When the Global Development Council meets on May 17 it should identify three to five key moments when President Obama, with the advice of the Council, can make a development difference. Among the immediate possibilities: the June G-8 summit in the United Kingdom, the September G-20 summit in Russia, the UN General Assembly meeting, and President Obama’s upcoming trip to Africa.
Lots of Rethink-relevant news and announcements lately. Here’s our roundup:
If you haven’t looked at the Foreign Assistance Dashboard lately, I’d suggest you do so. The government’s online platform and (eventual) one-stop-shop for storing and visualizing US aid data has some new features. There are new displays of existing data, plus the first set of USAID and MCC quarterly financial data. These tweaks and more timely data are a step in the right direction, but more US federal agencies need to leap onboard and start adding their data to the mix.
I was pleasantly surprised by the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last week on the FY2014 USAID and MCC budgets. I expected a remix of the partisan spats I watched two years ago. Instead, there was impressive congressional turnout plus serious questions and thorough answers. There was even some friendly competition between USAID and MCC. But five contradictions come up anytime foreign aid is on the Hill and the latest budget hearing was no exception.
MCC CEO Daniel Yohannes and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah are heading back to Capitol Hill Thursday to testify together before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. I expect Yohannes and Shah will sing different parts of the same tune: the United States is prepared to do more with less as it strives to fulfill the administration’s global development vision. But it should also be a remix of their joint hearing two years ago with questions on how Congress should prioritize among US development programs. Shah and Yohannes can hit some new high notes on how their agencies are being selective with aid dollars, sharing more aid data and doing better evaluation. They should also be clear about the differences between USAID and MCC. And let’s hope the committee members can avoid the low notes from two years ago when partisan spats (including some in Latin) marred what could have been an important development policy conversation between the executive branch and Congress.
The $52 billion FY2014 international affairs budget request is a small investment with big returns for the United States and the world, Secretary of State John Kerry said in congressional hearings last week. The request is the same amount Congress allocated in FY2013 and a four percent cut from FY2012. Kerry told members of Congress that the State Department and USAID are prepared to do more with less.
The Obama administration’s proposal for food aid reform is evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, but it is still a big step in the right direction. Overall, the administration estimates that the proposal would allow roughly the same level of funds for food aid to reach an additional 4 million people, and do so more quickly in emergencies.
President Obama's total FY2014 international affairs budget request--$52 billion--looks a lot like what was left for international affairs in FY2013 after sequestration. But the administration uses a scalpel, not an ax, to get there in FY2014. The FY2014 budget, if approved, shifts significant resources away from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and concentrates spending on food security, global health and multilateral investments. And the big news, of course, is an overhaul of US food aid.
I see three signs the president’s scalpel is guided by his 2010 Presidential Policy Directive on Global Development (PPD) (and I owe a huge debt to the always-stellar USGLC budget analysis from Larry Nowels and others):
As expected, the president’s budget includes a request for Congress to approve US participation in the 2010 IMF quota reform agreement. There’s a very strong case for approving the request, and I’ll simply point you here, here, and here to read it in detail. Suffice it to say, the IMF is a bargain for US taxpayers, promoting growth and stability globally in ways that directly benefit the US economy and often working in support of US strategic interests around the world.