Crowdsourcing for Analogies

4 October 2011, 2151 EDT

Earlier today, I tweeted and blogged and even (dare I say it) facebooked to get some help. The challenge: to come up with a good analogy to capture the incredibly strange idea that cutting foreign aid might be a way to address the US fiscal crisis.

My starting point: Cutting foreign aid to address the budget crisis is like an alcoholic cutting back on apertifs.

The responses thus far:

Cutting foreign aid to address the budget crisis is like an alcoholic cutting back on chocolate liquor candies. Nominated by The Duck’s own Dan Nexon. A big improvement on mine.
Cutting foreign aid to address the budget crisis is like eliminating peanuts on all flights to address the price of jet fuel. Nominated by Brandon Valeriano. Very 21st century economy.
Cutting foreign aid to address the budget crisis is like getting your hair cut in an effort to lose weight. From Mike Tierney. Perhaps the most perfect simile since both a hair cut and foreign aid do involve a slight but entirely meaningless change and are done for other reasons.
Cutting foreign aid to solve the budget crisis is like executing Troy Davis to reduce prison overcrowding. Via Chad Rector. Yow!
Cutting foreign aid to address budget crisis is like an alcoholic cutting back on roses for your mistress, but keeping her. Via Anonymous. All I can say is: huh?
Cutting foreign aid to address budget crisis is like an obese dieter forgoing after-dinner mints. By Bill “I am not a terrorist” Ayres. My co-author once again shares a similar mindset as I was thinking along such lines at first.

Of course, the politicians who propose cutting foreign aid do not necessarily care that we IR scholars know that it is a very small part of the budget. They are playing on the well known perceptions of voters that foreign aid is a much bigger part of the budget. And it is far easier to cut these dollars than where the money is really at: social security, medicare, defense and tax cuts. So, anyway, I am still taking suggestions in the on-going contest to come up with a good analogy to cutting foreign aid to solve the fiscal crisis.