Ron Paul: Aid to Egypt 'A Bad Investment'

Ron Paul has never liked sending foreign aid to any country, especially Egypt, and now the former Republican congressman and presidential candidate fears the day is coming when there is none left to send.

"When the time comes when we can't afford this any longer there's going to be a lot of pent-up hostility toward us," Paul told Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto on Monday. "I worry about that to a degree because I think it's going to be very, very harmful."

America has sent "many, many billions of dollars" to Egypt over the past 40 years, he said, and it has been "wasteful."

"We never know who's in charge of anything, yet we keep sending money and sometimes we try to prop up one dictator and we lose control, and we get somebody else," Paul said. "I'd say it's a bad investment."

The United States is trying to decide whether to continue sending aid to the country where crowds of demonstrators have been taking to the streets in recent weeks. Some wanted the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, the country's first elected leader in history. They got their way on July 3 when the military forced him from office.

But that set up a quandary for the United States since it cannot legally give aid to a country after it has been taken over by a military coup. Since the U.S. government preferred the interim government installed by the military over Morsi, who was moving toward strict Islamic law during his one-year in office, the White House and some members of Congress refused to use the term "coup."

Paul said he doesn't like idea of saying the U.S. will send aid only if it likes the leader a country elects.

"Foreign aid should be looked at as a principle," he said. "Do we have the right to take money from innocent American people and prop up different factions around the world?"

America ties to buy friendship, he said, "but one day we're going to wake up and find out we are broke and nobody's taking our dollars anymore."