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Engagement Amid Austerity: Reorienting the International Affairs Budget -- Connie Veillette & John Norris

3/20/12

Connie Veillette

The U.S. political environment has changed significantly since 2007 when President Obama promised to double U.S. foreign assistance. As the 2012 election cycle presses on, cutting the budget and reducing the deficit are on the minds of many. What does this mean for U.S. foreign assistance? 

My guests on this week’s Wonkcast, Connie Veillette, CGD’s director of the Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, and John Norris, executive director of the Sustainable Security and Peacebuilding Initiative at the Center for American Progress (CAP), have a blueprint for making U.S. foreign assistance more focused and effective amid budget austerity. 

Who Will Win Out? The Millennium Challenge Corporation Selection

12/6/11

Vijaya RamachandranOn December 15th the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an innovative U.S. aid agency, is set to announce which countries will receive its unique development assistance. Casey Dunning, policy analyst at CGD and my guest on this week’s Wonkcast, provides insight and recommendations on how these countries will (and should) be selected. I catch Casey shortly after her return from Honduras, where she saw firsthand the positive impacts of an MCC compact on rural development and highway construction.

USAID Modernization Efforts Amid Budget Cut Fever: Connie Veillette

1/24/11

Connie VeilletteIt’s been a busy time for Connie Veillette, director of the Rethinking US Foreign Assistance Initiative here at the Center for Global Development. Last week we hosted a major address by USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah describing the achievements of his first year in office and his ambitious plans for modernizing the agency. No sooner had Shah finished speaking than a group of Republican legislators proposed a budget cutting plan that would zero out USAID’s operating budget. I was eager to learn how Connie—an advocate for effective aid who spent much of her career working for Republicans on Capitol Hill—would assess these developments.

U.S. Development Policy in the Next Congress: Sarah Jane Staats

11/16/10

Sarah Jane StaatsWhat does the new makeup of Congress mean for global development looking forward? My guest this week is Sarah Jane Staats, director of policy outreach here at the Center for Global Development. Sarah Jane is responsible for engaging the development policy community—especially senior staff in the U.S. Congress, the administration and policy experts in leading development advocacy NGOs—in the Center’s research and other programs.

In this Wonkcast, Sarah Jane starts by explaining that, “the first big takeaway with the elections is that they were really not about foreign policy.” Because domestic issues drove the rhetoric of the candidates this election cycle, even the foreign policy positions of some freshman Congressmen are still unknown. Thirty nine of the sixty new House Republicans align themselves with the Tea Party, a group with no clear foreign policy agenda, much less a unified view about whether and how to engage developing countries.

Tempered Optimism on New U.S. Development Policy: Connie Veillette

9/27/10

After months of study, work, negotiation and anticipation, the Obama administration has announced its development policy. What’s new here and what are the chances of implementation? To find out, I chatted with Connie Veillette, who has recently joined the Center for Global Development as director of our Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance program. Connie comes to us from Capitol Hill, where she spent many years with the Congressional Research Service and worked most recently as a senior professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee minority staff, specializing in U.S. foreign assistance and USAID.

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