Guest guest Posted February 1, 2011 Report Share Posted February 1, 2011 http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/48551.html GOP seeks to slash foreign aidBy: February 1, 2011 04:38 AM EST Egypt’s turmoil is a stark reminder of how hard it is to freeze any foreign policy in place — let alone roll back the State Department’s budget to three years ago. But that’s very much the threat facing President Barack Obama as the new House Republican majority proposes to lump his State and foreign aid requests with “nonsecurity” domestic spending and to cut appropriations to 2008 levels. The result could be a $16 billion, or nearly one-third, reduction in the resources available to State, which finds itself pitted against domestic programs also facing the ax. The aftermath of one war, in Iraq, and the future conduct of another, in Afghanistan, would be directly affected. And it’s a dramatic reversal of the activist Bush-era philosophy that State must be treated as a dynamic part of the national security budget. Not so long ago, Gen. Colin was talking up his “diplomatic troops” before a Republican Congress, and former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice seemed to have brought her title with her when she became secretary of State. By contrast last week, Sen. Rand (R-Ky.), the new tea party wunderkind, proposed to do away with the entire foreign aid budget and the Republican Study Committee filed its own bill to terminate U.S. economic aid to Egypt and wipe out the Agency for International Development. These moves come at a time when GOP retirements and tea party primary challenges have made Republicans more reluctant to speak up for foreign aid. In the Senate Appropriations Committee, virtually every active Republican member who served on the State and foreign operations subcommittee in the last Congress is now gone. In the House, Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) has been thrust into the role of heading the equivalent subcommittee with only two years of experience on the panel. “I’m distressed that there is not enough recognition of the role the State Department is playing,” said Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar, ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is facing a potential tea party challenge to his 2012 reelection campaign. “It’s a new leadership group, and they are attempting to express that they are different and it’s a different time. And they’re apparently succeeding.” The numbers are dramatic — and even more so because of the way Republicans have chosen to frame the debate. The House Appropriations Committee, slated to outline its budget-cutting plans next week, admits its target of $32.8 billion from 2008 is really a Christmas 2007 number that doesn’t reflect about $8 billion in emergency foreign aid funds approved separately for fiscal 2008. The opposite is true for 2010, with the committee cutting from a base of $48.7 billion, which includes a greater share of Iraq- and Afghanistan-related appropriations that were previously treated as emergency funds outside the normal budget caps.If adjustments are made at both ends, the better estimate of the gap between 2008 and 2010 appears to be a $14 billion reduction — 26 percent. But that’s still small comfort for Obama — and there’s no sign yet that the House will adjust its numbers accordingly.Indeed, all the pressure is in the opposite direction: to maximize the savings on paper at least. And the timing could not be worse for State, given the transition under way in Iraq and with Obama still hoping to reduce the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan before the 2012 presidential campaign. More than his predecessor, Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary Gates, himself a veteran of the Bush administration, has encouraged State to take the lead, even in the case of military-related aid to Pakistan, a major partner in Afghanistan and in the larger war against terrorism. And more than one-third of the potential cut from 2010 funds — let alone Obama’s still larger 2011 request — is related to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. “If we have to take a significant cut in foreign assistance, in some fashion, that is going to affect Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen,” said P.J. Crowley, State’s spokesman. “Those are countries where we have vital interests and vital security concerns.” “You have a transition going on right now in Iraq from a military strategy to a civilian strategy,” he told POLITICO. And by way of example, Crowley singled out State’s plans to increase its presence by creating a new office in Kirkuk, a city that is important to Iraq’s oil resources and, with its Kurdish population, the nation’s internal ethnic conflicts. “Anyone who looks at Iraq will see that how Kirkuk is resolved over time is one of those fundamental issues that will shape the future of Iraq,” Crowley said. “If we take a significant hit in operating resources, you have to go back and look again at how much of this is sustainable, and that potentially means we might not have a presence, a civilian presence, in a location like Kirkuk, which will continue to be an area of very high tension.” “Having a diplomatic presence in Kirkuk would help Iraq manage one of [its] key unresolved issues. If you don’t have a presence there, then you have fewer insights into how it can be resolved.”With Granger on the House defense appropriations panel as well, tapping excess 2011 military funds could be one path to helping her navigate through these cuts. But it’s just as likely that high priorities, like Iraq, will simply command a greater share of the smaller State and foreign aid pie. That means that much less funding for lower-profile accounts. Refugee assistance, for example, already faces the threat of being cut in half, from $1.685 billion in 2010 to $823 million in 2008. International narcotics could lose nearly $1 billion, a two-thirds reduction. Most vulnerable are initiatives that hardly existed in 2008 but have since grown to address new issues, like climate change or the high price of food on world markets. The same applies to the estimated 2,170 foreign and civil service personnel added since 2008, and among global health accounts, maternal and child health programs are in similar straits, having grown substantially since 2008. Perhaps the most sensitive issue is how to handle one Bush legacy: the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, under which the U.S. has made long-term commitments to help supply antiretroviral drugs to patients in Africa. Obama already faces criticism for not matching the dramatic expansion of funding envisioned in the 2008 reauthorization of PEPFAR — signed into law by Bush. Turning back the clock to 2008 would mean State’s PEPFAR budget would be cut to $4.6 billion — a 14 percent reduction from the estimated $5.35 billion provided in 2010. This is not the type of treatment that can be stopped — and then resumed later — without medical consequences. Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, said the risk is that the virus would become more resistant to the course of drug treatment, requiring a new, and often, more expensive line of medicine to be used next. “It makes a fragile response even more fragile,” Zeitz told POLITICO. “It’s penny-wise, pound-foolish,” added Fawcett, global legislative director for Results, a global health group focused on tuberculosis — which kills many AIDS patients. To be sure, State is not without political resources. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Inouye (D-Hawaii) is a longtime political ally to Secretary Hillary Clinton, and he previously headed the foreign operations panel. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) did as well. But one indication of the dire situation is that mere speculation that South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham might step forward to claim the ranking position for Republicans has set off excitement. “We’re in the first innings of a long debate,” Lugar said.© 2011 Capitol News Company, LLC ==================================== BrydenSenior Program Policy OfficerIDSA/HIVMA Center for Global Health Policy Phone: 703-740-4956Mobile: 202-549-3664email: dbryden@...www.idsaglobalhealth.orgFollow the Center: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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