By Lauren Weber
The Trump administration’s plans to take back over $3 billion in congressionally allocated funds were killed Tuesday in a major win for foreign aid.
The planned rescissions targeted foreign assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. State Department. The global development community saw the effort as a way for the Trump administration to circumvent Congress’ budgetary process and achieve a version of the foreign aid cuts initially proposed in earlier budgets as part of President Donald Trump’s “America First” ethos.
The decision to not go through with the rescission package followed a Tuesday midday meeting between Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Office of Management and Budget head and fiscal hawk Mick Mulvaney.
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Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow for the Washington-based Center for Global Development, told HuffPost, “It’s a relief to see that cooler heads have prevailed.”
“Cutting the aid budget this way is probably the clumsiest of all possible ways to do it, due to how badly it would disrupt planning within the administration and poison relations with congressional appropriators,” Konyndyk said.
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