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The 112th Congress: A Perfect Storm for Aid Cuts, or a Perfect Opportunity for Reform?
October 26, 2010
This post also appears on The Will and the Wallet.
It is exactly one week until the midterm elections that many pundits predict will change the political landscape for at least the next two years. For those who track budget matters, the question has become, what do the elections mean for development and diplomacy—the two Ds that with defense are the professed pillars of U.S. national security?
I won’t engage in prognostications on the number of seats either party will hold in the 112th Congress. Regardless of who wins, the international affairs—or 150—budget will be under enormous pressure. The foreign operations budget (the bulk of U.S. foreign assistance programs) is larger and likely more vulnerable to deeper cuts than the State operations portion.
The real question is whether an anemic economic recovery, a $1.3 trillion budget deficit and the House and Senate led by parties holding slim majorities will create the perfect storm to sink the momentum that has built up around development? Or will the confluence of events force real reform, to ensure we are getting the biggest bang for our development bucks?
The American public has a better appreciation for the role that development plays as a key part of U.S. global engagement in the post-9/11 world. Yet, policymakers often view foreign assistance as an area that can be cut without provoking public backlash. This is in part because the direct beneficiaries live beyond our shores and the longer-term benefits for the U.S. take time, sometimes fail, and can be difficult to attribute to a specific foreign assistance intervention.
In this environment, elected officials make choices, and those choices often get simplified to: Do I vote for activities that will promote jobs here (my State) or there (not my country)? When budgets are tight, there is often little wiggle room for supporting both. The electoral dynamics are obvious and become even more salient as the U.S. presidential election gears up by mid-2011.
So how do we avoid the perfect storm? We should recognize that the international affairs budget request for FY2011 comprises just 1.4 percent of the federal budget. Cutting it would do far more harm to U.S. foreign policy than it will contribute to fiscal restraint. The payoffs in promoting global stability and obviating the need for more expensive military and post-disaster responses may not be quantifiable, but common sense tells us they are significant.
And to get specific, development advocates, administration officials, and Congress should consider the following:
- Embrace reform as a way to improve effectiveness and achieve sustainable results. The U.S. foreign assistance framework needs an overhaul—from its objectives to its architecture and everything in-between. Reform also means prioritizing evaluations that can guide policy making and funding allocations. The result will be that aid dollars will not just go farther, they’ll accomplish more.
- Be strategic in the cuts that are made by avoiding penny-wise and pound-foolish decisions. Shortchanging funding for evaluating programs, for example, may feel good now, but it will be wasteful over the long term. Cut the stuff that is truly wasteful. Requirements to restrict U.S. food aid to only U.S. commodities transported on U.S. ships adds an estimated 25 percent to the cost of doing business and can significantly delay our emergency relief efforts, according to the Government Accountability Office.
- Send up a unified National Security Budget so that Congress can see how development, diplomacy, and defense work together to support U.S. interests at home and abroad. Congress may still consider defense separately from diplomacy and development budgets, but sending up a unified budget justification would be a powerful presentation of the 3D rhetoric. With the difficulty in passing individual spending bills, there may be by default a 3D appropriations bill.
- Give Congress some ownership of important initiatives, including the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, the new Global Development Policy, and the Feed the Future Initiative, among others. Many of the ideas in the latter two were informed by early work done by authorizing committees. This entails meaningful collaboration with more Members on more issues. And yes, that includes Members who have been the most skeptical
- Discard the notion that Republicans don’t get it when it comes to foreign assistance. Some of the largest aid increases in history came under the previous Bush administration with bipartisan support in Congress.
Call me the optimist, but the 112th Congress, with its anticipated focus on fiscal restraint, could be the catalyst that achieves meaningful aid reform. That would be good for development and good for the budget.
Possibly Related Posts
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- Where Does Congress Fit in the New Development Policy?
- House Cuts President’s FY2011 Development Budget
4 Responses to “The 112th Congress: A Perfect Storm for Aid Cuts, or a Perfect Opportunity for Reform?”
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November 2nd, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Connie, you make some great points here. A slow economic recovery and a $1.3 trillion dollar debt shouldn’t sink reform, they should be the impetus to drive it.
But we need not look only towards the government to set reform in motion- the spread recent of communications technology has transformed the role of citizens in foreign assistance and empowered them to assume greater ownership. Today, Americans can get online and connect with local organizations overseas that are helping their communities, engage with them in dialogue, advocate for them, as well as donate to them directly. Bridging the Divide is one organization that is facilitating this approach in the Middle East.
Not only is this model more cost-effective, by cutting out the waste of heavy overhead, but projects that are locally-owned, relevant to local norms and needs are more likely to have lasting impact. And the benefits continue–building overseas citizen-to-citizen relationships in support of peacebuilding and development not only has the potential to improve international relations, but also to produce a more informed citizenry that demands better foreign policy.
Although the mechanics have been slow to shift, the rhetoric of American Foreign Policy is already highlighting citizen-to-citizen engagement as the way forward, as put forth by President Obama in his 2008 “Cairo to Kansas” speech. While providing Congress with the information and tools to push for top-level reform is important, advocacy efforts to keep the American public globally engaged is also a requisite. This will provide both a model to sustainable development and the necessary pressure to drive a system-wide change that has long been needed.
November 3rd, 2010 at 7:39 pm
If the new Congress acts rationally and understands that foreign aid is not simply throwing out taxpayers money to courrupt dictators. Each member needs a re-education on what aid is, what the different types of aid are, what is wrong with the US aid structure and the international aid organisations.
You noted that aid rose under the Bush Administration. What sort of aid? Aid dedicated towards strategic and non developmental goals.
November 4th, 2010 at 8:33 am
USAID badly needs to reform if it is to effectively promote development. If efforts to buy support were handled by State with USAID allowed to work with countries that seek to develop themselves a good start on reform would be made. If you would like to consider such things with me I would be pleased to communicate and send a copy of a current paper.
David dfitch7@yahoo.com
November 9th, 2010 at 10:01 am
House Republicans have promised budget cuts and got elected by huge margins on that platform. Yet they have sworn that defense spending, entitlements, and debt payments won’t be affected. 83% of Americans don’t want education funding to be cut. The list of areas with public support to make cuts is short. The most obvious place for cuts, and the only area with majority support from Americans to cut, is foreign aid.
If I were a House Republican, I know what I’d do.