Published at The National Desk.

WASHINGTON (TND) — $21 billion taxpayer dollars in foreign aid has gone to 18 Middle Eastern countries in the past couple of years.

Auditors at OpenTheBooks took a closer look at where American taxpayer dollars are going and why.

CEO of OpenTheBooks Adam Andrzejewski joined The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat to discuss the issue.

“This is U.S. taxpayer money that goes to promote global peace and security. It would go to economic aid, food, humanitarian aid,” he said. “I think the politicians that vote for U.S. foreign aid will tell you that it's in our own national security to provide economic development, stability, security for the rest of the world.”

The U.S. provides aid to both Israel and Jordan. OpenTheBooks discovered that about $50 billion a year goes to foreign aid and $21 billion of that, goes to the Middle East.

“Now the latest public opinion polls show that the American people, when it comes to foreign aid and the funding of it, this is the first place that they would cut from the federal budget.”

Israel receives most of the funding in the Middle East at $6.6 billion.