White House hopeful, rejected the proposal, saying that Israel was America's “greatest ally.”