From the article:
For more than a decade, U.S. engagement in global development efforts has stood as a rare exception to Washington’s constant partisan warfare, with both Democrats and Republicans tending to agree that relatively small investments in developing countries benefit U.S. national security and project American values. The Trump administration’s proposal to slash foreign aid spending by a third marks a distinct turn toward a more politically charged environment for these programs than has been seen in a long time, many in the development community agreed.
“It is a politicized foreign assistance budget,” said Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. Morris added that the choice to treat cuts to humanitarian assistance and global health programs as an opportunity to make a political statement represents a “departure” from recent decades.
“This administration sees a political gain by demonstrating deep cuts,” Morris said...
The president’s budget request is widely regarded as an aspirational document, more useful as a statement of White House priorities than as a blueprint for what federal funding will look like in the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, 2017. Congress, not the president, holds authority to appropriate funding. Still, as a statement of priorities, the Trump administration’s foreign affairs budget demonstrates “an absence of any real conviction about a development agenda,” said Morris...
Budget negotiations now move to Capitol Hill, where administration officials will defend their budget request to congressional lawmakers. Despite the broad and bipartisan pushback this budget has generated, the development community would be wise not to disregard it, said Morris.
“To say that a new president’s budget is just a wish list is assigning too much irrelevance to it. It is the starting process to the budget process,” Morris said.
“The point is — we are mistaken if we are overly dismissive about this,” he added.